LSAT 103 – Section 1 – Question 06

LSAT 103 - Section 1 - Question 06

September 1998

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 0:52

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT103 S1 Q06
+LR
+Exp
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
1%
152
B
1%
153
C
94%
165
D
3%
154
E
1%
146
137
144
150
 +Medium 147.884 +SubsectionMedium

Videocassette recorders (VCRs) enable people to watch movies at home on videotape. People who own VCRs go to movie theaters more often than do people who do not own VCRs. Contrary to popular belief, therefore, owning a VCR actually stimulates people to go to movie theaters more often than they otherwise would.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that owning a VCR prompts people to go to the movie theater more. She bases this on a correlation: people who tend to go to the movies more often also own a VCR.

Identify and Describe Flaw
This is a cookie-cutter “correlation does not imply causation” flaw, where the author sees a positive correlation and jumps to the conclusion that one thing causes the other, without ruling out alternative hypotheses. Specifically, she overlooks two key alternatives:

(1) The causal relationship could be reversed—maybe going to movies more causes people to get VCRs, not the other way around.

(2) Some other, underlying factor could be causing the correlation—maybe there’s something that causes people to both go to the movies and buy VCRs. (Maybe they simply like movies in general?)

A
concludes that a claim must be false because of the mere absence of evidence in its favor
The author doesn’t bring up a lack of evidence for any claims. Rather, she reaches her conclusion by presenting evidence in the form of a correlation.
B
cites, in support of the conclusion, evidence that is inconsistent with other information that is provided
The only evidence cited is a correlation between people who own VCRs and people who go to the movies more often. Everything else in the stimulus is at least consistent with this correlation being true.
C
fails to establish that the phenomena interpreted as cause and effect are not both direct effects of some other factor
This describes a key alternative hypothesis that the author ignores. She fails to establish that VCR ownership and moviegoing are not both direct effects of some other, underlying causal factor. (Maybe they’re both effects of simply liking movies in general?)
D
takes a condition that by itself guarantees the occurrence of a certain phenomenon to be a condition that therefore must be met for that phenomenon to occur
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of mistaking a sufficient condition for a necessary one. The author doesn’t make this mistake, and her argument doesn’t rely on conditional reasoning. Instead, she uses causal reasoning (and overlooks possible alternative hypotheses in the process).
E
bases a broad claim about the behavior of people in general on a comparison between two groups of people that together include only a small proportion of people overall
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of overgeneralization. But the author doesn’t generalize from a limited sample to an overly broad conclusion. Rather, she compares all people who own VCRs to all people who don’t, and so considers all people overall.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 103 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply