LSAT 154 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q24

LR Question 24 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: People who have experienced a traumatic event but who did not…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Experiencing a traumatic event can affect how much cortisol one produces responding to stress.

REASONING: People who’ve had traumatic experiences but didn’t develop PTSD have higher cortisol levels when exposed to stress than those who haven’t experienced trauma.

ANALYSIS: This is a correlation-causation flaw where the author thinks traumatic experiences caused/affected future cortisol-responses to stress. To weaken this, we need to find an alternative factor that explains this phenomenon, or something that suggests it’s a coincidence or the causation is reversed.

___________

1. “Medical conditions” is too general. “Sometimes” is very weak. The conclusion says that trauma CAN affect cortisol levels; this answer choice also saying something can also happen doesn’t do a good job of weakening the conclusion.
2. CORRECT. This gives an alternate explanation that reverses the causality. This says that these people already produce more cortisol when stressed and as a result, they don’t develop PTSD
3. We don’t care about less severe instances of stress.
4. This is out of scope. The stimulus doesn’t talk about treatments for PTSD and since these individuals in question don’t have actually have PTSD, this is irrelevant.
5. This would actually strengthen the conclusion. It’s giving us an explanation for why there might be more cortisol produced.

Recap: The question begins with “People who have experienced a traumatic event but who did not”. It is a Weaken question. Learn more about LSAT Weaken questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.