PT2.S2.Q10 - Advertisers are often criticized...

Gatsby96

Can someone explain why C is correct and why E is incorrect

LSAT Lizard

A family friendly newspaper has suddenly changed their business plan dramatically, becoming extremely non-family friendly. Afterwards, some of the companies purchasing ad space in that paper cancelled their advertising contract. The author concludes that those advertising companies must have done so because they felt supporting the no-longer-family-friendly paper was immoral.

Without reading any of the answer choices yet, there's a very prominent flaw in the author's argument. Why should we believe the advertisers who cancelled their contracts did so purely for moral reasons? It's also completely possible that they cancelled their contracts because advertising in non-family-friendly papers is not profitable, and they wanted to protect their profits.

The question could go in all sorts of directions, but if I see a prominent flaw in the stimulus argument, I expect / hope that the answer to the question will hinge on that flaw. I'm looking for ACs that interact with that flaw.

Choices C and E both interact with that flaw, so I agree that A, B, and D are easier to throw out than E.

But C is a better strengthener than E. C gives me exactly what I need to patch up the huge flaw in the stimulus: keeping the advertising contracts is expected to make more money than cancelling them, so the advertising companies deliberately made a decision that hurt their profits. The possibility that they cancelled their contracts in the interest of making money is completely deleted, so we need another reason for them cancelling their contracts. The author's idea that 'they did it because it was the moral thing to do' sounds much more reasonable now. Why else would they willingly give up some of their profits?

E is weaker because there are different (equally valid) ways of interpreting E, and only one of the interpretations strengthen the stimulus. The other interpretation weakens it, the exact opposite of what we want! Consider-

Interpretation 1: The income group that likes the new version of the paper is higher-income than the income group that has been reading the older version of the paper. This is pretty much the same as answer choice C (it means the advertisers that pulled out did so despite it being a bad decision from a money perspective). This is probably what you're thinking if you choose E as the answer.

Interpretation 2: The income group that likes the newer version of the paper is lower-income than the income group that has been reading the older version of the paper. This means that the advertisers started to lose money (or at least make less money) after the paper shifted focus, so it makes complete sense that many of them would cancel their contracts (probably to start new contracts with other papers where they aren't losing money). It makes the author look silly: 'the advertisers did something that protected their financial interest, I bet they did it for moral reasons unrelated to money.'

C strengthens the stimulus 100% of the time. But E strengthens the stimulus half the time, and weakens it the other half; since E gives us no clue as to whether the new readers are a higher or lower income group than previous readers, we should consider Interpretation 1 and Interpretation 2 as being equally likely.

julia.greve

Hey there! To understand why C strengthens our argument, let's take a look at our conclusion and supporting premise. The stimulus tells us that:

C: There's evidence advertisers are motivated by moral and financial reasons, because
P: Some advertisers withdrew advertisements from the violent publication.

Whenever we are dealing with a strengthen question, we know we are trying to find the "gap" between premise and conclusion and bring those pieces together. To find this gap, I like to identify our necessary assumption in the argument and see how that necessary assumption is seen in our answer choices. For instance, in order for our evidence to prove this moral concern, our argument assumes the advertisers were not purely motivated by financial concerns.

Doesn't that seem obvious? Once I find my assumption I see how that assumption is resolved in my answer choices. We see that exactly with C. This option tells us exactly - the advertisers had the potential to gain money if finances were their only concern. But they didn't choose that option, per the stimulus. In a roundabout way, this re-states the assumption we can find simply from reading the stimulus.

Answer choice E could be persuasive -- if we knew exactly what it is talking about. What does "appeal" mean? Interest, entertain? What does the "different" income group mean -- lower, higher, and how does that weigh on anything in our stimulus? Part of the trick the test makers play on us is using vague language that we can loosely interpret in a favorable way. But we are not to make assumptions or interpretations on our LSAT questions! In the future, make sure you've got a strong sense of the gap in the argument. Then, in the answer choices, pay close attention to whether we can understand our choices without making assumptions.