Logical Reasoning

PT2 · S2 · Q10 Advertisers are often criticized

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Advertisers are often criticized for their unscrupulous manipulation of people’s tastes and wants.

Conclusion

Some advertisers are motivated by moral as well as financial considerations.

Evidence

A publication switched from being a family newspaper to focusing on sex and violence. Some advertisers withdrew their ads. The author concludes this withdrawal "must have been because" they morally disapproved of the new content.

Evaluate

The author leaps from the fact of withdrawal to the cause: morality. But there is an obvious alternative — the advertisers might have withdrawn because the new content would not sell to their customers, which is a financial reason. To support a moral motive, we need to rule out the financial-self-interest explanation.

Goal

The correct answer should make it harder to attribute the withdrawal to financial self-interest — for instance, by showing the advertisers expected staying to be more profitable.

10.

Which one of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument?

  1. The advertisers switched their advertisements

    No Impact

    Knowing the advertisers moved their ads to other family newspapers does not tell us why they left this one. It is consistent with both stories — they could have moved because they morally objected to the new content, or because their customers are family-newspaper readers and would not be reached by the new publication. This does not distinguish moral motive from financial motive.

    28% picked this

  2. Some advertisers switched from family

    No Impact

    This describes a different group of advertisers — those who switched into the changed publication — and tells us nothing about why the advertisers we care about left. The argument is about the motives of the ones who withdrew, and this answer addresses a separate set.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    The advertisers expected their product

    Why this is right

    This rules out the financial-self-interest explanation. If the advertisers expected sales to increase by staying and decrease by withdrawing, then leaving cost them money. They withdrew anyway. Financial motive predicted "stay"; they did the opposite. That leaves moral disapproval as a much more plausible explanation for why they pulled out — exactly the conclusion the author drew.

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

    63% picked this

  4. People who generally read family

    Opposite

    This actually strengthens the financial explanation, not the moral one. If family-newspaper readers will not buy what the changed publication offers, then advertisers who target those readers would lose money by staying — giving them a clear financial reason to leave. That makes the moral story less necessary as an explanation, not more.

    6% picked this

  5. It was expected that the

    No Impact

    A different income group might or might not match the advertisers' customer base — and in any case, this is a financial consideration about audience fit, not anything about the advertisers' moral views. It does not distinguish moral motive from financial motive.

    1% picked this

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