Q18 - Efforts to get the public to exercise regularly

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: If they emphasized danger of couch potato vs. benefits of exercise, efforts to get the public to exercise would be more successful.
Evidence: Emphasizing dangers of smoking (vs. benefits of not-smoking) have been successful, while emphasizing benefits of exercise (vs. danger of laziness) has not been very successful.

Answer Anticipation:
This is an argument by Analogy, so it rests on how legitimate a comparison it is to think that what was true for smoking ads would be true for exercise ads. Possible objections to arguments based on comparisons/analogies are that "there's some important difference! they're not fair to compare!" In what sense might smoking vs. exercise be importantly different?
1. Maybe the benefits are more pronounced for exercise while the dangers are more pronounced for smoking.
2. Maybe people have an easier time abandoning a bad habit than adopting a good habit.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Tempting, but very strongly worded. The health risks don't have to be EQUAL to those of smoking. We only have to assume that discussing the risks of sedentary life would be as compelling as discussing the risks of smoking.

(B) The author isn't talking about whether the a specific message has / hasn't been effectively conveyed. For whatever reason, we know that exercise ads have struggled. We're not analyzing why. We're just hearing the author say that a different method would work better and wondering what she's assuming to get there.

(C) I don't think the author needs to assume any specific percentages above or below 50%, so the "most" and "few" seem overly specific.

(D) This has the loveable word "not" in it. If we negate the sentence by removing that "not", would we get an objection? Yes! Negated, we get "If smoking ads emphasized the benefits not the dangers, they would be even more successful". That would be a huge objection to the argument. It would mean that the author was suggesting that in order for exercise ads to do better, they should employ the LESS effective strategy that cigarette ads use to curb smoking.

(E) Too loaded: "majority" / "primary". The author doesn't have to assume anything this strong or specific.

Takeaway/Pattern: Tough correct answer to anticipate. Pretend you're speaking to your ugly friend Patrick and referencing your handsome friend Luis. If you say, "Patrick, in the past, your approach to flirting with girls has involved being very respectful to them. You've had little success. Meanwhile, Luis is pretty disrespectful when he flirts and has been highly successful. Thus, Patrick you would have better luck if you were a disrespectful flirter." Well, we're kind of assuming that Luis's mean demeanor is HELPING him. It could just be that he's incredibly handsome and succeeding IN SPITE OF (not because of) his disrespectful flirting. Maybe he would be doing even better if he were using Patrick's tactic of respectfully flirting.

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