56.2.14 Psychologist: We asked 100

Accounts Playable

I really didn’t like any of the answer choices, so I pretty much guessed on this one.

These psychologists surveyed 100 entrepreneurs and 100 business managers. The questions asked about different topics and the level of certainty was also recorded. Each groups were overconfident, but the E were more so than the BMs. Thus, people who are overconfident are more likely to start a business than those less confident.

What I am looking for: A lot wrong with this argument. First, all of the survey stuff. Was the sample representative of Es and BMs? Second, do the BMs accurately reflect people that are less confident? The conclusion makes too broad a claim; it should have limited it to more likely than than BMs, not less confident people in general. Lastly, the argument assumes that overconfidence and gauging success are the same thing. Are they? Not so sure.

Answer A: So what? Were these questions unbiased? You have to assume they were. Skip.

Answer B: This, if anything, might weaken the argument. We want to strengthen the argument. This suggests that some people can start businesses with accurate levels of confidence. Skip.

Answer C: This is irrelevant. Was the other survey good? Also, how would a correlation between confidence and success be relevant? We need a correlation between confidence and likelihood of starting a business.

Answer I guess it strengthens the argument, but I am still not that sure why. Does it show that there might be some support for there being a correlation between overconfidence (the ones that are the “most”) and odds of starting a business. I am still pretty wishy washy on this one.

Answer E: This is what I chose, but like I said before, I really didn’t like it. This is saying that the degree of overconfidence in the answered questions corresponded with the degree of overconfidence in business acumen. I think this would have been a pretty decent strengthener if “business acumen” were substituted for “likelihood of successfully starting a business.” Maybe not, though. If the phrase “confidence in his or her business acumen” were substituted for “likelihood for starting a business,” that would most assuredly strengthen the argument. Nevertheless, we don’t know if business acumen has anything to do with starting a business.

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@"Accounts Playable" :

I agree with your assessment of A, B, C. Those answers are crap.

With respect to D, the answer lends a little bit of strength to the argument, given that it supports the thesis that people who are more confident are more likely to start businesses. So it is an answer that should be left.

E is the correct answer because it fills in the gap between the premises and the conclusion. Premise: on our survey these guys are more confident and they started business
conclusion: people who are overconfident more likely to start business

gap: does the confidence on survey questions have anything to do with confident in business?

E fills that in, saying specifically that yes, the correlation is there.

iiiSpoon

@josephellengar

Are you looking at the correct question? (E) is not the answer; it is (D).

As to @Accounts Playable and anyone else who might have issues with this question,

This is one of those questions where the LSAT throws in a word people are unfamiliar with, and since we do not like (D), we assume the best in what (E) says; acumen, however, does not mean 'likely to attempt to start a business,' and for that reason it fails to strengthen.

I agree that (D) is rather wishy-washy (something I feel is more common in the later LSAT's) in that it kinda strengthens but does it half ass. (D) makes the assumption that the most overconfident business people that were found to have started businesses in the past started those businesses when they were overconfident. It could be that those overconfident individuals became overconfident post-starting business, which would then make (D) useless; or, maybe the English swings both ways and could mean that there was no distant past, but rather that they were already overconfident when they first set out to start a business. . .I'm not sure. I could really use someone with an English major.

Nevertheless, (A), (B), (C), (E) are terrible answer choices.

Sorry, if this does not help much.

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@E.CH.Poon

Wow, that's embarassing. Thanks for correcting me. I went in thinking that OP had said that E was correct, and the found a way to force it to work for me. Apologies.