Q22 - A study of 20,000 20- to 64-year-olds

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Question Type:
Inference (Most Strongly Supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
We know the following from a large study:
1. People's satisfaction with their income is not correlated with the amount of money they make.
2. People tend to live in neighborhoods of people from their same economic class.
3. People's satisfaction with their income depends largely on how favorably their income compares with that of their neighbors.

Answer Anticipation:
Tough to predict what the right answer will say.

Correct Answer:
(E)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) is contradicted by the information in the study.

(B) is contradicted by the information in the study.

(C) is contradicted by the information in the study.

(D) is out of scope. The information touches on satisfaction with income, not with satisfaction with life as a whole.

(E) is correct. If everyone's income were to increase, one's relative position compared to one's neighbors would be unchanged.

Takeaway/Pattern: Reasoning Structure: Comparison

#officialexplanation

[jane.eyre7777777]

I've never had this much difficulty understanding why an answer wasn't right.

I understand why E is the correct answer, but I think C is also correct.

(C) Satisfaction with income is correlated with neighborhood.

So I looked up the word "correlated" and found:

1. Either of two things so related that one directly implies or is complementary to the other
2. Either of two related things, especially when one implies the other.
3. A phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon, is usually parallel to it, and is related in some way to it

So according to the third definition, C is wrong, because definition 3 implies that two entities are parallel. We know that income and neighborhood are NOT parallel. Your income has to be higher than the neighborhood.

However... correlation, as per definition 1 and 2, doesn't necessarily implicate a "parallel" relationship. Correlation could just be any relationship that holds, like in our instance where your satisfaction depends on being above the average. This correlation holds across the board regarding people and their neighborhoods.

I interpreted the meaning of correlation to be 1 and 2 when I wrote the test, so I thought answer C was like a nice summary of the argument. in other words, "Satisfaction depends on neighborhood. If you want to be satisfied, then your income needs to be above average. If you want to be unsatisfied, then your income can be below average."

Can someone help? thanks so much

[judaydaday]

I incorrectly chose (C) as well.

I think (C) is wrong because of its language. If it said "satisfaction with income is strongly correlated with THEIR neighborhood" then maybe (C) would be correct.

But as it is, (C) indicates that the neighborhood strongly correlates with satisfaction. It does not recognize how the individual's relative position/status in the neighborhood is correlated with satisfaction with income. (C) is suggesting, for example, that your satisfaction is associated with whether you live in the ghettos or the Hamptons.

Instead, the stimulus is saying that its the Individual's position in THAT neighborhood that is correlated with their satisfaction.

[jane.eyre7777777]

I incorrectly chose (C) as well.

I think (C) is wrong because of its language. If it said "satisfaction with income is strongly correlated with THEIR neighborhood" then maybe (C) would be correct.

But as it is, (C) indicates that the neighborhood strongly correlates with satisfaction. It does not recognize how the individual's relative position/status in the neighborhood is correlated with satisfaction with income. (C) is suggesting, for example, that your satisfaction is associated with whether you live in the ghettos or the Hamptons.

Instead, the stimulus is saying that its the Individual's position in THAT neighborhood that is correlated with their satisfaction.

thanks for your response! yes, your answer WOULD make the choice much clearer. i really want to be able to accept (c) as the answer with your help in mind, but i still think (c) can be interpreted in the way i originally interpreted it even without the "their". Non-specificity of language is more encompassing, so to speak, and thus leaves greater room open for varying interpretations -- and these interpretations are correct precisely due to the non-specific nature of the text. so even if they don't specifying "their" in the answer choice, i'm still able to insert "their" into my reading, because no contradictory word guides the sentence in another direction.

do you get what i mean, or am i being crazy?

[rinagoldfield]

Hi Jane Eyre many 7s,

It sounds like you are confusing “correlated” with “related.” Yes, neighborhoods are related to satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean neighborhoods are correlated with satisfaction, or to use definitions 1 and 2 you provided, it doesn’t mean neighborhoods directly imply satisfaction. My place relative to my neighbors directly implies my satisfaction, but the neighborhood itself doesn’t.

These online definitions are misleading; the key is the “one directly implies another” part. Correlation means parallel, in tandem, consistent with, directly proportional, etc.

Correlation is an important concept on the LSAT, so remember from now on that correlation indicates a parallel.

[contropositive]

Hi Jane Eyre many 7s,

It sounds like you are confusing “correlated” with “related.” Yes, neighborhoods are related to satisfaction. But that doesn’t mean neighborhoods are correlated with satisfaction, or to use definitions 1 and 2 you provided, it doesn’t mean neighborhoods directly imply satisfaction. My place relative to my neighbors directly implies my satisfaction, but the neighborhood itself doesn’t.

These online definitions are misleading; the key is the “one directly implies another” part. Correlation means parallel, in tandem, consistent with, directly proportional, etc.

Correlation is an important concept on the LSAT, so remember from now on that correlation indicates a parallel.

So C is wrong because it mentions "correlation" and the argument is talking about two phenomenons relating (income satisfaction and neighborhood) rather than correlating?
The last sentence reads, "...[income satisfaction] depends largely on how favorably their incomes compare with those of their neighbors"

[ohthatpatrick]

The information in the last sentence indicates that satisfaction with income is correlated with how favorably one's income compares to the income of one's neighbors.

Could we say that "neighborhood" means the same thing as "how favorably one's income compares to the income of one's neighbors"?

Seems like a big leap.

If you were to ask a random stranger to interpret what (C) is saying, they would say, "Oh, some neighborhoods have high satisfaction with income, other neighborhoods have low satisfaction. So you tell me what neighborhood some is from and I can say whether they're likely to have higher/lower satisfaction with their income."

That's not what the paragraph said. It's saying that within EVERY neighborhood, you'll have people satisfied and people unsatisfied, based on how they compare to the average income of THAT neighborhood.

[ganbayou]

I'm still not sure between C and E...
I think we can know this from the last sentence, because it says "depend". Depend on means correlation right?
Also, I thought the stimulus itself have self-contradiction.
It says "live in neighbourhoods of people from their same economic class" but then it says "people's satisfaction with their incomes depends largely on how favorably their incomes compare with those of their neighbors."
I'm confused here...doesn't it contradict?