Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT15 S2 Q7 Explanation

Workers may complain about many things

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

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Stimulus

Workers may complain about many things at work, but stress is not high on the list. In fact, in a recent survey a majority placed boredom at the top of their list of complaints. The assumption that job-related stress is the corporate world is thus simply not warranted.

What this question is testing

Weaken

Conclusion

The author wants you to stop assuming stress is workers' biggest problem.

Evidence

Why? Because in a survey, more workers said boredom — not stress — was their top complaint.

Evaluate

Here is the move to watch: the author treats "what workers complain about" as the same thing as "what is most serious." But those are not the same. People can be most affected by something they do not even name as the problem. If boredom is actually a symptom of stress, the survey results undercount stress, not overcount it.

Goal

Find the answer that breaks the link between worker complaints and real seriousness — ideally one that suggests boredom complaints are themselves a sign of stress.

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

The question
7.

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

Answer choices

  1. No Impact2% picked this

    Those workers who are responsible for the planning and supervision of long-term projects are less likely to complain

    Workers responsible for planning and supervising long-term projects are a subset of corporate workers. Saying they complain less about both boredom and stress does not affect the relative importance of stress versus boredom across all corporate workers — and it certainly does not give us a reason to think stress is more serious than the survey suggests. The argument's conclusion is unaffected.

  2. Correct77% picked this

    Workers who complain of boredom exhibit more stress-related symptoms than do those who claim their

    Why this is right

    This is the wedge between the survey result and the conclusion. If workers who complain of boredom actually exhibit more stress-related symptoms than workers who find their jobs interesting, then "boredom complaints" may themselves be a symptom of stress. The survey was measuring what workers say bothers them most; this answer suggests stress is in fact present and serious among the very people complaining about boredom. The author's leap from "workers complain about boredom" to "stress is not the most serious problem" no longer holds.

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

  3. No Impact16% picked this

    Workers responding to opinion surveys tend to emphasize those experiences that have

    If workers emphasize recent experiences, that affects how the survey was answered, but it cuts in no clear direction — recent experiences could be either boredom-related or stress-related. This does not give us a reason to believe stress is actually more serious than the survey suggests. It just introduces a generic survey limitation.

  4. No Impact2% picked this

    Workers who feel that their salaries are commensurate with the amount of work they do are less likely

    This tells us salary fairness reduces boredom complaints, but it does not establish anything about how serious stress is or whether the survey misrepresents stress's importance. The argument concludes about stress, not about the causes of boredom complaints.

  5. No Impact2% picked this

    Workers are less likely to complain about work if they feel that their

    Job security affecting workers' general willingness to complain is a methodological observation that does not establish stress is more serious than the survey indicates. It applies to all complaints — boredom and stress alike — so it does not move us toward the conclusion that the assumption about stress is warranted after all.

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