Logical Reasoning

PT3 · S2 · Q10 People with serious financial problems are

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People with serious financial problems are so worried about money that they cannot be happy.

Passage

Conditional (cannot) Serious financial problems → not happy

Causal (makes) Their misery >> family, friends, and colleagues unhappy too

Conditional (only if) They and those around them happy → their financial problems are solved

Evaluate

Three claims about one chain of misery. The first is a hard rule: anyone with serious financial problems is unhappy. The third says the same thing from the other side, as a requirement: happiness for these people, and for those around them, needs the problems solved. The middle claim spreads the unhappiness outward by causation.

The guaranteed inference is the contrapositive of the first rule. If someone is happy, that person does not have serious financial problems. What the rules do not give is any guarantee of happiness. Solving the problems is required for happiness, not sufficient for it; a person could solve their money troubles and stay miserable for other reasons. And unhappiness has many possible causes, so an unhappy person need not have money troubles at all. Only the direction from financial problems to unhappiness, and its contrapositive, is locked in.

Goal

Find the contrapositive of the first rule: happy people do not have serious financial problems. Anything promising happiness, or inferring money troubles from unhappiness, reads a rule backward.

10.

Which one of the following statements can be properly inferred from the passage?

  1. Only serious problems make people

    Reversal / Negation

    The passage says serious financial problems cause unhappiness. It does not say they are the only thing that does. "Only serious problems make people unhappy" rules out every other source of unhappiness, which the passage never does.

    0% picked this

  2. People who solve their serious

    Reversal / Negation

    Solving financial problems is a requirement for happiness, signaled by "only if." Requirements do not guarantee outcomes. People who fix their finances may remain unhappy for reasons the passage never considers.

    21% picked this

  3. People who do not have

    Reversal / Negation

    Lacking serious financial problems removes one cause of unhappiness, but the passage never says it produces happiness. This negates the first rule without flipping it: no problems, therefore happy, is not what the rule supports.

    4% picked this

  4. If people are unhappy, they

    Reversal / Negation

    Unhappiness can have many sources. The passage establishes that financial problems lead to unhappiness, not that unhappiness leads back to financial problems. This reverses the first rule.

    3% picked this

  5. Correct

    If people are happy, they

    Why this is right

    People with serious financial problems cannot be happy. So anyone who is happy cannot be a person with serious financial problems. That is the contrapositive of the first rule, and it is the one inference the passage guarantees.

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

    72% picked this

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