LSAT 142 – Section 4 – Question 09

LSAT 142 - Section 4 - Question 09

December 2014

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT142 S4 Q09
+LR
Resolve reconcile or explain +RRE
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
2%
156
B
74%
165
C
2%
151
D
18%
161
E
4%
156
143
153
163
 +Harder 147.564 +SubsectionMedium

People are usually interested in, and often even moved by, anecdotes about individuals, whereas they rarely even pay attention to statistical information, much less change their beliefs in response to it. However, although anecdotes are generally misleading in that they are about unrepresentative cases, people tend to have fairly accurate beliefs about society.

"Surprising" Phenomenon
Why do people tend to have accurate beliefs about society, even though they are usually interested in and moved by personal anecdotes, which are often misleading and unrepresentative?

Objective
The correct answer will be a hypothesis that explains that, while people are interested in and moved by individual anecdotes, it may not be the case that these misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes cause people to change their beliefs about society.

A
Statistical information tends to obscure the characteristics of individuals.
We’re told that people rarely pay attention to statistics and that it doesn't change their beliefs. So, this doesn’t help to explain why people have accurate beliefs about society, even though they are interested in misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes.
B
Most people recognize that anecdotes tend to be about unrepresentative cases.
This helps to explain why people have accurate beliefs about society, despite being interested in misleading anecdotes. Since they recognize that anecdotes are often unrepresentative, their interest in them doesn’t lead to unrepresentative beliefs about society.
C
The more emotionally compelling an anecdote is, the more likely it is to change a person’s beliefs.
This furthers the discrepancy. If emotionally compelling anecdotes change people’s beliefs, then people who are interested in and moved by misleading and unrepresentative anecdotes would be likely to have unrepresentative beliefs about society.
D
Statistical information is made more comprehensible when illustrated by anecdotes.
We know that people rarely pay attention to statistics and are instead interested in anecdotes. Whether anecdotes make statistics more comprehensible tells us nothing about why people who are interested in unrepresentative anecdotes tend to have accurate beliefs about society.
E
People tend to base their beliefs about other people on their emotional response to those people.
This doesn’t explain why people who are interested in unrepresentative anecdotes still have accurate beliefs about society. Also, we don’t know how people’s beliefs about other individual people relate to their beliefs about society.

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LSAT PrepTest 142 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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