Logical reasoning PrepTest 147 · Section 1 · Question 6

Incorrect. While you could say that there's causality in the stimulus—body size "influences" mating decisions, which does imply an effect—it's not based on a correlation but rather on self-reported statements about what influenced "mating" decisions.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Opposing viewpoint—College students and people using personal ads frequently cite body size as important to them in a mate, so it must influence everyone in all societies.

Answer Anticipation:
We're not going to get too into this one, but, in general, if your argument is resting on frat boys and people who are still using the personals section of newspapers, you probably have an unrepresentative sample—especially as far as "mating" is concerned.

Answer Explanation:
Relying on the self-reports of college kids and personal ads is a great way to get a skewed sample when analyzing attraction—especially when the conclusion is about "all societies."

Key Takeaway:
Don't base your arguments about all societies on college-age kids and personal ads. You're going to have a skewed sample.

Incorrect. Similar to (A), the causality in the argument isn't central to the flaw, and it's certainly not saying that a given effect had only one cause—it's saying that something has an "influence" on something else, which leaves room for other influences.

Incorrect. First, there's no individual persons—the premises are even about whole populations. Second, ignoring that, this answer reverses the structure of the stimulus, where it was the conclusion that was about entire societies.

Incorrect. While this answer does highlight a sampling flaw, it doesn't correctly describe the stimulus. There, the individual cases were not a "very small number"—it was university-age students and personal ads. While we don't have a number to attach to the cases, we'd need a specific (and low—single or double digit) number for this to be the correct answer.