Q22 - In a recent study, one group of participants

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
Correlation: People who watched themselves (vs. others) exercise exercised more.
Causation: Watching yourself work out causes you to work out.

Answer Anticipation:
Classic Correlation vs. Causation flaw, so there's a good chance the correct answer will ID an alternative cause, show a counterexample, or explore reversed causality (though the last one seems less likely).

However, there was also a study done, so we have to consider the sample. While the stimulus doesn't give us information about the groups, the argument would be weakened if it was skewed in some way (say the group watching themselves exercise were already fitness instructors).

And! The later info is based on self-reported data, which could be skewed. Maybe the first group felt guilty about not exercising, so they lied about how much they worked out.

Phew, a lot of flaws here!

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Opposite. More examples of the cause and effect going together strengthen a relationship.

(B) Out of scope. Charity has nothing to do with exercise. This answer is trying to get you to think that maybe charity and exercise are somehow related, but there's no reason to think that's the case. Also, if anything, this aligns with the argument instead of weakening it.

(C) Too weak. Since we don't know which group these people were in, we'd have to make an assumption to get this answer to work.

(D) Crazy answer, right? I definitely wouldn't pick this on my first pass. However, I'd leave it because it talks about the possibility of overreporting, which I identified during the initial read because self-reported data should always raise a red flag. The only other answer that would survive a first pass is (C), since the other three are closer to strengtheners. Since (C) is missing crucial information, I'd come back here and talk myself into it. Watching a twin is like watching yourself, and if that leads to overreporting, it increases the chance that the exercisers were overreporting, which would weaken the argument.

(E) If anything, opposite. This answer aligns with the view that watching yourself do something makes you do more of it. While I wouldn't say it strengthens the argument, if it has any impact, it would cut in that direction, so I'd rule it out.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Be super careful when ruling out answer choices for Strengthen/Weaken questions! Just because something is unmentioned doesn't mean it's out of scope.

Also, if there are hints at multiple flaws (here, "motivate", "study", and "reported" all lead to different flaws), follow through on them all.

Finally, if you read an answer choice that triggers an idea you missed on your first read, go back to the stimulus! There's a good chance that, with the stress of test day, I'd miss the self-reporting error. But reading (D) should trigger the thought that I should check to see how the exercise was measured, thus leading me to picking an answer I might otherwise have dismissed.

#officialexplanation

[lsat1]

I got this wrong the first time because I picked C. However, during blind review, the word "CAN" in the last sentence of the stimulus jumped out at me (ie. watching videos of yourself exercise CAN motivate you to exercise more).

This means C is wrong because it does not weaken the conclusion of the stimulus, and neither does it really strengthen. It just doesn't add much to the fact that watching your exercise videos CAN motivate you to exercise more.

I picked D the second time around because it guarantees to weaken the argument. If people are self-reporting and they inflate their information, then obviously there is something wrong with the method of the study, which weakens the result of the study.

I eliminated A, B, and E off the bat because they either strengthen or were out of scope, etc.

Is there anything wrong with my thought process above?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, the "can" in the conclusion certainly means that we can't weaken the argument by simply providing some supposed counterexamples where people watched themselves but WEREN'T motivated to exercise more.

And, as Matt said in his original post, we don't know whether the people described in (C) were in the first group, the second, or a mix, so it's difficult to interpret what value it would have anyway just because of that muddled nature.

I would caution you against saying that (D) guarantees a weaken idea, simply because people sometimes struggle with Str/Weak because they're looking too aggressively for Proof / Refutation.

(D) just helps raise some doubt, which qualifies as Weakening.

If, in a somewhat relevantly similar study, people overreported something, then we have reason to be skeptical of the data in this study.

[DavidS899]

Yeah, the "can" in the conclusion certainly means that we can't weaken the argument by simply providing some supposed counterexamples where people watched themselves but WEREN'T motivated to exercise more.

And, as Matt said in his original post, we don't know whether the people described in (C) were in the first group, the second, or a mix, so it's difficult to interpret what value it would have anyway just because of that muddled nature.

I would caution you against saying that (D) guarantees a weaken idea, simply because people sometimes struggle with Str/Weak because they're looking too aggressively for Proof / Refutation.

(D) just helps raise some doubt, which qualifies as Weakening.

If, in a somewhat relevantly similar study, people overreported something, then we have reason to be skeptical of the data in this study.

This is confusing to me because the argument is not centered on the efficacy of watching yourself do anything and producing a result, the argument centers on watching yourself work out. This answer choice looks like a classic out of scope wrong answer. Why do I care what people did after watching reading? As soon as I saw that I crossed it out because it does not relate to the stimuli. How can it be said to weaken or cast doubt on the topic of watching workout of videos of yourself when it is addressing a totally unrelated topic?

[WesleyC316]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I've done over 30 PTs and I don't recall a single weakening question addressing the issue of wrong reports like this one. Are there any similar questions in the history of LSAT?

[AshH953]

I can see why other ACs are wrong but I'm so not persuaded by D. In my weird mind it feels even strengthening... When watching twin (other) doing sth people overreport, then the second group probably overreports as well, which makes the contrast between the two stronger instead of weaker.

[LSATN100]

I missed this question twice. In both of my attempts, I crossed out all the answers.
I failed to bring in the "common sense" assumption that identical twins look the same and it's hard to distinguish between them even for the twins themselves. So if a person watches the video recording of his/her identical twin, he would mistake his/her twin as him/herself.
So essentially, watching the video recording of your identical twin = watching the video recording of yourself. Or less radically, watching the video recording of somebody who looks exactly the same as yourself = subconsciously think that you were the person in the video recording.
My mistake is that I assumed that "watching the twin do something" = "watch another person do something"

[MikeJ237]

This question is a classic case of the LSAT people doing everything they can to challenge the influx of easily accessible study material online. The answer is so fluid and universal, it's beyond the pale.

[PretzelL30]

Tough question. I'm with some of the other commenters in that we've been trained not to make assumptions, and "watching your twin" as "watching yourself" seems like a big enough jump that I was very hesitant to make that. Like another commenter, I read this answer choice as saying, in another study, Group two was over-inflating their reporting (i.e., watching another person do something and deceptively saying you did it for longer yourself.)

However, it's certainly true to say the other four AC's were poor.

I got destroyed in this entire section. I wonder if it was harder than usual.