Logical reasoning PrepTest 130 · Section 3 · Question 12

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Studies/Phenomenon - All short-term psychotherapy patients show similar levels of improvement, no matter the type
Conclusion/Explanation - It must be a shared aspect of all types of short-term psychotherapy that causes the improvement

Answer Anticipation:
This argument relies heavily on a study and on comparisons in order to reach a causal conclusion explaining an observed phenomenon. That's a whole ball of common LSAT elements, so let's unpack it to see what we can anticipate!

First, the causal conclusion—is it based on a correlation? It is! The stimulus brings up a study showing that short-term psychotherapy clients show similar levels of improvement, and then it concludes that it must be a shared aspect of the psychotherapy that causes that improvement. However, there could be another cause—maybe it's not the psychotherapy, but rather just time that causes this improvement.

This is related to the second consideration—a sampling flaw in the study. There's no indication that there was a control group—a group that didn't undergo therapy—so we can't rule out an outside factor (again, such as time) leading to the improvement.

The argument also relies on a comparison—different types of therapy lead to similar outcomes, so it must be a similar feature that leads to that outcome. However, it's also possible that different features lead to the same effect—just as running and eating healthy can both improve health through different mechanisms.

There are a lot of potential answers to this Weaken question, so let's get to the answers ASAP.

Answer Explanation:
While this answer doesn't match our anticipations, it does call into question the experimental design. If the study measured only certain types of improvement, then it might have missed other types. The "similar levels of improvement" might be related only to immediate symptom relief, and there were other types of improvement that differed between the different types of psychotherapy. This calls into question whether "any client improvement" was the result of shared features, since there may have been different levels of client improvement completely missed by the study.

Key Takeaway:
While the design of a study is most likely to be flawed on the LSAT because of a problem with the sample, there are other ways that it can be designed poorly. Here, we saw that one potential place an experiment can go wrong is in deciding what to measure.

Incorrect. This answer about long-term psychotherapy is out of scope since the argument discusses only short-term psychotherapy.

Incorrect. This answer doesn't call any of the information from the stimulus into question. If anything, this aligns with the one potential common aspect that the Researcher identifies—just having someone that listens and gives attention to the client.

Incorrect. The Researcher accounts for this, recognizing that there are different kinds of psychotherapy but that they have some common aspect, no matter how different the other aspects are. This answer would weaken the argument only if it established that they are dramatically different in all potential respects.

Incorrect. According to the stimulus, on average, these different techniques and interventions lead to similar outcomes, so this doesn't change up or undermine anything that we are told in the stimulus.