Logical Reasoning

PT139 · S1 · Q17 Politician: A major social problem

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Politician: A major social problem is children hurting other children.

Conclusion

Watching violent films is at least partly responsible for children hurting other children.

Evidence

In a study, the kids who watched a video of children hitting Bobo were more likely to subsequently hit Bobo than were the kids who didn't see that video.

Evaluate

Since the author is interpreting the results of a study, we can use our Curious Fact / Explanation template.

Curious Fact Why are the kids who watched the Bobo video more likely to hit Bobo than the kids who didn't see the video?

Author's Story Watching violence on TV makes kids more aggressive.

We always then consider two different pressure points: - How ELSE could we explain the curious fact? - how plausible is the author's explanation?

Maybe the video-watching kids are hitting Bobo not because they learned violence from TV but because they just have cooped up energy, from having to sit still while watching the video. Maybe after any video, a kid has so much pent up energy that they're liable to act more aggressively.

Maybe all kids feel the aggressive urge to hit the Bobo doll, but only the kids who watched the video realize that they're allowed to.

Goal

Find an answer offering an alternate explanation for why the video-watchers were more likely to hit Bobo, an answer lowering the plausibility that watching "violent" TV causes more aggressive behavior, or an answer that allows us to accept the evidence but argue the anti-conclusion that .

17.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the politician's argument?

  1. Some of the children who

    Too Weak

    Causal arguments almost always tolerate some exceptions. When you claim that "smoking cigarettes increases one's risk of lung cancer", it doesn't weaken your claim to say that "some people smoke cigarettes but don't get lung cancer". These are messy, real-world claims about tendencies, not absolutes. Our author is only claiming that watching the Bobo video made the video-watching children, on average, more violent around the Bobo doll than the other children were. The fact that some kids who didn't see the video still hit Bobo or that some kids who saw the video didn't hit Bobo (and chastised those who did) does not weaken this claim.

    3% picked this

  2. The child who punched the

    Too Weak

    This is one paltry data point. The kid who hit Bobo the hardest didn't watch the doll. Cool. That doesn't make us re-imagine the data set we got -- on average, the kids who watched the video were more likely to hit the doll. The single kid who struck it with the most force is not helping us to evaluate a large-scale trend, whether he watched the video or didn't watch the video. When we're doing Weaken with causal arguments, there is usually a trap answer saying, "there is at least one data point that doesn't fit the trend you described", and those have no impact. If I say that people who have Instagram accounts are more likely to take a picture every day with their phone, that isn't me promising that "every single person" with an IG account takes a pic per day on their phone. It's an average. It tolerates exceptions.

    12% picked this

  3. Correct

    The children who had been

    Why this is right

    This basically establishes a big disconnect between the evidence and the conclusion. The author may have shown that "kids who watch a video about how other children behave around a toy are more likely to copy that behavior", but she doesn't get to use this Bobo study to say that "watching violent films makes kids more likely to hurt other children", if we're told that the video-watchers were no more likely than the other kids to punch other children.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    73% picked this

  4. Some children who had not

    Strengthens, if anything

    This seems like if anything it would just support the idea that children copy what they see, which can help the author argue that if they watch violent films, they'll copy that violence.

    11% picked this

  5. Many of the children who

    No Impact

    We weren't really assuming that any of the kids had seen a Bobo doll before the experiment. In fact, the author presumably wants these kids to be blank slates, so that she can show how watching the video (or not watching it) "instructed" the kids how to behave around a Bobo doll. If they had prior knowledge of Bobo dolls or how to behave around them, that would actually make it messier to interpret the data.

    1% picked this

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