LSAT 142 – Section 2 – Question 11

LSAT 142 - Section 2 - Question 11

December 2014

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT142 S2 Q11
+LR
+Exp
Weaken +Weak
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
64%
166
B
3%
156
C
28%
161
D
2%
156
E
2%
160
141
155
170
 +Harder 146.338 +SubsectionMedium

Psychologists observing a shopping mall parking lot found that, on average, drivers spent 39 seconds leaving a parking space when another car was quietly waiting to enter it, 51 seconds if the driver of the waiting car honked impatiently, but only 32 seconds leaving a space when no one was waiting. This suggests that drivers feel possessive of their parking spaces even when leaving them, and that this possessiveness increases in reaction to indications that another driver wants the space.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that drivers feel possessive of their parking spots, and increasingly possessive when other drivers want their parking spots.

Notable Assumptions
The author believes that the drivers took more time leaving their spots when other cars were around because they were possessive of their spots. He therefore assumes there’s not some other factor (i.e. the fact there’s a car nearby as they’re leaving the spot) preventing drivers from leaving their spots as quickly as they would when there aren’t other cars around.

A
The more pressure most drivers feel because others are waiting for them to perform maneuvers with their cars, the less quickly they are able to perform them.
Drivers aren’t possessive when other cars are around. They’re simply feeling pressure, which makes them slow down while leaving their spots.
B
The amount of time drivers spend entering a parking space is not noticeably affected by whether other drivers are waiting for them to do so, nor by whether those other drivers are honking impatiently.
We don’t care what happens when drivers enter a spot. We care what happens while they’re leaving a spot.
C
It is considerably more difficult and time-consuming for a driver to maneuver a car out of a parking space if another car waiting to enter that space is nearby.
This explains why drivers took longer to leave the space than when no cars were waiting, but it doesn’t explain why honking intensified the effect. We need to know why that caused drivers to slow down even more.
D
Parking spaces in shopping mall parking lots are unrepresentative of parking spaces in general with respect to the likelihood that other cars will be waiting to enter them.
We don’t care about how frequently this scenario occurs.
E
Almost any driver leaving a parking space will feel angry at another driver who honks impatiently, and this anger will influence the amount of time spent leaving the space.
Even without the honking, drivers still took longer to leave when another car was waiting for the spot. We need to explain why that is.

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LSAT PrepTest 142 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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