#15 - Psychologist: We measured the "cognitive plasticity," or the willingness

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[clbrogesr]

Hi - got this correct through POE, but I wanted to revisit the Q because this felt like a pretty meh right answer choice. Wanted to see if my reasoning was correct.

P1: Higher cognitive plasticity leads people to consider more ideas, which means they are probably more adventurous.
P2: Younger siblings have higher cognitive plasticity.
Conclusion: Younger siblings will be more adventurous than the first-born child.

All that answer choice C appeared to be doing - to me anyway - was reinforcing the relationship in premise 1 that higher cognitive plasticity leads people to be more adventurous (which I guess here we assume to be similar to take more risks). It felt like a pretty weak answer choice because I have to assume that considering new ideas and adventurous = take more risks. I see that the answer choice is correct through POE, but are there other ways it is strengthening the argument?

[atierney]

Hello,

Yes, I would say that one way to bolster any argument where the truthfulness of a necessary link is assumed is to demonstrate the truthfulness of that link. It's almost as if you are providing the "proof" to bridge whatever doubts may be present in the validity of the conclusion. This is especially true where the conclusion hinges upon the constructing a relationship between two things/conditions/or characteristics. So I think, that while I agree with you that the other answer choices are paltry at best, I would disagree with your assessment as to this particular answer choice's strength in terms of solidifying what is admitted to be an unsupported assumption in the argument ("It is reasonable to assume"). Now, one point of confusion might lie in the fact that we are told all the time to treat the premises as true on LSAT questions. Thus, if you're told that "it is reasonable to assume" a statement, then you must reasonably assume that the truthfulness of the statement. This does not mean that its contents have been proven true in reality, and for empirical questions (those that rely on "studies"), an attempt is being made to make a claim about reality itself, rather what might be reasonable to assume true.

One analogy you might make is that it is reasonable to assume that people who don't study fail tests. However, this does not mean that Johnny, who didn't study for his test, failed it, or that, in fact, statistically speaking, one is more likely to fail a test for which one does not study than otherwise, even if, it is certainly reasonable to assume this.

Let me know if you have further questions on that.

[rightway1566]

I got down to C and D, and ended up choosing D. Both answer choices seem fairly bad to me, as C is very weak ("other" studies could mean at least 1) and D is as well. Could someone describe what tips the scales in favor of C over D?

[Adam Tyson]

Because this is a Strengthen question, rightway1566, we only need a little bit of help from the correct answer. Anything positive that would tip the scales even a little bit in favor of our author being correct will do the job, and one thing that does that is corroborating data. Even just one study that produces similar results or additional confirming data is helpful! We aren't looking to prove anything; we just want a little help.

So rather than asking what makes C more helpful than D, let's see if D is even helpful in the first place.

For D to support the claim that younger siblings are likely to be more adventurous than their older sibs, we would need to know a few things about these business execs. First, are they even adventurous, taking risks and accepting new ideas? Is that a characteristic of all business executives? I don't know about that. Maybe if this had said "entrepreneurs" (people who start their own businesses) I might be willing to make that leap, but just plain old boring business execs? The ones I know tend to be highly risk-averse, playing it safe and rejecting a lot of new ideas in favor of doing what always worked in the past. See how this aspect of the answer could lead to discussion and debate?

Second, are the older siblings of these industry leaders less adventurous than their little brothers and sisters? This answer doesn't tell me anything about that comparison, and so it can't show me that the younger ones are MORE adventurous without me making some assumptions. The right answer - a helpful answer - shouldn't need me to help it along. It should be positive all by itself!

Finally, there's the weakness of "several" in that answer. Is it more than half? Is it just a large minority? If those "several" are just a small percentage of the total, that would mean most industry leaders are first-born, which, if we assume they are especially adventurous (and we should not assume that), would actually hurt the argument.

In short, answer D is a swamp of problems that needs us to do a lot of heavy lifting to make it come out as a net-positive for our author. Because there is so much ambiguity and weakness in that answer, it's no help at all. It's not just that the scales are tipping in favor of answer C; it's that answer D never even gets near the scale!

[nivernova]

I was hesitant to choose C because I wasn't sure whether the correlation is positive, in which case it would strengthen, or negative hence weakening it.

How can I be sure what answer choice C is saying is a positive correlation ??

[Jeff Wren]

Hi nivernova,

You're right that technically you don't know from the wording of Answer C whether the correlation is positive or negative.

However, based on the context of the argument, which suggests a positive correlation between cognitive plasticity and being adventurous, this seems like a reasonable interpretation. It would be rather odd if being willing to accept new ideas was negatively correlated with being adventurous, although I suppose anything is possible.

Also, I feel like when the word correlation is generally used in everyday life without specifying positive or negative, it's usually assumed/implied to be positive. This may just be my impression, but it seems like negative correlations would need to be clarified but positive correlations are what most people think correlations are. For example, if I read that "smoking is correlated with lung cancer," I would understand that means a positive correlation and wouldn't really even consider the possibility of it being negatively correlated.