LSAT 146 – Section 3 – Question 15

LSAT 146 - Section 3 - Question 15

June 2016

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT146 S3 Q15	+LR	Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw Conditional Reasoning +CondR	A 6% 157 B 5% 156 C 88% 165 D 0% 148 E 1% 152	141 148 155	+Medium	146.758 +SubsectionMedium

A good manager must understand people and be able to defuse tense situations. But anyone who is able to defuse tense situations must understand people. Since Ishiko is able to defuse tense situations, she must be a good manager.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that Ishiko is a good manager. This is based on the following:

Being a good manager requires understanding people and being able to defuse tense situations.

Defusing tense situations requires understanding people.

Ishiko is able to defuse tense situations.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The author confuses necessary conditions for being a good manager with sufficient conditions. The premises establish that Ishiko has satisfied two necessary conditions for being a good manager. She can defuse tense situations, and she must be able to understand people. But this doesn’t guarantee that she is a good manager. (There might be other necessary conditions that we don’t know about; so we can’t conclude that Ishiko is a good manager.)

confuses a quality that shows an understanding of people with a quality that is necessary for understanding people

The author accurately uses the premise stating that ability to defuse is sufficient for understanding people. So the author doesn’t confuse the conditional “able to defuse → understand people.”

confuses a quality that usually correlates with being a good manager with a quality that results from being a good manager

This argument doesn’t involve cause and effect. The author doesn’t conclude or assume that anything cause something else. Rather, the reasoning involves an attempted use of conditional statements.

confuses qualities necessary for being a good manager with qualities that guarantee being a good manager

Understanding and defusing are necessary for being a good manager. But this doesn’t imply that they are sufficient for someone to be a good manager. So Ishiko’s possession of those qualities does not prove that she’s a good manager.

overlooks the possibility that different managers defuse tense situations in different ways

This possibility doesn’t undermine the argument’s reasoning. We know from a premise that Ishiko can defuse tense situations. How she does it, and how others defuse such situations has no impact.

takes for granted that because all good managers have a certain quality, Ishiko must have that quality

The argument doesn’t conclude that Ishiko must have a certain quality because all managers have that quality. The conclusion is that Ishiko is a good manager.

LSAT 146 – Section 3 – Question 15

LSAT 146 - Section 3 - Question 15

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Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 146 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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