#22 - In a recent study, one group of participants watched

[deck1134]

Is the whole "identical twins" thing just a red-herring? The point is that these folks are not accurately reporting the time. How does the twin thing play into the answer choice?

[ltowns1]

I eliminated (B) because it had the word "hearing" instead of words like observing, watching, etc. Is that fair in this case? I really didn't see how (B) stregthened the argument.

[James Finch]

Hi Deck and LTowns,

LTowns: It's debatable whether one "hearing" and "seeing" are analogous enough to for evidence of one to support the other. Either way, the important takeaway from answer choice (B) is that it doesn't weaken the argument, which is what we're trying to do; irrelevant answer choices are just as wrong here as ones that strengthen the conclusion.

Deck: "Identical twins" is a definitely a red herring, forcing you to think through what the implications would be in a stimulus that is focused on "seeing yourself." The stimulus implies that subconscious desires/motivations are created merely by seeing a visual stimulus of oneself doing something, and so having evidence that seeing someone who isn't you, but looks exactly like you, doesn't cause a motivation to actually do the thing that was seen, but rather an overestimation of how much time you actually spend doing the thing. That last part fits in perfectly with the evidence given in the stimulus (essentially an alternate effect for the running study, that in turn causes the difference in reported times) even if the identical twins don't align exactly with seeing yourself. One's identical twin is as close as one can get without being an actual representation of oneself, so it still works to weaken the argument.

Hope this helps!

[yusrak]

Hi Powerscore,

I have a question regarding which sentence is the main conclusion. I categorized the pieces of the argument as follows:
Premise: A recent study had group 1 watch themselves run while group 2 watched other people run.
Premise: When contacted later, group 1 reported working out 1 hour longer each day on average than group 2.
Conclusion: Watching yourself working out can motivate you to workout more.

I thought that the last sentence was the main conclusion because of the conclusion indicator, "this shows that." I also thought it was the main conclusion because the other 2 statements support it; whereas the last sentence does not support the second premise, even if the order were reversed.

So based on this reasoning, I identified a causality flaw. The second premise states that group 1 works out more than group 2. Then the argument concludes that because group 1 watched a video of themselves this caused them to work out more. I prephrased that there could be alternate cause for the stated effect, perhaps group 1 was already more motivated than group 2.

Then I attacked the choices as follows:

A) wrong, it does not weaken the conclusion
B) wrong, in the stimulus groups 1 and 2 watched themselves - not people who are similar to them
C) weak contender because it does not specify which participants, is it referring to group 1 or group 2?
D) weak contender because the same people in the video did not read, but it does provide some reason to weaken the argument, that the participants over-reported
E) wrong, this strengthens the argument

Now I know the answer is choice D, hard to know if I won't make the same mistake again. But I want to know if my reasoning above regarding the conclusion and flaw is correct.

Thanks!
Yusra

[Adam Tyson]

So based on this reasoning, I identified a causality flaw. The second premise states that group 1 works out more than group 2.

I think you are only slightly off the mark here, Yusra, in an otherwise excellent analysis. Here's where you got off track: there is no premise that says that the people in the first group exercised more. Instead, it says they REPORTED that they exercised more. We just took their word for it! That is why answer D does the most to weaken the argument. It has nothing to do with who they watched, and everything to do with whether we should believe what they have to say! The author made a causal claim, but the problem could be viewed as one of unreliable data. We don;t know if they actually did exercise more, or if they lied. Answer C has nothing to do with a problem with unreliable data.

[ashpine17]

I am still really confused about the identical twin thing and the effect D has on the entire argument. I get that watching your twin exercise is similar enough to watching yourself exercise so that it would weaken the argument, but wouldn't it depend on whether or not the twin recognizes that he or she is watching his sibling?

[JoshuaDEL]

(C): This answer requires a couple additional assumptions to make it work. It is the classic "fill-in-the-blanks" incorrect answer choice. In this case, if we knew that those who watched a video of themselves exercising were in fact already highly motivated to exercise, then it wasn't the video that made the difference. Heck, I'd need to be pretty motivated to watch myself run on a treadmill [shudder]. However, note that we must introduce a missing and unwarranted assumption to make this answer work.

(D) This is the credited response. Yes, we are dealing with an identical twin here, but this answer is the only one that directly harms the conclusion and it does so by attacking the most pronounced flaw in this argument, that is, do people accurately self-report their exercise habits? The evidence provided in this answer choice, while qualified somewhat by the "identical twin," does provide some reason to believe that people may not accurately self-report such behavior.

