Logical Reasoning

PT15 · S2 · Q7 Workers may complain about many things

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

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

Start practicing free

Workers may complain about many things at work, but stress is not high on the list.

Conclusion

The assumption that job-related stress is the most serious problem for corporate-world workers is not warranted.

rephrase: Job-related stress isn't the most serious problem for corporate workers.

Evidence

In a recent survey, a majority of workers placed boredom, not stress, at the top of their list of complaints.

Evaluate

We would assign ourselves the Anti-Conclusion that stress is the most serious problem for workers.

The author will say, ?

So we'd need to make an excuse for that survey. Maybe the workers aren't aware of their own stress levels. Maybe they were afraid to admit to stress (sounds like weakness) whereas complaining about boredom sounds more badass. Maybe they don't think their bosses have the power to change stress but do have the power to change boredom (so they stressed the most changeable thing they wanted to complain about).

Goal

Look for an answer that can make an excuse for Boredom being #1 on the survey and allow us to argue that in reality stress is the #1 problem.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

Those workers who are responsible
No Impact
This is lumping together boredom and stress, when we want an answer to say, "No, boredom isn't #1. Stress is." So it has no usefulness to us.
2% picked this
Correct
Workers who complain of boredom
Why this is right
This is a tough answer to love, but it's ultimately our best option for trying to respond to the survey in a way that allows us to argue that stress is the biggest problem facing workers. This correlation makes it seem like there might be a causal connection between boredom and stress (although it would be hard to know whether stress leads to boredom or boredom leads to stress -- the latter seems more plausible). But regardless, we know that most workers complained of boredom, and now we know that these same people exhibit more symptoms of stress than other workers. So if a majority are complaining of boredom, then a majority are suffering from a higher level of stress-related symptoms, which helps us argue that stress is at least as serious a problem as boredom. It by no means allows us to prove that stress is the biggest problem, but it gives us an effective response to the author's survey evidence. We can argue that boredom is really just a proxy idea for stress, since bored workers = stressed workers.
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
77% picked this
Workers responding to opinion surveys
No Impact
This might somewhat weaken the argument by making the survey evidence seem potentially distorted by some Recency Bias. But ... you'd expect that in general the most recent problem a worker would have encountered would be the most serious problem (since it would presumably be the most serious because it's the most prevalent / memorable problem). So if we tried to say, "Hey author this survey is probably reflecting what workers were trouble with most recently", the author could potentially say, "Right! Since they were most recently troubled with boredom, that is apparently their most serious problem right now." It doesn't create as formidable an objection as saying that boredom is a proxy for stress.
16% picked this
Workers who feel that their
No Impact
What does this answer have to do with stress? It's correlating boredom with "salary feels wrongly proportioned to amount of work" and correlating non-boredom with "appropriate salary". But we don't know if there's any correlation between thinking your salary is / isn't appropriate and stress.
2% picked this
Workers are less likely to
No Impact
If we didn't feel like our job was secure, that would presumably be a source of stress. So that kind of makes it seem like someone who was worried about job security would be both stressed and more likely to complain about work. But that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Is this a generic sense of complaining, like grumbling to your coworkers? If so, who cares? If it's a specific sense of complaining on a survey about top work complaints, the fact remains that the number one complaint was boredom (not job insecurity, not stress). So this doesn't give us any way to respond to the author's survey evidence in order to argue that stress is a big problem.
2% picked this

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