LSAT 142 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q11

LR Question 11 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Psychologists observing a shopping mall parking lot…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Drivers are possessive of their parking spaces even when leaving, and more possessive when they know another driver wants their space.

REASONING: Driver time to leave a parking space changed based on the following factors:

• No car waiting: 32 seconds
• Car waiting: 39 seconds
• Car waiting and honking: 51 seconds

ANALYSIS: To predict how to weaken an argument, it helps to have an alternate hypothesis. And to think of alternate hypotheses, you’re allowed to use common sense. It helps here: this argument is terrible if you stop and think about it, based on experience.

Pretend you’re a driver. There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the time differences that has nothing to do with possessiveness:

• If there are no cars waiting, it’s easy to exit a space.
• If there is a car waiting, you have to go a bit slower to make sure you don’t hit the car.
• If a car is honking, then that’s stressful and it could increase your exit time.

We can’t say stress is the cause for sure, but it’s an alternate hypothesis. All you need to do to weaken the argument is point out a possible alternate cause. And usually, the LSAT indicate an alternate cause that is fairly obvious is you pretend you’re actually in the situation they’re describing.

A few wrong answers are tempting because they seem to affect the argument. But you’re not looking for an answer that’s merely relevant to the situation. You’re looking for an answer that offers an alternate explanation. If you can’t say how an answer explains the entire situation, then it’s not the right answer.

___________

1. CORRECT. This explains everything. Having other cars nearby increases pressure somewhat, and honking greatly increases pressure. This answer tells us that the pressure will slow down exit times.
2. You might think this weakens the argument by showing there’s no effect when drivers enter. But this is beside the point.
    
   The argument was that possessiveness was the cause of slowness when exiting. It makes sense that people might exit slowly due to possessiveness. But it wouldn’t make sense for possessiveness to affect the speed of entry. Once you’re entering a parking space, you’ve already won! It’s yours. There’s no point to going in super fast, as no one can take the space from you.
3. This doesn’t fit with the argument. The stimulus said that if another car is waiting, then people only take seven more seconds to leave. That’s a bit longer, but I wouldn’t say that leaving is “considerably” more difficult in that case.
    
   So this answer doesn’t fit the data. Also, this answer says nothing about honking. 
4. It doesn’t matter how likely someone is to be waiting. The argument is only about what happens if someone is waiting.
5. There are two problems with this answer. First, this answer only says that anger “influences” the amount of time leaving the space. That could mean that people leave faster when they’re angry. So this doesn’t clearly provide an alternate cause.
    
   Second, this answer offers no alternate explanation of the fact that people take 39 seconds to leave when a car is waiting quietly.