LSAT 156 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Some psychologists claim that empathic responses are forms of …

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Children’s behavior can’t be considered moral.

REASONING: Children show weak reasoning when responding to hypothetical moral dilemmas, so they must lack the reasoning needed for moral behavior.

ANALYSIS: There’s two groups of psychologists here. The first group is irrelevant to the question being asked, but I’ll summarize them for good measure.

• They think empathic responses are a part of moral behavior
• They observed children show empathy in real situations
• So they believe children can show moral behavior.

The second group is the one we’re asked about. They can be summarized as follows:

• Moral behavior must show an understanding of moral reasoning, so empathic responses don’t count.
• Based on responses to hypothetical dilemmas, they concluded the children lack this reasoning that’s needed for moral behavior.

There’s a couple things to unpack, but the weakest point here by far (especially compared to the first group) is that they used hypothetical scenarios. That’s a pretty shaky assumption to draw (that performance on hypothetical dilemmas reflects real moral reasoning and behavior).

___________

1. This is too weak to really challenge it. Being slightly better when rested doesn’t challenge the overall conclusion.
2. Adults being better doesn’t tell us whether children’s reasoning is sufficient.
3. A slight variance still doesn’t undermine that they didn’t meet the threshold required overall.
4. CORRECT. If children show much better reasoning in real situations, then the study’s method is flawed, and the conclusion based on it is undermined.
5. Some adults reasoning at the same level doesn’t show children have sufficient moral reasoning.