Young people believe efforts

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsNecessary Assumption

Keep going in LSAT Lab

Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one
Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step
81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Free to start

Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Stimulus

Young people believe efforts to reduce pollution, poverty, and war are doomed to failure. This pessimism is probably harmful to humanity’s future, because people lose motivation to work for goals they think are unrealizable. We must do what we can to prevent this children to believe that better futures are possible.

What this question is testing

Necessary Assumption

Conclusion

The author concludes: we must enable our kids to believe better futures are possible.

Evidence

The reasoning chain: young people are pessimistic → pessimism makes people lose motivation → we must prevent that loss → so we should make kids believe better futures are possible.

Evaluate

The last step is the gap. The author wants to prevent loss of motivation, and proposes a specific solution: enable belief in better futures. But for that solution to actually serve the goal, enabling the belief has to actually prevent the motivation loss. If it doesn't — say, if loss of motivation comes from other sources, or this belief doesn't restore it — then the recommended action doesn't solve the problem.

Goal

The assumption is the bridge from the proposed action to the goal it's supposed to serve. Negation test: if enabling the belief does NOT help prevent motivation loss, the conclusion doesn't follow.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

19.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the

Answer choices

Reversal / Negation12% picked this
Motivating people to work to solve humanity’s problems will enable them to believe that the future can be better and will cause
The argument's recommendation is "enable belief → preserve motivation." This answer goes the other way: motivating people causes them to believe better futures. That's the reverse direction. The argument doesn't need (or use) that reversed link.
12%
Correct76% picked this
Enabling people to believe that better futures are possible will help prevent the loss of motivation that results from
Why this is right
This is the bridge. The argument's goal is to prevent loss of motivation caused by pessimism. The recommended action is to enable belief that better futures are possible. For the action to serve the goal, enabling that belief must actually prevent the loss of motivation. Negation test: if enabling the belief does NOT help prevent the loss of motivation, then the recommended action doesn't serve the goal, and "we must do this" doesn't follow. The argument depends on this link.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
76%
Out of Scope5% picked this
Optimism about the future is better than pessimism, even if that optimism is based on an illusory vision of
The argument doesn't need optimism to be better than pessimism in the abstract, and it certainly doesn't need optimism to be valuable even when illusory. It just needs the recommended action to address the motivation problem. Negate this answer (optimism is not better when illusory) and the argument still goes through — we're not told the optimism the author has in mind is illusory.
5%
Too Strong4% picked this
If future generations believe that the future can be better, then pollution, poverty, and war
The argument doesn't need belief in better futures to eliminate pollution, poverty, and war. The conclusion is more modest: we must enable that belief in order to preserve motivation. Negate this answer (belief doesn't eliminate the problems) and the conclusion still stands — we still want to preserve motivation. This goes way beyond what the argument needs.
4%
Out of Scope3% picked this
The current prevalence of such problems as pollution and poverty stems from previous generations’ inability to believe that
The argument is forward-looking — about preventing the current generation's loss of motivation. It doesn't need any claim about what caused current problems. Negate this (previous generations' beliefs were not the cause) and the argument is unaffected; we still want to preserve motivation in the next generation regardless of what caused the world's current state.
3%

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill

LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free