Q15 - When a group of children

[WaltGrace1983]

Can someone go through this question with me? I picked (D) but I am fighting it during review.

The children who watch violent TV commit a much greater number of violent acts than the children who have been watching nonviolent TV
→
Children can be prevented from committing violent acts by not being allowed to watch violence on TV

What I am confused about here is that it goes from talking about committing a greater number to committing none at all. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be confused by that statement alone but what I am confused about is that the argument doesn't tell us how many violent acts the children who do not watch violent programming do. What if those kids commit 2 violent acts while the kids with violent TV commit 12 violent acts?

I can see why (D) helps get from the premises to the conclusion. If there are in fact other differences between the kids then how can we be so sure that ~TV is really going to help get to ~violent acts.

However, I feel like an argument could be made for (C) too. If we negate that then we get that violent acts and observation of those acts are related. Couldn't that mean that the kids who watch other kids do violent acts actually makes them more prone to doing violent acts themselves? Thus, maybe we cannot really conclude that ~TV = ~violent acts.

I just cannot get over that word "prevented" here. It is ruining my thought process!

[ohthatpatrick]

You're totally right about your assessment of the flaw involved in moving from "fewer violent acts" to "violent acts are PREVENTED".

But the story you were telling yourself with the negation of (C) is NOT tight enough to make that objection.

You said:
If we negate (C) then we get that violent acts and observation of those acts are related. Couldn't that mean that the kids who watch other kids do violent acts actually makes them more prone to doing violent acts themselves? Thus, maybe we cannot really conclude that ~TV = ~violent acts.

First of all, it's WAY too big of a stretch to say that "violent acts and observation of them are related" allows us to infer that "kids who watch other kids be violent are therefore more likely to be violent".

Secondly, that doesn't really pose an objection to ~TV = ~violent acts. After all, if getting rid of violent TV gets rid of the violent acts, then you don't have other kids observing the violent-TV kids acting violently.

====

I get why you wanted to force that one ... since you wanted an answer to deal with that "fewer acts vs. prevented" flaw. But remember that arguments may contain multiple flaws, and a correct answer need only address one of them. In the "hard zone" of LR sections, (roughly, from Q's 14-22) it's typical for LSAT to try to distract, confuse, or slow us down by including multiple flaws.

Often, we'll read a stimulus and anticipate that the correct answer is going after ONE flaw, but upon reading the answer choices we'll see that none of them correctly address that flaw ... that's when we really need to think flexibly. That's really what LSAT is testing in these questions: the ability to reconsider the answer choices with a fresh perspective and see if any of them, while not what we were expecting, still accurately answer the question.

Back to this question:

Conc: You can prevent kids from being violent by denying them violent TV

Prem: The study [a group who watched violent TV played with a group who didn't, and the violent-watchers acted more violently)

In this argument, we have two main flaws/issues to consider:
- Causality .. our author definitely considers the violent TV to have caused the violent behavior. LSAT always wants us to evaluate causality by considering alternative explanations.

- Comparative vs. Absolute ... the kids who didn't watch violent TV committed FEWER violent acts, but not necessarily NONE. So even if we accept that violent TV causes kids to be MORE violent, we can't necessarily assume that taking away violent TV would PREVENT kids from being violent.

(A) Our author may believe that violent TV has a harmful effect on society (although we'd have to supply our own assumption that "kids acting more violently has a harmful effect on society") .. but we have no idea what this author would say about "Television" more broadly. What if the author thinks that wholesome, educational TV has great benefits for society? No part of (A) is germane to the argument core, which is about whether or not "violent TV" causes children to "act more violently".

(B) Again, 'parents' and 'responsibility' are outside the scope of the argument core, which is about "violent TV" and whether or not it causes kids to act more violently.

(C) This sounds like the OPPOSITE of what the author thinks. The children in the study who passively observed violent actions (i.e. watched violent TV) ended up acting more violently, and the author thinks that these two things ARE related.

(D) This is very relevant to the core. Furthermore, if we negate it, it will severely weaken the argument. If we say "other differences between the two groups DID account for the difference in violent behavior", then we have supplied the ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION that LSAT wants us to use to weaken a causal argument.

(E) Nothing in this argument was about being "treated violently".

Hope this helps.

[WaltGrace1983]

Thanks a lot for the reply! It really helped. I can see why (C) is incorrect a lot more clearly now.