LSAT 108 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q4

LR Question 4 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The average 40-year-old North American …

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: TV ads have influenced North American habits of thought.

REASONING: The average 40-year-old North American has watched more than 1 million TV ads.

ANALYSIS: The argument goes from: People have been exposed to a huge number of ads

to

Ads have influenced their habits of thought.

Now, you might be able to reason that if people are exposed to something 1 million times, it’ll influence them. But that’s an assumption that needs to be stated on the LSAT. That assumption would directly connect the premise to the conclusion.

___________

1. Too broad. Even if this is true, it doesn’t tell us that TV ads specifically influenced people’s thinking. Maybe other external influences (family, school, friends, culture) did all the work.
2. CORRECT. If anything you’re exposed to in great quantity influences your habits of thought, then TV ads would influence your habits of thought if you’ve watched a million of them.
3. Even if people can’t avoid commercials, that doesn’t mean the commercials influence their thinking. Exposure ≠ influence (without our missing assumption).
4. Whether some people find commercials interesting is irrelevant.
5. Too weak. It only says some forms of communication have this effect. It doesn’t tell us that TV commercials are among those forms.