Q27

[manish_kanwar]

Hello All (LSAT instructors),

I cant seem to get the hang of this question using conditional logic. Can some please help us using the UNLESS formulation used in the answer choice B. I cant understand it.


How do we get to the inference that the higher the cohesivness, the better the decision making.

Thanks in advance.
M

[noah]

If you're struggling with "unless" you should take a look at our Logical Reasoning guide - there's a section on conditional logic that would help you out quite a bit. "X unless Y" means that X will surely happen unless Y does. Y happening does not ensure that X will not, but if Y doesn't happen, then you won't get X. In short, treat "unless" like "if not."

In the first paragraph we learn that "when cohesiveness is low or lacking entirely, compliance out of fear of recrimination is
likely to be strongest." Based on that, we can infer that you need to have cohesiveness if you hope to avoid a strong likelihood of suffering from this problem. (B) notes that.

(A) is out of scope - we don't learn about how groups deal with adversaries.

(C) is tempting, however we don't know what sort of decisions groups with varied opinions generally arrive at - we particularly don't know if they're sound! A group with varied opinions can still be cohesive. Don't be fooled by the first sentence of the passage, which is spelling out what should be true ("in principle...").

(D) has an issue with degree - the key factors? Plus, we never learn about how stress and high expectations impact group dynamics.

(E) is unsupported - we only know from the first paragraph that in low cohesive groups compliance out of fear of recrimination is likely to be strongest.

[sr]

But there is evidence against B:

Line 29: In a highly cohesive group, the danger is that people will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny.
This shows that even with a cohesive group, it is still difficult for a group to examine all options critically.

[noah]

But there is evidence against B:

Line 29: In a highly cohesive group, the danger is that people will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny.
This shows that even with a cohesive group, it is still difficult for a group to examine all options critically.

I appreciate the critical eye!

That line points out a danger if things go too far - if you get into groupthink, but it still doesn't change the fact that cohesiveness is necessary. It's like food - you need it to live, but if you eat too much, you have problems.

[lihanxiao1991]

Hi, the first sentence tells us that a cohesive group can do a better job at decision making than noncohesive group. I think this generally supports C?

[noah]

Hi, the first sentence tells us that a cohesive group can do a better job at decision making than noncohesive group. I think this generally supports C?

The first sentence says "In principle..."

Imagine I say "In principle, monkeys should not be choose meals based on the color of the food..." What do you think I'm about to say? I'm about to say that they actually do choose food based on color!

Make sense?

[csunnerberg13]

I'm a little confused about answer choice B...so it translates to this in conditional logic:

No cohesiveness --> difficulty examining all relevant options
No difficulty --> cohesiveness

So we're basically saying, cohesiveness makes it less difficult to examine the options, right? This confused me because I thought this idea went against the passage, if the passage is saying cohesiveness (as in groupthink situations) make it more difficult for groups to examine all the options - such as it says in line 26-30: "In a highly cohesive group of decision makers, the danger...is that they will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny..."

Don't these ideas conflict??

Thanks

[noah]

I'm a little confused about answer choice B...so it translates to this in conditional logic:

No cohesiveness --> difficulty examining all relevant options
No difficulty --> cohesiveness

So we're basically saying, cohesiveness makes it less difficult to examine the options, right? This confused me because I thought this idea went against the passage, if the passage is saying cohesiveness (as in groupthink situations) make it more difficult for groups to examine all the options - such as it says in line 26-30: "In a highly cohesive group of decision makers, the danger...is that they will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny..."

Don't these ideas conflict??

Thanks

Great question! As I looked over the thread before getting to your question, I had a similar thought. However, the passage is more nuanced than just saying that a cohesive group falls into groupthink. And, most importantly for this question, just because groupthink is a potential pitfall of cohesiveness doesn't mean that the author thinks it's no longer necessary to have cohesion for a group to easily engage in critical thinking.

Analogously, we have to have salt to make a dish tasty, but it can definitely lead to problems. (Yes, I'll submit that for the month's worst analogy!).

Finally--and this is annoying--we have to pick the answer the author is most likely to agree with, so working wrong-to-right is even closer to our heart than usual.

[timsportschuetz]

I do not think that (A) is wrong for the above mentioned reasons. I think it has more to do with the actual wording of the answer choice. It states that cohesive groups are "more likely to engage in confrontational negotiating styles with adversaries". This answer choice was constructed in order to trap test takers since most of use would equate the above to "disagree more often". However, this is not what this answer choice says. This answer is talking about more or less styles of confronting someone in a group. We do not care about this at all! The only thing discussed about groupthink is the existence of vocal disagreement and its relative frequency... not the style or demeanour of the people arguing.

[daijob]

I still do not understand why B is the answer...as previous poster also points out, line 25-30 seem contradict B especially the unless part...
It says " in a highly cohesive group of decision makers the danger is...they will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny". Line17~also seems add this.
Or is this question mainly asking whether it is easy to reach decisions? Then I think it makes a sense because as the authorsays in high cohesiveness group they do not carry out a investigation, so it's easy to reach concensus...
Is this what the question asking??

