Support When the annual period of daylight saving time begins, and clocks are set forward one hour, many people lose an hour of sleep. ██ ███ █████████ ████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ███████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████ █████████ ██ █ ███████ ███████ ████ ███ ███████ ███ ████ ████ ██ █████ ██ ██ █████████ ██████ ████ █████ ███████████ ██ ███████████ ███ ████ █████ ██ ███████ ██████████
This argument follows the phenomenon-hypothesis structure. The first two sentences describe a fact pattern, and the last sentence offers a potential explanation for those facts.
Fact 1: People get less sleep on daylight savings day.
Fact 2: People get into more crashes on daylight savings day.
_________
Hypothesis: The crashes are probably because people are getting less sleep.
So as usual our job is to brainstorm alternative explanations (to eliminate!) and bolster the offered explanation. First some alternative causes:
- Maybe people often have “daylight savings day” parties and get super drunk.
- Maybe governments often make changes to road signage on daylight savings day.
- Maybe there is a subculture of daylight savings purge people who engage in Mad Max style road warfare on daylight savings day.
You get it. Maybe [something else] happens on daylight savings day to cause accidents. Because we're in a Strengthen question, one category of answer choice to anticipate, is “No no, [that thing you’re thinking of] doesn’t happen.”
This particular explanation doesn’t have any glaring plausibility problems – it makes sense that sleep deprived people would get into more accidents – so there aren’t any clear “repair this hole” anticipations to be had here. Answer choices that touch on plausibility will likely come in the form of corroborating evidence – more data that suggest sleep deprivation is linked to traffic accidents.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ ████ ███████████ ███ █████████
Many people forget ██ ███ █████ ██████ ███████ ████ ████████ ██████ ████ ██████ ███ ███ ████ ███ ████████████ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██ █ ███████
Perhaps (A) was tempting for you because you briefly forgot this is a Strengthen question, and saw (A) pointing to an alternative cause of the increased accidents (like people driving recklessly to rush to their meetings).
As a strengthener, though, we’re looking for (A) to eliminate alternative causes or to bolster the plausibility of sleep deprivation as a cause of these extra accidents. But the people (A) describes – who have forgotten to adjust their clocks – are people who have not lost an hour of sleep because they accidentally slept in.
Those people can’t corroborate sleep deprivation as the causal mechanism because they aren’t sleep deprived.
Traffic accidents are ████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████ ██████ ██ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ████ ████ ███ ██ ███ ███████
This would be solid if it said “Traffic accidents are less common on the day after daylight savings time ends than they are on average for that time of year.” Evidence showing that people get into fewer accidents when they have more sleep would corroborate the argument's assertion that sleep deprivation causes accidents.
But (B) is actually comparing the entire springtime to the entire wintertime. That’s way way way too broad to strengthen our argument.
The traffic accidents ████ █████ ██ ███ ███ █████ ████████ ██████ ████ ██████ ███ ██ ████ ██████ ████ ███████
The subtle shift to a different concept (severity) is quite common in wrong answer choices to WSE questions. It would be relevant if our conclusion were about fatalities or hospitalizations or general bad consequences, but our conclusion is just about the number of accidents, big or small.
The higher incidence ██ █████████ ██ ████ ██████████ █████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ██████████████ ██████ ████ ██ ██ ████ ███████
(D) provides higher resolution data from daylight savings day that sharpens the link between sleep and traffic accidents. Not only do traffic accidents increase on the day people lose an hour of sleep, they increase most at the time of day when people are sleepiest.
This evidence provides support for the argument's implied causal mechanism that sleep deprivation causes drowsy driving causes accidents. And because it's so finely-tuned, it also precludes any competing causes that would predict a different pattern of accidents throughout the day. The “daylight savings day parties” anticipation from earlier, for example, might predict a higher rate of accidents in the morning when people are most hungover.
Presenting evidence that corroborates (in Strengthen) or conflicts (in Weaken) with the author's hypothesized explanation or the predictions that follow from that explanation.
The effects of █████ ███████████ ███ ██████ ███ ███████ █████
This would strengthen the argument if the stimulus’ evidence were about traffic accidents occurring more often 3 days after daylight savings starts.
In that world, there would be reason to doubt sleep as the cause because perhaps people have made up for that single lost hour of sleep by then. But, of course, our actual evidence is about traffic accidents within 24 hours, so our argument is fine from that perspective.
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