Logical Reasoning

PT151 · S3 · Q18 An analysis of the language in social media

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An analysis of the language in social media messages posted via the Internet determined that, on average, the use of words associated with positive moods is common in the morning, decreases gradually to a low point midafternoon, and then increases sharply throughout the evening.

Conclusion

A person's mood typically starts out happy in the morning, declines during the day, and improves in the evening.

Evidence

An analysis of the language in social media messages found that on average the use of positive-mood words is common in the morning, goes down to its lowest midafternoon, then rises sharply through the evening.

Evaluate

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

Curious Fact Why is it that we see more positive words in the morning and evening, and fewer positive words midday, on social media messages?

Author's Explanation People tend to start and end the day in a happy mood, with a decline in mood in between.

The correct answer to these questions always involves one of two pressure points: - an Alternate Explanation for the curious fact - affecting the plausibility of the Author's Explanation

Since we're doing weaken, the #1 tendency is to provide some Other Way to explain why we see more positive words in the morning / evening, less positivity in between.

Maybe it's not people's moods that change in that cycle, but just the fact that during the day they're at work, so that affects the way they post on social media. Perhaps on a Saturday or Sunday (when not working), they're just as likely to be positive midday.

Or maybe it's just different people logging in at different times. The people with jobs are only going on social media during morning/evening, and they have positive outlooks. The people logging on midday are jobless and despondent.

Or maybe midday is just when Russian troll farms are at their most active, seeding social media with intentionally confrontational energy. Yup, I think LSAT is going to talk about Russian troll farms.

Goal

Look for an answer that provides an Alternate Explanation for why language is happier at the beginning/ending of a day than during the middle of a day, or an answer that hurts the plausibility that people's moods follow a typical U-shaped graph.

18.

The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument overlooks the possibility that

people’s overall moods are lowest
No Impact
We're talking about a daily cycle, not a weekly one. This doesn't offer an alternate explanation for the data, since it describes a weekly pattern of starting low and ending high, not a daily pattern of starting high, dipping, and then ending high.
1% picked this
many people who post social
Too Weak
Quantities like "some / sometimes / not all / many" are almost always wrong on Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox. They just don't provide enough info to have much impact. This is basically saying "there are at least 10 people who only post neutral words". Cool. They don't change the fact that the average still is what it is: more positive in the morning/evening than in midday.
9% picked this
the frequency in the use
Too Weak
Too Weak: not necessarily Out of Scope: other forms of comm. "Not necessarily" / "need not" / "not all" will almost always be wrong on Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox, since they have such little strength behind them. To learn that X is not necessarily Y is only to learn that at least once there has been an X that wasn't Y. So this answer just says, "At least once, someone used words on social media with a different frequency than they used words in other forms of communication".
25% picked this
the number of social media
Irrelevant Distinction: # of messages
We're dealing with averages here, so the absolute numbers don't really concern us. Whether the number of messages is / isn't much greater or lesser in the morning vs. the evening doesn't change any part of this conversation. We care about the positivity / negativity of the messages, not the quantity.
5% picked this
Correct
most of the social media
Why this is right
This weakens the connection between the Evidence and the Conclusion, because the author was taking the Evidence (a daily social media pattern of positive, negative, positive) to show that people experience this arc of mood throughout the day. But most people who post in the evening don't post in the morning, then we wouldn't look at this progression of positivity and negativity and conclude that it tells us something about the daily mood roller-coaster of social media users. The author was assuming the the same people were posting positive stuff in the morning, sadder stuff midday, and happier stuff in the evening. According to this answer, this data is just coming from different sources at different times. The people posting in the morning generally aren't posting in the evening. The people posting in the evening generally aren't posting in the morning. So this progression of positivity/negativity that was observed is really telling us more about the moods of people who post in the morning vs. those who post midday vs. those who post in the evening. It isn't tracking the course of someone's moods throughout a day.
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
60% picked this

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