LR Question 17 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Critics worry that pessimistic news reports about the…
QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported
FACTS:
- Everyone has direct experience of the economy.
- If people have direct experience, they don’t defer to journalists.
- Some critics worry that pessimistic economic journalism will affect people’s perception of the economy.
- Journalists say they can’t worry about the effects of their work.
ANALYSIS: I rearranged the facts to make the deduction more obvious. Facts 1 and 2 combine to show that it’s unlikely that people will be influenced by journalism about the economy.
___________
- This is a trap answer. It would have been right if it had said “by the extent of negative reporting” or something like that.
But it says “by the extent of people’s confidence in it” - Careful. The stimulus said that people only defer to journalists when they lack direct experience. But the stimulus did not say that people always defer to journalists when they lack experience.
Lack of experience is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition. - The stimulus supports the opposite of this.
- CORRECT. This seems probable. People have direct experience of the economy, so they won’t defer to journalists.
- This isn’t supported. We know people don’t defer to journalists if they have direct experience, but journalists could still be harming people in some other way.
Journalists say they can’t worry about the effects of their work, but that doesn’t mean they’re right not to worry.
More Resources for Most Strongly Supported Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Most Strongly Supported questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers most strongly supported questions.
I was wondering why A was wrong. Didn’t it say that pessimistic journalism can harm the economy because people lose confidence in it? Therefore, is it not also true that people losing confidence in the economy harms the economy? How is it a trap answer?
While critics say that pessimistic news reports could harm the economy by lowering confidence (which we can ultimately conclude is wrong, which I’ll get to in a second), answer A takes it further by saying critics are wrong to think CONFIDENCE affects the economy at all. But the stimulus never refutes that idea – it actually assumes that confidence does play a role. The issue is that A misattributes what is being challenged: the stimulus questions whether journalistic reporting has a strong influence on confidence, not whether confidence itself affects the economy. This is why, like Graeme said, if we switched “by the extent of [people’s confidence]” to “by the extent of [negative reporting]”, A would have been correct.
This is why D is right. D says news reports are unlikely to have a significant effect on people’s view of the economy. We know this because the passage states that studies show people only defer to journalists on issues where they have no direct experience (the last sentence). However, from the first sentence, we know everyone has direct experience with the economy every day. So, people won’t defer to journalists on the economy. Therefore, it is indeed unlikely that news reports about the economy would have a significant effect on people’s opinions about it.
Hopefully that clarified it for you, let me know if you have further questions!
I’m curious about the word “likely” on the LSAT. I caught on that people don’t always defer to a journalist but I think the word “likely” on both answers B and D tripped me up.
Your explanation on why B is incorrect makes it seem like “likely” equals a sufficient condition. Is that correct?
In this case, “likely” and “unlikely”, while confusing, aren’t there to suggest a sufficient condition. They’re just quantifying language on the LSAT, like “some”, “most”, etc. The sufficient and necessary conditions for this question look like this:
If Defer to Journalists –> ~Direct Experience; and its contrapositive would be
If Direct Experience –> ~ Defer to Journalists
D is correct because, in the first sentence, the stimulus says that people have Direct Experience with the economy. Thus, people won’t defer to journalists on economic matters, so the journalists can write all the pessimistic reports they want, and it won’t have a significant effect on people’s opinions.
Hi Graeme,
I think your analysis of why answer D is correct misses a point.
Instead invoking the common sense that people have experience with the economy, I believe a more significant reason why answer D is correct is that it says that “the news reports… are unlikely to have a significant effect on people’s opinion…” Which limits the applied group to people who have already formed an opinion. Furthermore, the argument stem expresses that people defer only when “they have no direct experience”
The stimulus tells us that everyone has “direct experience” of the economy every day, so it’s common sense to assume that “the people who have an opinion” are “all people” — an opinion is just a viewpoint or judgment, and when you have everyday exposure to something, it’s almost impossible to have literally opinion on it. You could even moderate that assumption and just say it’s safe to assume that at least a majority of people with everyday exposure must have some opinion.
The explanation for (D) is correct because of the conditional reasoning in the stimulus.
(1) Defer to journalists –> ~Direct experience
(2) Direct experience –> ~Defer to journalists
We know that people have direct experience everyday, which, as the explanation points out, means that people will not defer to journalists. So, we can say it’s unlikely that news reports are going to have a significant effect on people’s opinions about the economy.