LSAT 120 – Section 4 – Question 11

LSAT 120 - Section 4 - Question 11

October 2005

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT120 S4 Q11
+LR
+Exp
Inference +Inf
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
17%
159
B
16%
157
C
1%
158
D
3%
155
E
62%
163
144
156
168
 +Harder 146.628 +SubsectionMedium

Historian: One traditional childrearing practice in the nineteenth century was to make a child who misbehaved sit alone outside. Anyone passing by would conclude that the child had misbehaved. Nowadays, many child psychologists would disapprove of this practice because they believe that such practices damage the child’s self-esteem and that damage to children’s self-esteem makes them less confident as adults. However, no one disagrees that adults raised under that traditional practice were, on average, as confident as adults not so raised.

Summary

It was once traditional to make misbehaved children sit alone outside, and passersby would know they had misbehaved.

Many child psychologists don’t endorse this practice based on two beliefs: (1) that it damages children’s self-esteem; and (2) that damage to children’s self-esteem makes them less confident as adults.

Children raised with the traditional practice do not tend to have lower confidence levels than adults who never underwent this practice.

Very Strongly Supported Conclusions

Either the traditional practice didn’t tend to damage children’s self-esteem, or childhood self-esteem damage doesn’t harm adult confidence.

If the traditional practice damaged children’s self-esteem, childhood self-esteem damage doesn’t tend to harm adult confidence.

If childhood self-esteem damage harms adult confidence, the traditional practice didn’t tend to damage children’s self-esteem.

A
The beliefs of many present-day child psychologists about the consequences of loss of self-esteem are incorrect.

Unsupported. It’s possible that the child psychologists are wrong to believe that self-esteem loss leads to lowered confidence, but it’s also possible that the childrearing practice in question actually didn’t tend to cause self-esteem loss.

B
Some of the most confident adults, as well as some of the least confident adults, were raised under the traditional practice in question.

Unsupported. The stimulus only mentions average confidence levels, which tells us nothing about the margins. Maybe the most and least confident adults weren’t raised under the practice and the mid-confidence adults were, averaging out to the same confidence level in both groups.

C
With the traditional childrearing practice, passersby did not always make correct inferences about children’s behavior by observing them outdoors.

Anti-supported. We know that the children were made to sit outside because they misbehaved, and we also know that anyone passing by would conclude that the children sitting outside had misbehaved. Therefore, everyone passing by would make the correct inference!

D
The most confident adults are those who developed the highest level of self-esteem in childhood.

Unsupported. We know many psychologists think that childhood self-esteem loss leads to lower adult confidence, but we don’t know if that’s true. We also don’t know whether high self-esteem correlates with high confidence levels, or even if child psychologists believe it might!

E
If children’s loss of self-esteem makes them less confident as adults, then the traditional childrearing practice in question did not tend to cause significant loss of self-esteem.

Strongly supported. Since adults raised with the practice tend to be as confident as other adults, one of the psychologists’ claims must be wrong: either self-esteem loss doesn’t make children less confident as adults, or the practice didn’t tend to cause self-esteem loss.

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