Logical reasoning PrepTest 121 · Section 4 · Question 23

Incorrect. If this answer is true, then time management and efficiency are actually the same thing, and thus there's no causal relationship between the two. That calls the entire argument and study into question!

Incorrect. If motivation is a more important factor than technique, then recommending that managers learn time-management techniques isn't going to do much to enhance their time management—it'd be better to find a way to motivate them. This weakens the recommendation to achieve the desired outcome through one means since it's less effective than another.

Incorrect. This answer brings up counterexamples—those who have one of the supposed causes (time-management seminars) but not the effect attributed to it (efficiency—you can't be efficient and unproductive). Since it presents a counterexample to one of the assumed causal relationships, this answer weakens the argument.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Bizarro Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Consultant report - The most efficient managers have excellent time management skills
Recommendation - Train mid-level managers in time management

Answer Anticipation:
Let's start with the question stem. You might be tempted to treat this as a Strengthen question, but the correct answer might have no impact on the argument. "Neutral" answers don't weaken the argument, so they'd address the question stem. Since the correct answer doesn't necessarily strengthen the argument, it's best to think of this question stem as in the Weaken zone, eliminating answers that have a negative impact on the argument.

Weaken questions tend to have correlation/causation flaws. Studies tend to have correlation/causation flaws (and a report by consultants suggests a study was done). And conclusions with recommendations tend to be causal (to make a recommendation, you have to believe that the recommendation will have a desired effect), and causal conclusions tend to have correlation/causation flaws.

See where we're going with this?

This argument uses a correlation between the most efficient managers and excellent time management skills to lead to a conclusion that relies on assuming time management skills make a manager efficient. It also assumes that teaching time management techniques will make someone have better time management—another dubious causal assumption. Since the argument has a correlation/causation flaw, we can look for our usual answers:
(1) Identify an alternative cause, often of both correlated phenomena (a quality that leads one to be an efficient manager also leads one to have excellent time management skills)
(2) Counterexamples (efficiency without time management or the other way around; time management without training/techniques, or the other way around)
(3) Reversed causality (being an efficient manager causes the development of excellent time management skills, which is possible)

Remember that this is a Bizarro Weaken question, so we're looking for 4 answers that fall into these categories (or have a negative impact on the argument) to eliminate.

Answer Explanation:
The recommendation in the conclusion is about those managers who need training in time management because they're not efficient, and thus those who are already efficient are out of scope. Since an out of scope answer doesn't affect an argument, this answer doesn't weaken the recommendation and thus is correct.

Key Takeaway:
Recommendations are inherently causal in that you need to assume the recommended action will have a desired effect. Knowing this can help you identify a correlation/causation flaw in an argument with a recommendation in the conclusion much faster!

Incorrect. This answer brings up counterexamples—managers who have the desired effect (efficiency) but don't have the assumed cause (time-management seminars). If most efficient managers didn't go through time-management training, then that calls into question whether putting others through that training will increase their efficiency to the desired level.