Q5 - Financial success does not guarantee happiness

[noah]

The conclusion is that $ doesn't guarantee happiness. Why? Because in a survey, only 1/3 of those who say they were financially successfully claimed to be happy.

So, what's the gap in this argument we need to strengthen?

One issue is that the conclusion is based on those people that said they were financially successful. Were they really? What if of the, say, 90 supposedly rich (financially successful) people surveyed (and we don't know how many people were polled in total), only 30 of them were actually rich? And it turns out they were the 1/3 that said they're happy.

(A) helps fill this gap by saying those folks were actually rich.

(B) is about what is thought and was thought. It doesn't address the premise-conclusion link. Out of scope.

(C) is about people that did NOT claim to be rich. We don't care about them right now.

(D) has the same issue as (C).

(E) is tempting. What if the 2/3 of people that said they're unhappy weren't actually unhappy? What if they were actually happy?! The issue is that we don't know the extent of the poll. Let's imagine that while 90 people said they're rich, 800 people were surveyed. That means that 710 people did not claim to be rich. If half of them said they're unhappy, and they, as (E) suggests, were lying, it doesn't affect the argument. We care about whether the supposedly rich people's answers to the poll means what the conclusion says it does about them.

[WaltGrace1983]

I was a little bit confused by your explanation of (E). Let me see if I got it right...

In a survey, only one-third who claimed financial success reported happiness
→
Financial success does not guarantee happiness.

First of all, this would thus imply that - out of all of those people who had financial success - 2/3 of them claimed to be something other than happy. They may not have been unhappy per se but they weren't happy nonetheless. Thus, the argument is concluding that financial success is not sufficient for happiness because, after all, some people have financial success and aren't happy. It seems like the stimulus is in itself trying to weaken a causal claim .

Anyway, as for (E), we have a few problems. "Most of the respondents" doesn't really mean anything. We don't know how many people actually claimed to be financially successful! What if 1000 people took the survey and only 9 claimed to be financially successful and only 3 of those people claimed to be happy. Most of the respondents - aka, 501 of them - could have claimed to be unhappy but were actually happy. However, maybe these people aren't financially successful anyway. This would make (E) irrelevant to the stimulus.

If that was too confusing...

"Most of the respondents" doesn't equal the respondents claiming to be financially successful. That is why (E) is irrelevant.

(A) is much better. If these people who claimed financial success were actually financially successful then this would perhaps justify the conclusion that financial success doesn't guarantee happiness.

[oscey12]

I didn't see A as filling in a gap as much as reaffirming what was already in the stimulus. So basically A ensures that the reports were honest and accurate? Should we strongly consider these types of answers when we see them on the LSAT? I'm curious because I've seen answers rejected because they "claim what we already know." Thanks!

[renata.gomez]

same as above!! I eliminated A thinking that it was premise booster.

[adisadeliovsky]

same here, I eliminated A and reluctantly chose B because I thought A was stating what we already knew. I am usually very wary on answers choices like these on the LSAT, because they have been wrong in the past, seeing as it seems as though it is a premise booster!

Can anyone help me to figure out when to chose and reject answer choices like this one?