We should do what will make others more virtuous and not do what will make others less virtuous.
Statements
conditionals
Makes others more virtuous → do it
Makes others less virtuous → don't do it
causal (makes)
Praise makes less virtuous people more virtuous. Praise makes more virtuous people less virtuous.
conditional (none except)
Deserve praise → more virtuous person ~more virtuous person → ~Deserve praise
Evaluate
We're given a rule in the first sentence that tells us to do things that make people more virtuous and not do things that make people less virtuous.
And the second sentence has an Overlapping Idea; it talks about making people more/less virtuous.
So from the second sentence we can infer: you should praise people who are less virtuous (because it makes them more virtuous) you should not praise people who are more virtuous (because it makes them less virtuous)
It's a good habit to make inferences as you go (both when reading rules in Logic Games and in reading premises or statements in arguments or Inference stimuli). LSAC is often testing our ability to hear a correct inference, and then relate it to what comes next.
By combining the 1st and 2nd sentences, we have an inference in our heads that "we should praise people who are less virtuous", and then the 3rd sentence says "only more virtuous people deserve praise".
Huh. Do those contradict each other? They feel like they contradict, but it's just because we get a counterintuitive result: we should praise people who are less virtuous, even though they don't deserve praise.
Goal
We never know for sure what the answer will be on an Inference question, but we did get some inferences from the 2nd sentence, should praise less virtuous shouldn't praise more virtuous
and then we could combine those with the 3rd sentence to get, should praise people who don't deserve it shouldn't praise people who do possibly deserve it