Logical Reasoning

PT142 · S1 · Q22 A study of 20,000 20- to 64-year-olds

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A study of 20,000 20- to 64-year-olds found that people's satisfaction with their incomes is not strongly correlated with the amount they make.

Statements

contrast / causal difference-maker:

people's satisfaction with their incomes is not seemingly caused by the absolute amount of money they make.

rather,

people's satisfaction with their incomes is seemingly caused by the relative amount of money they make to other people in their neighborhood (usually from a similar economic class)

Goal

Look for an answer that safely reinforces or explains the fact that people mainly evaluate their income in relative terms to their neighbors, not absolute terms.

22.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following hypotheses?

  1. People with high incomes are

    Goes Against

    This violates what we were just told. This makes it sound like the causal difference-maker for income satisfaction is absolute income, not relative, if wealthy people are more satisfied than middle class people. The paragraph would have us expect that within a wealthy neighborhood, the less-wealthy would be unsatisfied. In a middle class neighborhood, the more-wealthy would be satisficed.

    0% picked this

  2. Older people are generally more

    Out of Scope: older / younger

    The causal difference maker for satisfaction was "doing better, relative to your neighbors". Is there a common sense connection that older people are generally doing better relative to their neighbors than younger people? No, that's a bit of a stretch.

    0% picked this

  3. Satisfaction with income is strongly

    Goes Against

    The paragraph told us that satisfaction was caused by how you ranked within your neighborhood, not how your neighborhood ranked overall.

    22% picked this

  4. In general, people's income levels

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: life as a whole We were only talking about satisfaction with income levels, so we don't have support for talking about satisfaction with "life as a whole".

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    An increase in everyone's incomes

    Why this is right

    This aligns with the idea that relative differences matter, not absolute differences. If you are already unsatisfied with your income, because your next door neighbors are wealthier than you, and all three of you start getting $1000 a month in universal basic income, that won't change your assessment, because your relative position to your neighbors hasn't changed. Since increasing everyone's incomes would change absolute income, not relative income, we wouldn't expect it to affect satisfaction with income much, since we were told that satisfaction with income doesn't track well with absolute income but does track very well with relative income.

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

    75% picked this

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