LSAT 151 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: An analysis of the language in social media messages posted via the …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: A person’s mood is happy in the morning, declines during the day, and improves in the evening.

REASONING: The language used in social media messages showed this pattern.

ANALYSIS: Are the social media messages being posted by the same person?

The argument is saying patterns in the language of social media posts track changes in individual people’s moods over the day:

• Positive words are more common in the morning, dip in the afternoon, rise in the evening.
• Therefore a typical person’s mood follows that same pattern.

But if different people are posting at different times, we don’t know that it’s the same people becoming happier again in the evening. It might be confusing a pattern in aggregate posting behavior with a pattern in individual mood.

___________

1. Irrelevant. The argument is about mood changes over the course of a day, not a week.
2. That might affect the completeness of the data. But this pattern is shown in those posts that do use mood words.
3. Great. We’re only concerned with what social media shows about mood though, so this doesn’t matter.
4. Whether the number of posts differs is not the issue. It’s the pattern that those posts show.
5. CORRECT. If this is true, then the pattern may reflect different groups posting at different times rather than people’s moods improving in the evening.