LSAT 104 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Critic: Many popular psychological theories are poor…

QUESTION TYPE: Role in Argument

CONCLUSION: It isn’t important that popular psychological theories aren’t very good at being proper scientific theories.

REASONING: The popular theories get better results than other “scientific” theories.

ANALYSIS: This is a pretty good argument. Some people criticize popular theories for being clumsy theories that explain little.

This argument points out that the theories have a big advantage: they work.

___________

1. The author doesn’t disagree with any of the claims about popular theories. They are inelegant and they don’t solve the mystery of the psyche.
    
   On the other hand, they work.
2. CORRECT. Some scientific snobs will say the theories are useless because they’re inelegant and they don’t solve mysteries.
    
   The statement in questions shows that these objections are not very important. The popular theories work, while their scientific rivals don’t do so well.
3. The last sentence says the other theories are more scientific. The popular theories are therapeutically better, but they’re not more scientific.
4. We’re not told anything about scientific theories, except that they don’t work very well. The whole argument is about popular theories.
5. The popular theories work, but we don’t necessarily know why. Something can work, even if our explanation for why it works is wrong.

Recap: The question begins with “Critic: Many popular psychological theories are poor”. It is a Role in Argument question. Learn more about LSAT Role questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.