Candy Inc. offers two health insurance plans to its employees

It was a very tricky question that left almost all of us ponder. Speaking of pondering, let's acknowledge the fact that this is a weaken question so we should focus on the conclusion of the argument, and I would suggest that when the prompt says "undermine the argument/reasoning" we need to go deeper than just weaken.

I am just giving my try, to help explain what I think and I am open for debate so that you can also scrutinise my reasoning.

Almost all correct answers in weaken questions rely on attacking the conclusion. So let's focus on the conclusion by companies executives, who states :

IMO, the executives fail to address all the possibilities that could be the reason for what the situation is in the company. The executives may have incomplete information or they rely on evidence (here, gym reports) as the only source of data and thus, the correct answer choice would introduce new possibilities.

This is exactly what option E does. Let me reproduce it again :

This choice states that ALL the employees are allowed to select between the two plans available "at the beginning of each year" and this means that all of them have equal opportunity to select one plan, which they think would be better financially. Every employee knows about the financial incentive "at the beginning of each year" (there is a reason I am stating and underlining it twice) that the variable plan offers, but still some go with the fixed plan (maybe because they know they are too lazy to attend the fitness classes or for some other reason) and others go with the variable plan. So it would be incorrect to say that modest financial incentive motivated these employees to change their behaviour.

Also, it may be the case that those who chose to go with variable plan ($110) were already involved in fitness activities (reverse causality of what is stated in the passage) and thus, financial incentive was just a cherry on the cake for them. Maybe these employees, who took up variable plan, were already motivated to take fitness seriously. This reasoning completely wrecks the executives claim of financial incentive.

I hope this helps.

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Choice (E) says only when employees choose the variable program.

While the fact that they choose the variable program in advance tends to indicate that they plan to attend the classes long before they actually do so, the fact that they choose the plan long before attending the classes is not a clear indicator of their underlying motivation for choosing the variable plan.

In fact, it could very well be the case that they both choose the variable plan and attend the classes partly because of the small financial incentive offered.

So, choice (E) has no effect whatsoever on the strength of the support for the argument’s conclusion, and this question has no correct answer.
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The official explanation provided is as follows:

The argument claims the financial incentives motivated people to change, but no information is provided about people’s prior fitness habits. At the beginning of the year, an employee who already attends a lot of fitness classes would likely choose the variable plan because he or she would save money by doing so. The argument observes a correlation between the variable plan and fitness behavior. The executives concluded that the incentives of the variable plan caused the behavior. This choice weakens the executives’ conclusion by suggesting the opposite causal model: existing fitness behaviors could have caused employees to choose the variable plan in the first place.

Isn't the assumption made that employees who choose the variable plan is based on existing fitness behaviours too far-fetched? GMATNinja
EDIT: Tagged GMATNinja

isn't E just stating what the Question is saying ?


Your advice will be valuable here GMATNinja, gmat1393, GMATNinjaTwo, nightblade354

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K.y.Shrenik Bimbsar

E is actually supporting the argument.
Can someone please explain this.I am not able to find any of the options correct here.Chose B though.

Hi can anyone offer an explanation, why option E is the right choice? technically i feel that it is supporting the argument.

Can anyone explain why E is the correct answer instead of B

I'm posting a screenshot of the Official Explanation. Please let me know if you guys can make sense of it. Apparently this is a 600-700 level question.

https://imgur.com/rwOJ0VX

This is a causation vs correlation question.
It could have been the case that majority of gym enthusiasts opted for the variable plan because they knew effective price for them will come around 90$. Not the other way around.

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it is totally weird explanation to the ans. ins't it a too much assumption and if this can be assumed then why can't option A be assumed . Option A also provide the opposite causal model.

I eliminated all the options in this as I did not find a suitable weakener.

Conclusion- Company executives claim these results demonstrate that even modest financial incentives can motivate people to change their fitness behavior.
I do not agree with OE.

The argument claims the financial incentives motivated people to change, but no information is provided about people’s prior fitness habits.-- Agreed

At the beginning of the year, an employee who already attends a lot of fitness classes would likely choose the variable plan because he or she would save money by doing so.-- But how can we ignore the case that financial incentive motivated people to change their fitness behavior

E. Employees of Candy Inc. are allowed to select between the fixed and variable plans at the beginning of each year-- But it can also mean that financial incentive has motivated people to change their fitness behavior.

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , generis , jennpt , other experts - please enlighten
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Agree . Very unlikely to have such question in actual exam

MartyTargetTestPrep Hello expert, may I ask about A? I think A offers an alternative reason (wearable device) to motivate people to change their fitness behavior, but not the incentive (rebate) motivating people to change their fitness behavior. Can A weaken? Thanks

Why C is out of scope…. Maybe the employees are having physical activity for fitness outside the office space

Very tough question.
Imo E

The conclusion is that the financial incentives led to the more gym attendence.
We have to weaken that.
E says that Folks choose the plan at the starting of the year knowing very well everything.
So folk who choose fixed plan may very well be healthy so they don't want to pay extra for the plan. Other reason my that for variable plan folks want to recover their money in the form of rebate

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