Q14 - Researcher: People are able to tell whether a person i

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The ability to judge whether a chimp has "resting-dominant-face" is probably due to primate biology.
Evidence: People can tell whether a person has "resting-extrovert-face" from pictures. And people can tell whether a chimp has "resting-dominant-face" from pictures. And humans and chimps are both primates.

Answer Anticipation:
This seems like one of those middle of the LR section Strengthen questions where it's unclear what value one of the premises holds.

If we're trying to say that people's ability to judge a chimp's dominant/submissive profile from the chimp's resting face is a primate biological ability, then it makes sense to support that by saying "chimps and humans are both primates". But what the heck does people's ability to judge a person's extrovert/introvert profile from the human's resting face have to do with our Conclusion? You can tell the author THINKS it's relevant, because she starts the second sentence with "since people are ALSO able to tell ...".

I would anticipate an answer that makes the first sentence seem relevant to the rest of the conversation. But any answer that makes it seem like the ability to detect dominance in a neutral face is biological, not cultural, would do.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This weakens, by drawing an asimilarity. If our recognition faculties are a primate thing, not a cultural thing, then how come we're not good at recognizing THIS primate?

(B) This does nothing, but if anything it weakens by making it seem like there's a crucial difference between people-judging-people and people-judging-chimps. Our author's argument was trying to make those two cases seem relevantly similar.

(C) YES! This makes the first sentence relevant to the rest of the conversation. It makes the "people judging human-extroversion" example more relevantly similar to the "people judging chimp-dominance" example, and it ties them together based on biology ("genetic predisposition"), not culture.

(D) Omigosh, D, thanks for telling us that! Let me go file that irrelevant fact in a super important filing cabinet that just HAPPENS to look like a garbage can.

(E) "Some" is so weak that I would hesitate to even read the rest. This says "at least one of the pictures was a composite of several people". Great? My compliments to the Photoshop technician who rendered the composite?

Takeaway/Pattern: This argument leans on a comparison between "people judging human-extroversion" and "people judging chimp-dominance". We strengthen comparisons by making them more fair to compare, as our correct answer choice did. We weaken comparisons by making them less fair to compare, as (A) and (B) seemed to be doing. If you want a couple other examples of "how is the OTHER premise relevant to this argument?" strengthen questions, try these:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... t6151.html
https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... t5525.html

#officialexplanation

[priyanka.krishnamurthy]

Quick question - for the analysis of E with the 'some' wording being too weak, I have generally been reluctant to pick these ACs for both weaken and Strengthen questions as they don't, generally, heavily impact the argument. I know we don't have a ton of end all be all tricks but for AC 12 the right answer did include 'some' (and of course it was better than the other ACs) but I just want a bit more guidance: should we be MORE wary of some answer choices for Strenghthen questions than we are for weaken ones?

Thanks,
pK

[ohthatpatrick]

No, it's the same for Strengthen, Weaken, and Explain/Resolve (paradox) questions.

All three of those are worded, "Which of the following, if true, most ....", so we're looking for whichever answer does the MOST to strengthen, weaken, or explain.

A really weak idea is not going to do a lot to strengthen, weaken, or explain (in the vast majority of cases).

But it can still do SOMETHING. If all our other answers are irrelevant or going the wrong direction, then an answer that barely strengthens (or weakens / or explains) could still be the correct answer.

If no other answers Strengthen, then an answer that kinda strengthens is still gonna be the answer that most strengthens.

So this whole "beware: weak answers" heuristic is something you use for Strengthen / Weaken / Explain (and you could also use it for Principle Support and Sufficient Assumption, but most of those answers are conditional so this heuristic doesn't swoop in to help us that much).

But it's just a heuristic: a rough rule of thumb. There are plenty of exceptions and it's no substitute for deeper thinking, if we have time and want to maximize our accuracy.

Some of my least favorite Str/Weak questions ever have correct answers that are using super weak wording. We don't tend to love those answers since they are so weak, but if you remind yourself that no other answer even HAS the desired effect, then the weakly worded answer can still be the winner.

Hope this didn't add confusion.