Logical reasoning PrepTest 121 · Section 4 · Question 18

Incorrect. Neither conditional talks about actually achieving the goal—just convincing followers that it can actually be achieved through their effort—so this answer is out of scope, and out of scope answers are always potentially true.

Incorrect. Similar to (A), there's no sufficient condition for actually attaining the goal, so this answer is also out of scope.

Incorrect. The stimulus establishes that it's necessary to convince people of this if they are to follow a leader, but that's a reversal of this answer. And reversals can be true—they're invalid inferences, not false.

Incorrect. This answer is about achieving a goal, not following a leader towards a goal, so it's out of scope and thus might be true.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Cannot Be True

Stimulus Summary:
(1) Leadership → Making followers aware of importance AND Conveying collective goal (both equally)
(2) People follow a leader → Convinced efforts are needed for goal AND Convinced efforts will achieve goal

Answer Anticipation:
The conditionals in this stimulus are relatively complex—they're wordy and they have AND necessary conditions. However, they're still conditionals, and so we can approach this Cannot Be True question with a set strategy—find an answer that establishes a sufficient condition is met while denying the necessary condition.

What we don't want to do is spend a lot of time trying to combine these conditional statements. If there is a shared term, it's the sufficient conditions about leadership, and since they're on the same side of the arrow, they can't be chained together.

So with our two (unwieldy) conditionals mapped out, let's head to the answer choices to find something that brings up one of our two sufficient conditions while stating the necessary condition isn't present.

Answer Explanation:
The stimulus notes that convincing people that their efforts are necessary for a goal is a necessary condition for getting them to follow a leader. As such, someone who isn't so convinced of this won't follow a leader, contradicting this answer choice. This answer establishes the sufficient condition of the second conditional but denies the first necessary condition, so it cannot be true.

Key Takeaway:
Cannot Be True questions aren't looking for an unsupported answer—they're looking for an answer that is directly contradicted by the stimulus. As such, out of scope answers are incorrect because they could be true since we don't have information about them.

Additionally, when a Cannot Be True question features conditional logic, the correct answer will almost always establish a sufficient condition is present but the necessary condition for it is not.