Thank you

[rinagoldfield]

I agree with the above posters that (B) is not obviously stated in the passage, and the author does acknowledge that cohesiveness can limit a group’s ability to examine an issue critically (lines 29-31). However, the general gist of the passage is that cohesiveness is necessary but not sufficient for good decision making. For example, in lines 6-12, the author states:

Compliance out of fear is common.
If overcome fear --> cohesiveness

So we need cohesiveness to avoid agreeing simply out of fear. The author does go on to detail some pitfalls of cohesiveness, but emphasizes at the end of the passage that cohesiveness itself does not cause these pitfalls.

(B) captures the “cohesiveness is necessary” part of the idea that cohesiveness is necessary but not sufficient for good decision making. It feels incomplete since it leaves out the “but not sufficient” part, but it is ultimately supported by the passage.

Also- as Noah pointed out above, the wrong answer choices are quite wrong here. The process of elimination is the test-taker’s friend!

[laura.bach]

I picked (A) because of lines (12 - 17).

"As members of a group feel more accepted by the others, they acquire greater freedom to say what they really think, becoming less likely to use deceitful arguments or to play it safe by dancing around the issues with vapid or conventional comments."

(A) - Highly cohesive groups are more likely to engage in confrontational negotiating styles with adversaries than are those with low cohesion.

----------

I thought low cohesion groups are evasive in their disagreement and higher cohesion groups are more direct (direct = confrontational?).

Could someone help me understand why those lines don't support A?

Thank you!

PS - Re-reading the first explanation, my thought now is maybe I interpreted "adversary" to mean adversaries within the group, and the answer choice meant to reference how the group as a whole deals with external adversaries. Is this why the answer is wrong?

[oyxy1111]

I picked (A) because of lines (12 - 17).

"As members of a group feel more accepted by the others, they acquire greater freedom to say what they really think, becoming less likely to use deceitful arguments or to play it safe by dancing around the issues with vapid or conventional comments."

(A) - Highly cohesive groups are more likely to engage in confrontational negotiating styles with adversaries than are those with low cohesion.

----------

I thought low cohesion groups are evasive in their disagreement and higher cohesion groups are more direct (direct = confrontational?).

Could someone help me understand why those lines don't support A?

Thank you!

PS - Re-reading the first explanation, my thought now is maybe I interpreted "adversary" to mean adversaries within the group, and the answer choice meant to reference how the group as a whole deals with external adversaries. Is this why the answer is wrong?

I would disagree. Choice A says "highly cohesive groups are more likely to engage in confrontational STYLES". It sounds like there are plenty of debates happening within this kind of groups. As for whether the chances are bigger for those groups to be involved in confrontations, this comparison is not directly stated in the text. Noncohesive group members may choose to play it safe to avoid recrimination, while cohesive group members may fall victim to groupthinking as well. Only those highly cohesive groups which achieve critical thinking may be more open to objections.

[phoebster21]

But there is evidence against B:

Line 29: In a highly cohesive group, the danger is that people will think the proposal is a good one without attempting to carry out a critical scrutiny.
This shows that even with a cohesive group, it is still difficult for a group to examine all options critically.

I appreciate the critical eye!

That line points out a danger if things go too far - if you get into groupthink, but it still doesn't change the fact that cohesiveness is necessary. It's like food - you need it to live, but if you eat too much, you have problems.

LOL! I love your analogy.
I was fooled by this question too. I think I really need to get better at realizing buzz word such as "can, may, etc." I noticed that in lines 22, it outwardly says "while the members of a highly cohesive group CAN feel much freer to deviate from the majority.." and we know that the author thinks that deviation and voicing your true opinion IS important to analyzing the issues critically, THEN we can draw the conclusion that highly cohesive groups will find it less difficult (note: not necessarily easy, but just less difficult) to critically examine all options, than would a low cohesive group.

[bmoswald]

I now understand that B is the correct answer, but my initial reason for eliminating the question was because a fairly high degree of cohesiveness also goes along with not being critical enough, such as lines 29-31.

Am I thinking about this in the wrong way or misunderstanding the passage?

Thanks

[AyakiK696]

I eliminated B because of the wording of "fairly high degree of cohesiveness." I just thought that group needed to NOT be low or lacking in cohesiveness, in order to engage in critical decision-making. I can see now how B is the best answer choice (sigh...haven't yet mastered the art of elimination) but wouldn't "fairly high" have degree issues? Or is it acceptable because of the modifier "fairly," which leaves some room open for interpretation?

[ohthatpatrick]

Correct, the "fairly high" is the appropriate degree modifier because the point of the passage is that cohesiveness has a Goldilocks zone:
- too little cohesiveness, and bad 1st paragraph stuff happens
- too much cohesiveness, and bad groupthink stuff happens

We're hoping to have the "sweet spot" of cohesiveness ... "fairly high" ... "Moderate" ... etc.