#7 - In one study, hospital patients’ immune systems

[James Finch]

Hi Ibarrajo,

The issue in the stimulus is that it makes a bizarre assumption that the root cause of the improvement isn't the laughter itself, but rather the tendency to laugh, so the amount one actually laughs isn't relevant. The more obvious and reasonable causal explanation would be:

Greater tendency to laugh causes More Laughter at Comic Videos causes More Improvement

With the assumption being made that those with a greater tendency to laugh actually did laugh more at the videos. This type of flaw question with a causal stimulus is basically asking for a more reasonable causal assumption than the one made in the stimulus.

Hope this helps!

[mcglen01]

Hello,

I selected answer choice B for this problem and I think I see why it wouldn't work but I want to explain my reasoning.

B would be wrong because even if patients with a greater tendency to laugh have a stronger immune system to begin with, that doesn't necessarily mean they will be helped more in their recovery from laughing a little than other patients that laughed a lot. B doesn't address how laughing aids patients in their recovery process, so even if patients with a greater tendency to laugh have stronger immune systems, it is possible that laughter does significantly impact a patient's recovery, so who's to say that patients with weaker immune systems that laugh more aren't making larger gains than those patients that don't laugh much, regardless of initial immune system strength? This doesn't indicate why patients with a greater tendency to laugh can make more gains in recovery laughing a little than other patients are helped laughing a greater amount.

With B, I thought a stronger immune system would explain why those with a greater tendency to laugh that laughed only a little could make greater gains in their recovery than other patients, because their bodies would be more healthful and able to recover (so laughing wouldn't matter or impact anything because their immune systems were strong, making them recover faster). I see now however, that the argument states a study has indicated laughter leads to greater gains in recovery, so I made too many inferences in assuming that a strong immune system would be more important to making gains in one's recovery than any benefits laughter could have.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi McGlen01!

You're on the right track--the argument is about "gains in immune system strength." The relative starting strengths of people's immune systems don't matter because we're talking about how much strength their immune system was able to gain after watching comic videos. It's all about the amount of the increase in immune system strength, not the overall strength of the immune system.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[pmuffley]

I picked D and am thoroughly confused by this discussion. Can you please help me understand why I am incorrect?

"But much greater gains in immune system strength occurred in the patients whose tendency to laugh was greater to begin with. So hospital patients with a greater tendency to laugh are helped more in their recovery from illness even when they laugh a little than other patients are helped when they laugh a greater amount."

My thinking - If tendency to laugh is greater to begin with -> then much greater gains in immune system strength occurred

conclusion - > (cause) greater tendency to laugh = (effect) helped more in their recovery

but what if they were helped more in their recovery, which increased their tendency to laugh? The cause and effect would be switched and therefore weaken the argument.

Also, if you provide feedback and mention the difference between "gains in immune system strength" and "helped more in their recovery from illness" can you please elaborate on how the two are different? That will really confuse me because I am reviewing my June 2014 practice test (this problem is one of the problems I missed) and just as one of many examples, the forum stated for another LR question from the June 2014 practice test a "good idea" and "good solution" were equal in meaning.

Thank you for your help!

[Robert Carroll]

pmuffley,

You missed a key part of the argument - the new information in the conclusion. The intensity of the laughter never comes up in the premises at all. Because the conclusion says something about that, that's a flaw in the argument - the premises don't talk about it, but the conclusion does. At best, the premises give us that there is a correlation between tendency to laugh and gains in immune system strength. At no point do the premises show that this correlation exists regardless of the intensity of laughter.

Another issue is that it says in the premises, when establishing the correlation, that greater gains in immune system strength occurred in those whose tendency to laugh was greater to begin with. Reverse causation thus doesn't work here - they started with the greater tendency to laugh and gained immune system strength later.

The argument seems to think that "gains in immune system strength" and "helped more in their recovery from illness" are different. The second sentence is stated as if it's not just a translation of the first sentence, but an explication of a consequence of it. While I think that makes sense, because the two terms are not completely synonymous, the distinction doesn't seem to matter for identifying the flaw in the reasoning here, and thus is unimportant for answering the question.

Robert Carroll

[pmuffley]

Can you help me identify where they are taking about intensity of laughter in the conclusion but not in the premise(s)?

in premise: "...occurred in the patients whose tendency to laugh was greater to begin with."

conclusion: "So hospital patients with a greater tendency to laugh..."

Also, isn't the stimulus open to being wrong? Therefore, if the author says that their tendency to laugh was greater to begin with, the author may very well believe that, but be mistaken.

I don't know why I'm having so much difficulty with this problem. Thank you for your help.

[Robert Carroll]

pmuffley,

"even when they laugh a little than other patients are helped when they laugh a greater amount"

This info in the conclusion talks about how much patients laughed, which is not mentioned in the premises at all. That's the intensity language I was talking about. We know from the premises that people with a greater tendency to laugh had greater gains in immune system strength. What the premises don't address is how much they actually laughed.

This is a Flaw question. The premises in a Flaw question are taken to be true. A flaw with an argument is not that its premises might be false, but that, even if the premises were true, they wouldn't prove the conclusion. Therefore, because it says in the premises that the tendency to laugh was greater to begin with, that fact can't be flawed.

Robert Carroll

[sarcarr@gmail.com]

referring to question 16 in the other LR section on test 72:
viewtopic.php?t=6714
How is it that we must accept "all artists believe..." as stated in the conclusion of that argument as a premise when there is no other support for that claim...but we cannot accept "when they laugh a little" as stated in the conclusion of this argument as premise info that specifically tells us these folks laughed less, making A look like a bad answer? If one goes about treating this part of the conclusion as a premise as it was done in the art question, it leads to the elimination of the wrong answer. To summarize, when looking at these two questions side by side, and their respective explanations on these forums, it is not clear to me when part of the conclusion is to be treated as premise info and when it is not.

[Robert Carroll]

sarcarr,

In the question you're talking about, "all of whom believe..." isn't a premise or conclusion at all. It's not part of the argument. It's setting up what the argument is trying to prove wrong. So, is it the author's conclusion? No...the author disagrees with it! Is it a premise? It's directly opposed to the author's conclusion, as the author recognizes - that's not evidence! So it's just not the author's conclusion, so there's no reason to doubt it because it has no role whatsoever in the argument.

In the question in this thread, the entire last sentence is the conclusion, and discusses the amount of laughter when that never occurred in the premises at all. That's the entire problem.

Robert Carroll