Emotional stress is a well known cause of certain serious

Emotional stress is a well known cause of certain serious health problems, including high blood pressure and cardiac complications. Now, an additional concern can be added to the list of maladies caused by emotional stress. A recent study surveyed both people who have high levels of emotional stress and people who don’t, and found that people with high emotional stress levels are significantly more obese and nervous than people with lower levels of emotional stress.
Emotional problems--> many other effects (two of them- obesity, nervousness).
Point to observe--> obesity and nervousness are the effects of emotional stress not the other way round
Way to solve a causal relationship i.e if Cause(C)-->Effect(E) --> Then the correct answer must be one of
i)If C is there then E must be there.
ii)If E occurs then C must be there.
iii)E should not in turn cause C


Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument rests?

A) Obesity and nervousness can lead to serious health problems.It is saying that E is causing C, a serious mistake
B) Emotionally stressed out people are aware of the various health problems attributed to emotional stress, including high blood pressure and cardiac complications. out of scope, cause and effect relations must be answered using above techniques only.
C) Equivalent numbers of people with high and low levels of emotional stress were surveyed for the study. noway concerned with the number
D) Obesity and nervousness do not make individuals less capable to deal with emotionally stressful situations. saying that E Does not in turn cause C, point (iii) in our discussion, therefore right
E) Emotionally stressed out people who had encountered an emotionally stressful situation immediately before responding to the survey were more obese and nervous than the people form same group who had not encountered any emotionally stressful situation for a few days. saying that E caused C, in other words people who were obese responded as being stressed

Do consider giving Kudos +1 if you learnt something from above explanation.

Here goes the OE. Suggestions to improve the quality of OE are most welcome

The argument shows a causal relationship between the premises and the conclusion. The conclusion states that emotional stress causes people to become obese and nervous. The assumption in this causal argument should must support the causal direction of the conclusion. i.e. the assumption must prove that A causes B or Emotional stress causes obesity and nervousness.

The assumptions in a causal arguments are often of two types:

i) Assumptions that support the causality of the argument either by eliminating an alternate cause of the conclusion OR
ii) by demonstrating that the conclusion, it it exists, is in proper direction. In other words A is caused by B and not B has caused A.

Any option which does not tell us anything about the causal link between Emotional eating and, obesity and nervousness can be safely eliminated.

A) Obesity and nervousness can lead to serious health problems.

The stimulus does not discuss the seriousness of health problems, so, this choice becomes irrelevant. Moreover, no link to the causal relationship

B) Emotionally stressed out people are aware of the various health problems attributed to emotional stress, including high blood pressure and cardiac complications.

Again the awareness of people on problems related to emotional stress is irrelevant.

C) Equivalent numbers of people with high and low levels of emotional stress were surveyed for the study.

The number of respondents does not say anything about the causal link between emotional eating and, obesity and nervousness.

D) Obesity and nervousness do not make individuals less capable to deal with emotionally stressful situations.

This answer choice rules out an opposite direction for the causality, making our conclusion valid. Thus, the correct choice.

E) Emotionally stressed out people who had encountered an emotionally stressful situation immediately before responding to the survey were more obese and nervous than the people form same group who had not encountered any emotionally stressful situation for a few days.

This choice is incorrect for two reasons. First, the argument never compares some emotional eater to other emotional eaters. Second, the argument is not based on immediate impact of emotional stress in making people obese and nervous.



Vercules
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When we deal with this such statement that something is compared: some people in a group and others do not ............is always the same answer.

D must be the answer.

I repeat myself: whenever we encouter these questions the answer is always worded as D
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IMO Answer should be D.
If an option proves that the cause and effect are irreversible than that option strengthens the argument or can be the assumption of the argument.

Archit

Nice explanations everyone, I have updated the question with OA
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Yes Aditya i agree with your point. But one more issue with A, is that note the argument states that that Emotional stress leads to certain type of serious health problem.....Its a vague term and we can categorize every other disease occurring because of it as a a serious health concern...

Vercules pls post the OA and OE......

