Logical Reasoning

PT107 · S3 · Q7 Newsletter for community-center

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Newsletter for community-center volunteers: Retired persons who regularly volunteer their time to help others generally display fewer and milder effects of aging than their nonvolunteering contemporaries: in social resources, mental outlook, physical health, economic resources, and overall functioning, they are found to be substantially stronger than nonvolunteers.

Conclusion

Volunteering can benefit your own well-being!

Evidence

Retired people who regularly volunteer usually have fewer and milder effects of aging than their nonvolunteering contemporaries.

The volunteers tend to have more social resources, better mental outlook, better physical health, more economic resources, and better overall functioning than nonvolunteers.

Evaluate

This question stem is a very rare variant of a Flaw question stem, but asking "Why is this inference (i.e. conclusion) unwarranted" is the same as asking "How is this argument vulnerable to criticism?"

This argument's evidence is a Curious Comparison -- how come we find that elderly volunteers have fewer effects of aging, better health, more money, etc. than elderly non-volunteers?

The Author's Explanation is that "volunteering benefits your well-being". In other words, the author thinks that by volunteering, these people don't age as much / have more money / better mental outlook, etc.

Whenever an author tries to explain a curious fact, we ask the same 2 questions: - is there some other way we could explain the curious fact? - how plausible is the author's way?

In particular, when you get a correlation between X and Y (ppl who are X are more likely to be Y), and the author concludes that X causes Y, we want to consider two automatic objections: - wait a sec, what if Y causes X? (reverse causality) - what if X and Y are just symptoms of Z? (third factor)

In this case does it make any sense to say that instead of volunteering causing elderly people to have milder effects of aging / more money / more social resources, etc. that it's actually the reverse?

Having milder effects of aging / more money / more social resources is what's causing them to be volunteers?

Yes, that makes tons of sense. If you're broke, alone, and enfeebled as an elderly person, you probably don't have the strength / means to do volunteering.

Goal

It feels like Reverse Causality is such a good common sense alternate explanation for this correlation that the answer will likely deal with that.

The inference drawn above is unwarranted because

the center has a self-interested
Never a Flaw
LSAT will never sign off on us invalidating someone's argument simply because that person would gain from their argument being true. That's actually one of the ten famous Famous Flaws, known as Ad Hominem. Also, the fact that some of these paragraphs have a speaker identified before a colon at the outset is totally irrelevant. Take any argument -- it doesn't make any difference whether it's prefaced by Lawyer: Professional Golfer: Newsletter for Exiled Mimes: Those identifiers at the beginning have never been relevant to a correct answer. We teachers don't even read them. When I first read this answer choice, I thought, "the center?" because I had never bothered to read who was saying this argument. LSAT doesn't care who the source of an argument is (beautifully, in this day and age). They only care about the substance of that source's ideas.
10% picked this
it interprets “well-being” as including
Not a Flaw
You're right, (B), it does interpret things like friends, money, psychology, health, and overall functioning as parts of "well-being". Because they are. :)
11% picked this
some of those who do
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: considered peers This author is never saying that all volunteers are peers, so we wouldn't be objecting to anything this author said or thought by saying, "Nuh-uh. Some of them aren't peers." When the first sentence compares retired persons who volunteer to their nonvolunteering contemporaries, that means "people who are around the same age, but don't volunteer".
4% picked this
growing older might not necessarily
Not an Objection
Was this author promising that growing older always involved a change in mental outlook? Nope. So we wouldn't be objecting to anything the author said or thought by saying, "Hey, author, there is at least one case in which growing older didn't result in a change in mental outlook". This author was only assuming that for many people volunteering resulted in a change in mental outlook.
2% picked this
Correct
those with better resources, health,
Why this is right
When we're doing Flaw or Weaken and the argument involves a causal interpretation of a Curious Comparison, the correct answer will usually involve pointing out an Alternate Explanation for that comparison. This answer is supplying the Reverse Causality objection that volunteering doesn't cause older people to have more money / vigor / happiness / functioning. Instead, having more money / vigor / happiness / functioning enables one to volunteer, so that's why there's more health / money / happiness found among the volunteering crowd than among the nonvolunteering crowd.
Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
74% picked this

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