Logical reasoning PrepTest 111 · Section 4 · Question 16

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
It's easy to make people feel bad for large mammals, but it's hard to make them feel bad for microorganisms, so publicity campaigns for endangered species probably won't help the most important environmental problems.

Answer Anticipation:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions frequently have new concepts that show up in the conclusion, and the assumption connects something from the premises to that new concept.

Here, the conclusion mentions the most important environmental problems, but the premises aren't about environmental problems at all!

It does discuss the other part of the conclusion (albeit tangentially)—the publicity campaigns. While it doesn't mention these explicitly, it does discuss evoking sympathy for different animals, which could be done via a publicity campaign. These campaigns could be effective at evoking sympathy for large mammals, but not other kinds of organisms.

Since the conclusion is that such campaigns won't successfully address the most important environmental problems, and the premises establish they would successfully evoke sympathy for large mammals, the argument must be assuming that evoking that sympathy for the large mammals won't address the most important environmental issues. Or, alternatively, it's assuming that failing to evoke sympathy for the other organisms will mean that these campaigns can't address the most important environmental problems.

Let's find an answer stating one of those two things.

Answer Explanation:
This answer matches our anticipation and addresses the new concept in the conclusion. If we negate this answer—the most important environmental problems do involve the large mammals—then the publicity campaigns would successfully evoke sympathy and thus could potentially address those problems. The argument falls apart, so this is the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
Look for new concepts showing up in the conclusion of Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions! These new concepts are almost always present in the correct answer, as that answer needs to connect the new concept to something established in the premises.

Incorrect. The argument cares about getting people to attribute feelings to these animals—it doesn't matter if they actually have feelings. This answer is thus out of scope.50444,Incorrect. The argument is about publicity campaigns failing to be effective, so this answer about when they're "most" effective isn't necessary for the argument to work.

Incorrect. The argument is about whether a certain strategy will have an impact on environmental problems. People ignoring those problems would likely result in those problems not getting solved, but even if people are paying attention to them, they still might not get solved. As such, this answer isn't necessary for the argument to hold.

Incorrect. The conclusion is about the most important environmental problems, so this answer about being environmentally significant" is too broad. There are many things that are environmentally significant but aren't related to those most important problems.