I too am confused about C and D and I crossed out D for the same reason other people have mentioned. In your explanation, you mentioned that D is appropriate because it tackles the possibility of inaccurate self-report. However, just because they can inaccurately self-report in one situation, doesn't mean they will do so in this situation since the situation is totally different: watching yourself vs watching someone else (twin).

By the same line of reasoning, C also seems like a valid answer because it brings up the possibility of external factors affecting the experiment, reported hours not increasing in certain conditions. If the author mentioned that the motivation level of both groups was relatively equal, I would understand why this wouldn't weaken the argument at all. It seems to suggest an alternate cause/external factor as to why the second group didn't increase as much.

D just seemed totally irrelevant as the situation is totally different (unless the test makers think watching your twin is the same thing as watching yourself) while C weakens the argument at least a little bit since the author didn't explicitly mention that both groups consisted of equally motivated people. Although C may not be the 100% satisfactory answer, it seemed to be the best one for me.

Let me know if I misunderstood your point and please help me!

[Adam Tyson]

Answer C does nothing because it only addresses some subset of the entire group and doesn't affect the overall result that people who watched the videos of themselves reported exercising more, on average, than the other group did. The argument allows for variations within both groups, which do nothing to hurt the overall claim since the video watchers still reported an overall greater average.

Answer D might be more easily understood as a weaken answer if it simply said "sometimes people who self-report in studies lie or make mistakes." Surely that would raise at least some doubts about the argument! The answer doesn't have to prove anything about what the two groups did or didn't do, but only has to sow some seeds of doubt. It doesn't matter if they lied because they watched themselves, or because they watched their twins, or just because they are liars. What matters is that this answer points out that the data could be unreliable, and therefore any argument based on that data is also unreliable.

[ArizonaRobin]

Throughout all the Powerscore training, it has been made clear to us that we shouldn't have to "advocate" for a right answer or perform mental gymnastics to make it work. It should be correct on its own. Yet with D, the LSAT writers are asking us to make two assumptions to make the answer work.

1) We have to assume that watching an identical twin is analogous to watching oneself. The stimulus specifically states that the group that watched other people exercise was not the group that exercised more. Since the study compared people who watched a video of themselves with a group of people who watched other people, this is an important distinction that we are now asked to ignore. In real life, it is still possible to tell identical twins apart and common sense says that a person could certainly tell the difference between themselves and their twin.

2) We are asked to make the leap between a sedentary activity (reading) and exercising. We have no information that would suggest that these are in any way linked. Perhaps watching someone exercise is motivating but watching someone read might make a person want to sleep more? Or might make someone feel bored and overreport the amount of time they spend reading...

I feel like if we were being asked to make one leap, it might make more sense, but being asked to make two is really asking us fight for this answer choice. Can someone please explain to me when we should expect to advocate for answer choices and when it is appropriate to follow the normal rules?

[Robert Carroll]

Arizona,

Nothing about this situation violates the rules for answering questions. You see two assumptions we have to make:

1. Viewing your twin is analogous to viewing yourself.

2. Reading is analogous to exercising.

Well, these assumptions are perfectly fine, to an extent. What does it mean for two things to be analogous? Unless the things are identical (and I don't think we'd describe two things as "analogous" if they are identical), it means that, while not being perfectly similar, they are similar in some relevant ways. They can't be similar in all ways, or else they'd be identical. So any case of an analogy is a case where there are some similarities and some differences. The utility of an analogy to prove a point is a function of the degree of similarity, most especially relevant similarity, and the degree of difference.

So, if the assumptions are that twins are analogous to each other and that reading is analogous to exercising, those analogies are already true by definition. What's not yet proven is that the analogies are close enough in relevant respects to do what we want - here, to weaken the argument.

1. Is seeing your twin doing something the same as seeing yourself do it? No, of course not. But it's similar. Is it more similar than seeing a dog do something? Sure. So it's similar in some ways. The questions is not WHETHER there's an analogy (there is), but how strong it is in ways that matter. Is it plausible that seeing your twin do something causes you to identify with the twin in a way stronger than other observations would show? Yes, that seems plausible. That's all we need for this analogy to weaken.

2. Is reading the same as exercising? Of course not. Is it more similar to exercising than something? Sure. So this analogy exists, and there's a plausible case that people might overestimate one activity if they also overestimate another, similar one.

That's all we need to make this work - no stretches, just a couple analogies that do exist and that we just need to make sure are similar enough in relevant ways to get the answer to weaken the argument.

Robert Carroll