LR Question 22 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: In a recent study, one group of participants watched…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: Watching yourself exercise can inspire you to exercise more.
REASONING: There were two groups. One watched a recording of themselves exercising. The other watched a recording of someone else exercising. The group that watched themselves reported exercising for an hour more per day.
ANALYSIS: There are two issues with this:
- The conclusion is about how much people exercised. However, the evidence is only about how much people reported exercising. We actually don’t have evidence about how much people exercised – the reports may not be correct.
- The study didn’t have a good control group. It’s possible that watching someone else exercise was demotivational. We should have had a baseline for how much people exercise without watching a tape.
Note: you’re often told “don’t contradict the stimulus”, which is good advice: LSAT answers usually don’t contradict a premise. But….you need to interpret this advice carefully. Correct answers will often seem to contradict a premise, but not actually contradict it. There’s no issue with seeming to contradict a premise that.
Also note that it is possible for a correct answer to contradict a stimulus. It’s just extremely rare, whereas people commonly want to contradict the stimulus. Which is why the common advice is not to try. But an answer isn’t wrong if it contradicts something!
___________
- There are two problems with this. 1. This just says “more”. That could be “1 minute more” and so this doesn’t necessarily indicate a significant difference. Both the stimulus and the right answer have a qualifier that sets a higher lower bound. (Watch out for this kind of thing. It eliminates a surprising amount of answers) 2. The conclusion only said that watching yourself exercise makes you want to exercise. It made no claims about the effects of watching different types of exercise. This answer could only have weakened the argument by saying something like “watching yourself lift weights made people exercise less than watching someone else lift weights”. That would show differences in exercise type: more effective to watch yourself run, but more effective to watch others lift weights.
- This shows that hearing about others can make someone charitable. But, it doesn’t weaken the argument, because it doesn’t show what happens if you hear a story about your own past charity. Maybe hearing about yourself being generous would make you even more generous. If so, that wouldn’t weaken the argument.
- This might seem to contradict a premise, and thus weaken the argument. But it doesn’t do that. The premise said that on average people are more motivated after watching themselves. It’s possible for a group to be more motivated on average even if some people in the group aren’t more motivated.
It makes sense that it’s difficult to increase the motivation of people who are already highly motivated, but watching yourself exercise could still motivate the unmotivated. - CORRECT. This might seem waaaay too indirect, but it gets at the central issue: our only evidence is about the amount of exercise people “reported”. If these self reports of exercise totals are wrong, then the conclusion is wrong. This answer shows that people who self report themselves doing a virtuous thing may exaggerate.
How? In this study, people watched “themselves” reading, a virtuous activity. (I’ll deal with the twin issue later). All of us think we should exercise more, and read more. So if we can be shown to exaggerate one, perhaps we exaggerate the other.
This answer shows that people do overreport how much they read after seeing themselves read. So, it suggests people may also overreport a similarly virtuous activity, exercise.
But wait: this answer said people watched their twin read, not themselves. How is that the same? Well, an identical twin looks….identical to you! We can reasonably assume that watching your twin is more like watching yourself than watching a stranger. Don’t let LSAC fool you by introducing a random concept: this answer directly weakens the reliability of self reporting after watching [someone who looks just like yourself] do a virtuous activity.
…..I think they’re making these answer choices more complex. - This supports the argument! It shows the effect goes both ways, and suggests that we tend to do whatever we see ourselves doing.
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But a twin is another person, so it actually strengthens the argument. How do you know twins don’t compete with each other in this way? This violates lsac’s provably right/provably wrong policy and might be the worst lsat question I’ve seen so far.
Thanks for the explanation!
You’re making a bunch of assumptions to get to strengthen. These are the ways it weakens:
1. We don’t know if they know it is the twin and not them. It may not be a high res video
2. It shows the possibility that humans lie, regardless of motive
The real problem here is the gap between reporting exercise and exercise. The right answer highlights that the two are not the same.
To help affirm my reasoning, question regarding the elimination of answer choice (C):
Is it also relevant that the conclusion is about, “a recording of yourself exercising CAN motivate YOU to exercise more.”?
In my reasoning, I figure that the fact that outliers (those already motivated) have not been affected, does not affect whether the conclusion about the reader is possible (hence the use of the word “can”).
Further, the answer choice also commits the same error as the stimulus does, in that it specifically discusses what the participants report, rather than what they did. Perhaps they did put in an extra set, or extra mile, but failed to recognize it.
That’s right. The conclusion is that seeing yourself run CAN motivate you. So, the experience of an outlier doesn’t necessarily affect that general conclusion.
Yes, they did commit the same error, but it doesn’t really play into why this answer is right or wrong. But I guess by virtue of committing the same error it is harder for this answer to weaken it.
Hi,
I feel like the assumptions to make (D) the right choice are too far. What if you only consistently report a higher amount of exercise than your peers only if you know you see yourself, and not someone very similar to yourself?
If we can assume that twins are nearly similar, or similar in the relevant aspects (looks, etc.), then we inherently assume that knowing that you really see yourself, and not someone similar in the mentioned aspects, is irrelevant to this study.
And this is where for me, it goes too far from being accurrate…
I chose (E), as it is additional evidence that people who watch themselves doing something tend to report in general higher average hours of exercise than their peers, and it is unlikely that they always are really doing that activity for longer than their peers on average.
Please help me to understand where I went wrong
Thanks Guys!
Hi Graeme. First off, these explanations are fantastic so thank you. I chose C on this question only because of process of elimination. The evidence used in the stimulus is a comparison between those who watched someone else exercise and who who watched themselves exercise. Technically, one who watches their identical twin exercise is watching someone else exercise (and we can reasonably assume that they know the difference because, after all, they are family). Thus, if they tend to over report then this either A.) tells us nothing about the results of the study or B.) tells us that the group that observes others may have a tendency to over report and therefore strengthens the original argument, if anything, as the self-watch group is reporting higher exercise even compared to potentially inflated data. Is this interpretation logical to you? I think this question has only bad answers …
The crux of the stimulus is that one group watched a tape of something they visually identified with (themselves) and the other watched a tape of something they did not identify with.
By process of elimination, you’ll find that D is the best answer. The problem with C is that we don’t know which group these highly motivated participants were in. Thus, C lends nothing that would weaken the study’s conclusion unless you make an assumption about their membership in one group or the other. Also, the highly motivated group could technically be a small amount of people and thus be meaningless. The other answers all strengthen so we’re left with D.
D isn’t a very straightforward answer or a very strong weakening answer. But it does address the idea that people might overreport when you rely on them to self-report, which is a flaw present in the stimulus. What overreporting tells us is that the study’s findings are flawed, and thus watching yourself exercise might not actually make you exercise more. It’s entirely possible that the group that observes others were honest and the ones who observed themselves overreported. That would certainly be a reason to doubt the findings.
Also, on your point about someone knowing the difference between themselves and their twin: obviously twins can tell each other apart, but in a video, it might not be that clear. And seeing someone 99.99% like you doing an activity might have a strong effect on you akin to watching yourself.