QUESTION TEXT: Sociologist: Research shows, contrary to popular…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: You’ll be happier without a pet.
REASONING: People without pets are happier
than those with pets.
ANALYSIS: This argument makes a
causation-correlation error. Just because
people with pets are less happy doesn’t mean
pets make them less happy.
It could be that sad people feel lonely and buy
pets, and therefore drag down the average
happiness of pet owners.
___________
- This could mean that three out of 90 million pet owners are happier than non-pet-owners. “Some” is very vague.
- Sometimes, I wish I had a dog. I’m not a pet owner. What does this have to do with whether owning pets cause sadness?
- This is vague. Non-pet-owners may be even happier than “reasonably happy”. We already know that pet owners are less happy on average. “Less happy” doesn’t mean “unhappy”. It’s a relative term.
- CORRECT. This shows that pet owners would be even less happy without pets. They’re less happy on average, but pets don’t cause the problem: they help make most owners happier.
Note: this isn’t a strong criticism, since “most” could be as low as 51%. But it does weaken the argument.
- Everyone feels unhappy sometimes. This is useless. We only care about overall average happiness.
Free Logical Reasoning lesson
Get a free sample of the Logical Reasoning Mastery Seminar. Learn tips for solving LR questions
Leave a Reply