Self-study
Psychiatrist: Support Psychological stress is known both to cause negative emotions and to impair physical health. ████ ████████ ████ ██████████ ████ ████████ ████████ ████ ████ █████ █████ █████ █████ ██████ ██ ████████
Argument Summary
Stress causes negative emotions, and stress impairs physical health. One cause (stress) produces two separate effects (negative emotions, impaired health).
From there, the psychiatrist concludes that overcoming the negative emotions could cause one's health to improve. That conclusion makes sense only if negative emotions actually influence health. But the premise never establishes that. It just establishes that negative emotions and impaired health share a cause.
Anticipation
Substitute any other shared cause and the reasoning becomes obviously absurd. Rain causes streets to get wet and rain causes umbrellas to open, so closing umbrellas would dry the streets. Or: hot weather causes ice cream sales to rise and hot weather causes drownings to rise, so banning ice cream would reduce drownings. In both cases, eliminating one effect doesn't touch the other, because they don't actually cause each other. They just share an upstream cause.
The psychiatrist is making the same mistake with negative emotions and impaired health. The correct answer should describe the flawed assumption that because two effects share a common cause, one effect must cause the other.
17.
The psychiatrist's argument is most ██████████ ██ █████████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████████
a
It presumes without █████████████ ████ ███ ██████████ ████ ████████ ████ █ ███████ ██████ ████████ █████████ ███ ████████
The premise doesn't present two conditions that together produce an effect. The premise presents one cause (stress) producing two separate effects (negative emotions, impaired health). And the conclusion isn't that the two effects causally influence "one another" in both directions; it's that one of them (overcoming negative emotions) causally influences the other (health) in one direction. (A) misdescribes both the structure of the premise and the direction of the conclusion.
b
It presumes, merely ██ ███ █████ ████ ███ ██████████ ████ █ ██████ ██████ ████ ███ ██ █████ ███ ██████████ ███ ████████ █████████ ███ ██████
This accurately describes the flaw. Two conditions (negative emotions and impaired health) share a common cause (stress). The psychiatrist treats that shared-cause relationship as if it meant one of the two conditions (stress) causally influences the other (impaired health).
c
It confuses two ██████ ████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ █████ ██ ██████ ████ ██████ ████ ███ ██████████ ███ ████ ███████
There aren't two causes that together bring about an effect in this argument. There's one cause (stress) and two separate effects. The necessary-versus-sufficient confusion (C) describes would apply only if the psychiatrist had presented two things working in combination to produce a third thing, which never happens in the stimulus.
d
It takes for ███████ ████ ███ ██████████ ████ ████████ ████ █ ███████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████ ███ ████ ███████
Same misdescription of the premise as (A) and (C). The argument doesn't present two conditions that together produce an effect; it presents one cause and two separate effects. (D) is also about each of two conditions independently producing the same joint effect, which is a different structural claim from anything the psychiatrist makes.
e
It takes for ███████ ████ ████████ █ █████████ ████ ████████ ███████████ ██ ███████ █████████ ████████ ██ █████████ ███ ██████ ██████████
For (E) to describe the flaw here, the argument would need two specific elements: (1) a premise that negative emotions causally contribute to impaired health, and (2) a conclusion that overcoming negative emotions would eliminate the impairment. The argument has neither. The causal link from negative emotions to health isn't a premise the argument relies on; it's the very thing the argument illegitimately assumes (which is the actual flaw, described by B). And the conclusion is that overcoming negative emotions could cause health to "improve," not that it would eliminate the impairment.