#5-A person's personality is linked to that person's genes

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Flaw. The correct answer choice is (A).

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

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[jmramon]

Hi Powerscore,

I was able to find the answer that replicates the stimulus' flaw in reasoning (A), but am still having trouble understanding what the exact flaw in reasoning is. I think that the stimulus takes correlated factors and turns them into a causal argument using the latter term (genetics) as the cause and the former term (personality) as the effect, as answer A structurally mirrors. But what kind of flaw is this? Error in causal reasoning? Its hard for me to even tell whether this is a CE flaw or a SN flaw, but the word "linked" in the stimulus makes me think the author's confusing correlation with causation. Please help!

[James Finch]

Hi JM,

This question involves a fairly rare type of flaw to see in a stimulus, that of the misunderstanding of the force of evidence. Here, the author takes the evidence of a "link" between a person's genes and their personality to conclude that because genes ordinarily do not change over time, personality does not change over time either. The problem with that logic is that it misinterprets a "link" as something more like "sole determinative factor," making an inference unsupported by the shaky evidence offered.

Answer choice (A) makes the same unwarranted inference, confusing "related to" for "determined only by."

Hope this clears things up!