#16 - People are not happy unless they feel that they are

[moonman157]

I had it down to B and E and was wondering why it was E. Thanks.

[Nikki Siclunov]

The stimulus employs conditional reasoning:

Happy --> Needed

Needed (most people) --> Family/Friendship

In other words, people can be happy only when they are needed, but most people find that they are needed only within the sphere of family and friendship. (E) is the contrapositive: outside the sphere of family and friendship, less than half of all people (i.e. NOT most) can be happy.

There is no evidence that the nature of modern society actually undermines the importance of family life to one's happiness. In fact, family life is indispensable for the happiness of most people, suggesting quite the opposite of what answer choice (B) states.

[SherryZ]

Hi there! Thank you for helping me!

I picked C but the correct answer choice is E. Could you explain why C is wrong and E is correct?

Also, can this question be solved by Formal Logic?? If yes, is the relation like following?
Happy feel needed (Inference: Feel needed Happy)
Feel needed within the sphere of family and friends (Inference: within the sphere of family and friends Feel needed)

If my analysis above is correct, could you tell me how to link them together and solve the question?


Thank you!
--Sherry

[Steve Stein]

Hi Sherry,

Your diagrams look good, and we can link them, but the question at the end of your post speaks to the clever trap sometimes set by the testmakers: the statements can be linked...

Happy feel needed require friends and family

...but in this case they don't lead to any valid inferences.


The question is a Must be True, so we need to look at each answer to determine whether it passes the Fact Test.

Answer choice (C) claims that most people are happy in their private lives, but looking at the statements in the stimulus, the author does not make this claim.

The right answer (E), though, says that the minority of people can feel needed outside friends and family. This is confirmed by the author's statement that the majority of people must turn to friends and family for the feeling of being needed.

I hope that's helpful! Please let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve

[lsatprobs]

Really struggled with this one, and do not know why.

Like others, I got the answer choices down to C and E!

I had this diagram:

H--> N

N (most) -->Friends and Family

I had a "most arrow" between the N and the Friends and Family, and wanted to ride the most train all the way to the answers....BUT that did not work. Ok, I kept my composure and looked again.

I see now that C is a trap answer, how enticing, "if they are not happy in their jobs" LOL! There are other factors too, like random strangers (not family or friends), etc etc. Also, who said most people are happy in their private lives? Right, like, what if most people are just not happy? I just do not see the evidence to support this bad boy at this point.

However, can someone explain "E" to me? Still struggling a little.

So let me get this straight:

If MOST happy people (suff) who have to feel needed by others (nec) get this feeling through friends and family (51%-100%), then we can assume that the rest of people who get of happiness and whatnot get it in other ways (49%-0%)?

Just want to confirm this line of thinking!

Thanks in advance!

[Francis O'Rourke]

That sounds like you fully understand this one, lsatprobs!

[Tuothekhazar]

However, can someone explain "E" to me? Still struggling a little.

1. If people feel happy, those people require to be needed.

2. Most people in modern society can have this needed feeling only from the sphere of family and friendship.
* It means that " some " of people in modern society can have this needed feeling " not " only from the sphere of family and friendship.

Inference:

Most people in modern society as a group belongs to the " people ", then the other group also belongs to the " people " must be few people in modern society.

So, If most people in modern society can have an emotion, its requires that they must gain this emotion only from a group.

Then it must true that if few people in modern society can also have that emotion, it's requires that " they must gain this emotion not necessary only from that group. Which is to say, they can still have the emotion from that group, but it also means that it's ok for them to retrieve that emotion outside of that group.

So, regardless almost everyone knows that their job could be done by anyone, few of people in modern society still can feel happy by feeling needed from either outside the sphere of family and friendship or both inside and outside the sphere of family and friendship.

If that's the case, then we know the number of people in modern society who can only feel needed from only the sphere of family and friendship for the sake of being happy must larger than the number of people who can do such outside the sphere of family and friendship.

That is basically what E says.

* my humble 2 cents here, its not simply just a inference question, since it firstly requires you to " infer " for any must-be-true propositions, and then asks you to identify " necessary assumption " from those proposition matching the answers.

[haganskl]

Hello.

I selected E because I could eliminate the others but I struggled with it because it felt like I was making a false inference. If this was a straight up MBT question, would E be a valid answer?

TIA

[Robert Carroll]

haganskl,

Answer choice (E) should still be good for a Must Be True. Most people can be happy only within the sphere of family and friends. Family and friends are part of "interpersonal relationships". Outside that sphere, fewer than half of people can achieve happiness. So the mismatch between "family and friends" and "interpersonal relationships" is not an objection to this answer, because being outside of the interpersonal relationship sphere is also outside the family and friends sphere.

Robert Carroll

[mariaaa]

Hi there,

I was stuck between A and E and I am a little confused as to why A is not correct.

I understand that:
Happy --> Feel needed
Feel needed -(most)-> within sphere of family & friends

In answer choice A it says that: People who realize that others could fill their occupational roles as ably as they do themselves cannot achieve any happiness in their lives.
I took "People who realize that others could fill their occupational roles as ably as they do" to mean that they do not feel needed. And by taking the contrapositive of the first statement - Not feel needed --> not happy - I came to the conclusion that they cannot achieve happiness. Why is this incorrect?

Thanks in advance for your help!
-Maria