LSAT 129 – Section 3 – Question 04

LSAT 129 - Section 3 - Question 04

June 2009

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Request new explanation

Target time: 0:55

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT129 S3 Q04
+LR
Resolve reconcile or explain +RRE
Net Effect +NetEff
A
8%
157
B
90%
165
C
0%
151
D
0%
154
E
1%
155
133
142
152
 +Medium 146.07 +SubsectionMedium

Two randomly selected groups of 30 adults each were asked to write short stories on a particular topic. One group was told that the best stories would be awarded cash prizes, while the other group was not told of any prizes. Each story was evaluated by a team of judges who were given no indication of the group from which the story came. The stories submitted by those who thought they were competing for prizes were ranked on average significantly lower than the stories from the other group.

"Surprising" Phenomenon
The group who knew they were competing for prizes wrote stories that ranked significantly lower on average than the group who didn’t know they were writing for prizes.

Objective
The right answer will be a hypothesis explaining why the writing quality was different between people who knew they were being judged for prizes and people who didn’t know they were being judged. That explanation must result in people writing worse when they’re aware they’re being judged for prizes.

A
The cash prizes were too small to motivate an average adult to make a significant effort to produce stories of high quality.
First, we don’t know if any of the stories submitted were of high quality. Second, the cash prizes seemed to make a difference.
B
People writing to win prizes show a greater than usual tendency to produce stereotypical stories that show little creativity.
The group who knew they were writing for prizes wrote unoriginal stories, whereas the other group wrote with more relative creativity since they didn’t know they were competing. This explains the difference between the groups.
C
Most adults show little originality in writing stories on a topic suggested by someone else.
We need to know why one group wrote worse stories than the other. This lacks any comparative aspect.
D
The team of judges was biased in favor of stories that they judged to be more realistic.
We don’t know that the group who didn’t know they were writing for prizes wrote relatively realistic stories.
E
No one explained clearly to either group what standards would be used in judging their stories.
This doesn’t explain why one group wrote worse stories than the other. We need a comparative aspect in our answer.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 129 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply