Psychology behind answer choice A

CJ Shin

Hey guys, I am posting this to share my experience on answer choice A.
After doing about 20 PTs or so, I have reached a level where I can sort of see what the LSAT writers are intending to do with our minds.
I must say that these guys truly are the masters of their domain.
They have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves, and they UNDERSTAND how our fragile minds work.

Specifically, I have had this weird feeling that they not only employ mind tricks with us with answer choice E, but also with A.
On early parts of LR sections, most answer choice As look very attractive, IF you do not have a full grasp of the stimulus.
The writers usually give you some useless information that disguises the true core of the argument and include specific words from that part of the stimulus in the answer choice.

On the other hand, for some really crazy convoluted questions, there is a surprisingly high frequency of A being the right answer.
I think the psychology behind this is that when people face a really confusing stimulus, most of them panic and try to rely on POE without really knowing what they are looking for.
But the problem with POE without a good understanding of the stimulus is that the writer can throw in even more confusing answer choices and virtually pull you apart in all directions, ultimately leaving you more confused, and precious time ticking away.

So my takeaway from this is to be suspicious of As for easier questions as they are likely to be wrong, and for the really hard ones later on, give more attention to A being a contender.

By the way, my experience is definitely not conclusive.
Try it out for yourselves

Peter

I have this inkling the longer the question is, stimulus and questions combined (Parallel Reasoning, Parallel Flaw both easy and hard ones), the probability the answer is A/B goes up and D/E goes down. This is just cause I think the LSAT has a built in reward system for those who really know the concept over those who rely on eliminating answer choices.

Practically speaking, this just means on longer questions start reading from A rather than skip around like I have a bad habit of.

J.Y. Ping

Very interesting conjectures! I'd love to empirically test them if we get enough data from user prep tests.