Politician: A major social problem is children hurting other children.

I am choosing B. What is the OA??


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B: it is talking about just one child, the action of just one child can not be made into a conclusion for all.

Isn't C strengthening the politican's argument?

It seems that C weakens the argument because the argument speaks of hurting children and not dolls, thus C also speaks of none of children in the experiment being violent against other children.

C says that all children are n more likely to punch other children than doesn't it strengthen the politician's argument as children did imitate punching behavior after watching the movie

Hey subhsngh0 - no, it weakens it, since the politician is claiming that the movie is a cause for the violence - but if both groups were violent to the same degree, this means it probably is not the cause, but rather something that is common to both groups is.

sony1000 you're in the right direction, but a small correction: C does not say none of the children in the experiment are violent, it just says the violence was the same in both groups (the phrase "no more likely" does not meant "not likely" but rather "not more likely than what's stated next).

sandesh87 nope, it's weakening.
The politician is claiming the movie is the cause of the violence: movie ==> violence
(C) is telling us that the kids who didn't watch the movie are also violent: therefore, something else must be the reason: something else > violence

IMHO, we need to find an answer choice which will say that the film is not the primary cause for the children punching the Bobo doll, or there is no difference in behavior between the group of children who has watched the film and the group of children who did not watch the film. Answer choice “C” says that.

Hey DavidTutorexamPAL So why are the children, who did not watch the movie, not punching bobo doll if all the children have same degree of violence and movies don't have any impact?

ARGUMENT
[con] politicians conclude that the partial reason why kids hit others (or show aggressive behavior) is due to watching violent films;
[prem] most kids of one group that watched a violent film were more violent than another group that didn't watch such film.
[asum] assumes that the groups were representative of the whole without bias; but what if the group that watched the film was more inclined to violence before watching and the other group wasn't, then the results would be biased and arg would fall.

WEAKEN
(A) "some": this could weaken, but since the argument states "most", then this would matter;
(B) "children who punched hardest wasn't shown": again, we are worried about "most" not a specific sample;
(D) "some imitated others…" this actually strengthen the argument, since those who didn't watch were watching others and acting more aggressively;
(E) irrelevant;

Answer (C): if both groups were equally likely to punch the doll, then watching/not-watching wasn't the reason why they were acting aggressively.

This is a causal argument. The claim by the Politician is that watching violent films induces violent behaviour in kids.

"Politician: A major social problem is children hurting other children. The results of a recent experiment by psychologists establish that watching violent films is at least partly responsible for this aggressive behavior. The psychologists conducted an experiment in which one group of children watched a film of people punching Bobo the Clown dolls. The second group of children was not shown the film. Afterward, both groups of children played together in a room containing a Bobo doll. Most of the children who had seen the film punched the Bobo doll, while most of the other children did not.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the politician's argument?

(A) Some of the children who did not punch the Bobo doll, including some who had been shown the film, chastised those who did punch the doll."
SOME children chastised other children...shell game

(B) The child who punched the Bobo doll the hardest and the most frequently had not been shown the film.
-this does not go in the direction that we want...children still hurting other children

(C) The children who had been shown the film were found to be no more likely than the children who had not been shown the film to punch other children." CORRECT
-well, if the claim is that violent films induces undesirable behaviour, then this provides evidence to the contrary

(D) Some children who had not been shown the film imitated the behavior of those who had been shown the film and who punched the doll.
-wrong direction ...strengthens

(E) Many of the children who participated in the experiment had never seen a Bobo doll before the experiment.
-irrelevant

Hello expert, GMATNinja I can understand why C is correct, but I think D weakens too. As the conclusion is that watching violent films is responsible for children hurting other children, D says children will imitate what other children do (imitation is from other children but NOT from the film), so maybe violent film is not the culprit. Could you help explain? Much thx.

OA from PowerScore Forum-

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (C)

This politician discusses the social problem of children who hurt other children, and the results of a recent experiment in which children were separated into two groups, one of which was shown a film that featured people hitting a “Bobo the Clown” doll. The other group was shown no film, and when the two groups got together in a room with a Bobo doll, most of the children who had seen the Bobo-hitting film hit the doll, while the majority of those who had seen no film did not hit the doll. The politician concludes, based on these results, that aggressive behavior is attributable, at least partially, to watching violent films.

The stimulus is followed by a Weaken question, so the correct answer choice will somehow undermine the politician’s argument, that the results of the experiment help to establish a link between watching violent films and aggressive behavior.

Answer choice (A): The fact that some (possible as few as one!) of the children chastised the doll punchers does not weaken the politician’s argument, which is that the aggressive behavior of the kids who watched the film lends support to the notion that watching violent films is to blame, at least in part, for the problem of aggressive behavior. Since this vague choice has no effect on the politician’s argument, it cannot be the right answer to this Weaken question.

Answer choice (B): The fact that the one most aggressive child did not see the film does not weaken the politician’s argument that films can contribute to aggressive behavior—it merely shows that aggressiveness can exist in the absence of violent films as well.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice. If, as this choice provides, the children who had seen the film were no more likely to hit other children, that weakens the politicians argument. While some children may have mimicked the Bobo-hitting that they had seen in the film, if the hitting was limited to that specific context, and they were no more likely to hit actual children, that weakens the politician’s claim that watching such movies leads to more generally aggressive behavior in general (or that such a claim is established by the results of the Bobo study).

Answer choice (D): This choice supports the notion that children imitate behavior that they see, be it in films or in person; if anything, this would lend support to the author’s argument. In any case, this certainly does not weaken the politician’s argument, so it cannot be the right answer to this Weaken question.

Answer choice (E): Regardless of the children’s previous familiarity with the Bobo dolls, the children who saw films of people hitting the Bobo dolls were more likely to hit the dolls themselves. This choice does not weaken the author’s argument, so it cannot be the right answer choice.

Let's start by reviewing the exact words of the passage:

• Conclusion: "The results of a recent experiment by psychologists establish that watching violent films is at least partly responsible for this aggressive behavior."
• Support: A study showed that "most of the children who had seen the film punched the Bobo doll, while most of the other children did not."

So the right answer should weaken the conclusion that "watching violent films is at least partly responsible" for aggressive behavior in children.

Let's now consider (D):


Does this weaken the above argument? Not really. Even if we proved that imitating other children can cause violent behavior, that wouldn't do much to weaken the argument. The argument only claims that watching violent films is "at least partly responsible." It never claims that watching violent films is the ONLY culprit.

From another angle: the argument relies on the fact that "most of the children" who saw the film punched Bobo, while most of the others didn't. But even if (D) were true, and some of the children who didn't see the film imitated the ones who did and punched Bobo, that wouldn't weaken the evidence. Bottom line, it would still be true that most children who DID see the film punched Bobo, and most who DIDN'T see the film didn't punch Bobo. You could even argue that the violent behavior of children who didn't see the film was ultimately caused by the film, since the imitators' behavior was inspired by children who saw the violent film.

For all of those reasons, we can eliminate (D).

I hope that helps!

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