#5 - Financial success does not guarantee happiness. This

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen. The correct answer choice is (A)

The conclusion in the stimulus is that money can’t guarantee happiness. This conclusion is based on a survey in which only one-third of the people who self-reported they were financially successful also reported they were happy. This is a strengthen question containing a surveyed population which means that the answer choice which strengthens the survey or assumes its soundness will likely be correct.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. This strengthens the survey and its soundness by eliminating the possibility that people might have lied when they completed the survey. One can imagine a group of people who claimed that they were financially successful on the survey, but were not. In fact, if these people lied about their wealth it would be likely that they are also currently unhappy with their present state of wealth. If we rule out this possibility, as does answer choice (A), the conclusion in the argument is strengthened.

Answer choice (B): The stimulus never claimed that financial success was necessary for happiness, only that it could not guarantee it. As such, B adds no support to the conclusion.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice may tell us the happiness levels of a certain group of people five years ago, but tells us nothing about this same group’s level of happiness now.

Answer choice (D): Without knowing the reported happiness levels of these respondents who lied about their financial success, we cannot conclude anything from this answer choice.

Answer choice (E): This would weaken the conclusion. Consider the two possibilities: (1) If most of the respondents who reported they were unhappy also reported they were financially unsuccessful, we have a group who is really happy while being financially unsuccessful. This would directly conflict with the conclusion; or (2) if most of the respondents who reported they were unhappy also reported they were financially successful, we have a group who is really happy while being financially successful. This would mean money might guarantee happiness, also weakening the conclusion.

[reop6780]

This is strengthen type as I believe.

I knew answer A was very attractive from at first glance, but chose C while reading.

(correct answer is A)

Is C wrong because it deals with respondents without financial success, who are not the respondents described in the stimuli?

I just thought of conclusion, "financial success does not guarantee happiness." And, I thought answer C would strengthen conclusion in that I mistakenly thought financially successful were happy 5 years ago when they were NOT financially successful.

[Robert Carroll]

reop6780,

Yes, this is indeed a Strengthen question.

The conclusion is that a person can be financially successful without being happy. Answer choice C refers to people who report that they had NOT achieved financial success, and that they WERE happy five years ago. Because the happiness or unhappiness of those WITHOUT financial success is not relevant to the conclusion that those WITH financial success don't have to be happy, information about the group referred to in C would not be relevant to the correct group. What I need to know is that there are people who have achieved financial success but who are not happy.

A is correct because, as the stimulus stands, all I know is that a certain number of people reported being financially successful. The conclusion is about actual, not perceived, financial success. So if I knew that those who reported being successful were correct (not lying, not mistaken about their success), then, because they would really be financially successful people, their happiness/unhappiness would be relevant to the conclusion.

Hope this helped!

Robert

[Johnclem]

Hi,
I got this question right but it took me longer than it should. and I had difficulty getting rid of E. ( the explanation to ac E confused me a bit ). This is how I approached this problem. Could you see if my thinking is okay on this one ?


1- a survey concluded only one third of the respondents who claimed to have achieved financial success reported they were happy.
C : financial success does not guarantee happiness.

Before looking at the question stem : at first I thought this may be a flaw question about numbers and percentages. But then I quickly realized that because we do not have any numbers or percentages in the conclusion there has not been a flaw committed. So then I tried to pinpoint the authors assumption.
1- the author must be assuming one third is a small number ( even though we don't know the total surveyed ).
2. The author must be assuming the survey results are actually correct.


E- I was stuck with this choice because I felt it can weaken or strengthen the argument depending on whether the respondents were financially successful or not . ( if most of the happy people reported they were successful then this weakens the argument , if on the other hand most of the happy people were not successful
then this could strengthen by showing that success is not a guarantee of happiness ) .

Thank you
John

[Adam Tyson]

Hey John! Take another look at the conclusion - financial success does not guarantee happiness. Does the smallness of the group of unhappy successful people matter? Not at all! As long as there is just ONE person who is financially successful and unhappy, that is all the proof we would need that financial success does not guarantee happiness. "Guarantee" is a necessary condition indicator - if something guarantees happiness, then that thing is Sufficient for happiness. Here, the author argues that financial success is not sufficient for happiness, and to prove that we only have to show that one time the supposedly sufficient condition happens and the purported necessary does not.

You're right on track with your other idea about the author's assumptions - any time an author relies on a survey to conclude anything, he has to be assuming that the survey is good. He assumes all the things we need of good surveys - a representative sample that is big enough for our purposes, with unbiased questions and accurate, truthful answers. We strengthen his argument by eliminating doubts about the validity of the survey, as answer A does here - it tells us that the answers were accurate and truthful.

E hurts the argument by telling us that the survey answers were NOT accurate! A good weaken answer, but since they asked us to support the conclusion (strengthen) we have to eliminate it as an opposite answer. Note that E doesn't destroy the argument, though, because while most who said they were unhappy were actually happy, we don't know if any of those in that "most" group were also in the "financial success" group. Maybe all of those people truly were unhappy, but a larger group of people who were not financially successful were all lying about their unhappiness?

Good work, but don't get sidetracked by the numbers issue here, and beware of those tricky opposite answers.