Thanks for updating the answer...request can you continue posting questions on cause and effect assumption.It will really help....
Thanks again

Archit

Explanation by vercules deserves 10 Kudos, Cam we get 20-30 More Causal Questions?

Everything else is perfect except A Obesity is an effect of emotional stress and serious illness is also an effect of emotional stress. The question here in discussion is not about cause-effect but two effects of a single cause in time space. so three situations arise either serious illness causes obesity or obesity causes serious illness (its like syllogism a ->b a->c then a->b->c ) or a->c->b) or both are mere correlated events but not causal. But the question is how one will prove it with such discrete data.

Though Answer C seems OK but the presence of option A erodes C's Integrity. as a single solution.

One more thing, here the question is not of what we thing is right or wrong but what author has actually assumed while clubbing premises and conclusion and is right in his/her perspective. See no where in question is " if below statements are true"

Lets do a negation test and see if argument can stand after option C is reversed.

Conclusion: Emotional stress is a well known cause of certain serious health problems
Option D: Obesity and nervousness do not make individuals less capable to deal with emotionally stressful situations
Negation of Option D: Obesity and nervousness make individuals less capable to deal with emotionally stressful situations

Check yourself if conclusion will stand for itself or not, Now negate the option A

Sometime traps are right and well proven but lack to support the argument

Actually, we all are trying to fit every solution into cause-effect jigsaw irrespective of what actually conclusion demands as it must be true argument.

Thanks
Sid

I found the following in one of the CR strategy documents downloaded from this group :

How to break down causality?
1. Find an alternate cause. This is the strongest way to rebuke a causality based stimulus.
2. Show that the change might not occur even when cause occurs or that the effect can occur without the cause.
3. Show that the stated relationship is reversed. This is where you prove that what is perceived to be the effect produces what is thought of as the cause (relates to the question)

this is an assumption question.
The conclusion is a cause and effect one.
So simply, the assumption must be that the causality doesnt flow from the other way.
THE CONCLUSION IS Emotional stress is causing another new thing - Obesity and nervousness. Now this assumes that it is NOT Nervousness or obesity that causes stress. because if it is, then I'm sorry... the conclusion will be more wrong than right.

To me it was a split between option C and option D. I ruled out option D because it was talking about capability to deal with emotional stress. The question stem does not talk about it. It simply talks about emotional stress. Perhaps if D was worded as "Obesity and nervousness do not adversely affect an individual's emotionally stressful situations." then it was sure shot answer to me. Therefore D was out of bounds w.r.t the question stem IMO.

Did I overstretch the meaning here?

Hope your preparation is going well. Let us try to understand the argument.
The argument shows a causal pattern. In this case, the premise is A and B are correlated and the conclusion is A caused B. The assumption will be that
1. There is no other cause present.
2. And it is not a coincidence.
Now let us explore the answer choices
A- This choice is out of scope
B- Awareness is not discussed in the argument hence this choice is also out of scope.
C- Again the number of people surveyed will not affect the argument; this is also out of scope.
D- This is the correct answer as per the discussion this choice rules out other causes.
E- There is no such comparison between people who encountered an emotionally stressful situation before or after the survey. Irrelevant to the discussion.
Hope it helps. Be consistent in your efforts.
All the best!!
PythaGURUS Faculty Team
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I went through all discussions but still not able to understand why D is the correct answer and A is not. In Question stem does not mention anything related to "dealing with stress" but it mentions in 1st line regarding the serious health probs caused by emotional stress, and also the stem tells that high stress>moere obese and nervous compared to low stress.
Can someone please help why we eliminated A and selected D.

I understand why D is the correct answer, but I did not understand what option E was trying to convey

E Quotes "Emotionally stressed out people who had encountered an emotionally stressful situation immediately before responding to the survey were more obese and nervous than the people form same group who had not encountered any emotionally stressful situation for a few days"
which means before the respondents answer the surveyor the researchers approach respondents to answer their questionnaire, the people who responded that they are emotionally stressed out were more obese and nervous before answering. the assumption is taken to show that the emotionally stressed out people were indeed obese and nervous, but while it validate the survey, the after affect of survey can't result in respondents losing weight just because they respond to the survey. Its illogical hence incorrect.
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