Took 2 minutes. Choice is c. Need to make “volunteers with moderate level” look good over “volunteers with highest levels of self esteem “


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The psychologist’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

A. It fails to adequately address the possibility that many of the volunteers may not have understood what the psychological questionnaire was designed to measure.
even if peopl dont what the survey is for, it doesnot impact their answers

B. It takes for granted that the volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem had better social skills than did the other volunteers, even before the former volunteers had attained their high levels of self-esteem.
already the argumnt has mentioned that high esteem people took the test.

C. It overlooks the possibility that people with very high levels of self-esteem may tend to have a less accurate perception of the strength of their own social skills than do people with moderate levels of self-esteem.
this could be possible

D. It relies on evidence from a group of volunteers that is too small to provide any support for any inferences regarding people in general.
size of group is irrelevant

E. It overlooks the possibility that factors other than level of self-esteem may be of much greater importance in determining the strength of one’s social skills
argument is concerned abt social skill and self esteem relationship, other things out of scope.

Here is a simple explanation to all the folks confused with Option B -

GMATNinja as usual has given us an awesome explanation. I would like to add a few points to it!




Read the conclusion slowly " This suggests that attaining an exceptionally high level of self-esteem greatly improves one’s social skills. "
The psychologists say that high self esteem improves the social skills.




Now read option B slowly. In simple words it says "People with high self esteem already had better social skills (than other volunteers with low self esteem) even before they attained their highest level of self esteem."
Even if this were true it does not really make the argument vulnerable to criticism. Why?
Because even if they had better social skills earlier, there is still scope for improvement in their social skills which may be caused due to high levels of self esteem.
Even if volunteers with high self esteem had better social skills (than other volunteers with low self esteem) before they reached high levels of self esteem, it does not really make the argument vulnerable. Because it might be that these volunteers made their social skills even better than before. Which means they improved their social skills. Just what the conclusion says.

GMATNinja please let me know if my approach is 'vulnerable to criticism'.

Hi GMATNinja
Thanks for your response!

However, I do not understand how you concluded that "option B
says that social skills can be *improved* even in the absence of high self-esteem."

I feel option B only states that - volunteers with high level self esteem already had high social skills before achieving that high self esteem level.

And my analysis is this - so what if they already had high social skills even before reaching high self esteem level?
This still doesn't effect the conclusion. Maybe after these volunteers reached high self esteem level, they further improved on the already high social skill level.

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Dear GMATNinja,

I selected C knowing it completely breaks the conclusion. But I was confused between B & C. Perhaps my understanding of Option B was incorrect, please do help me if thats the case, since the whole process of arriving at C was time consuming and I would like to improve that.

During pre-thinking I came up with 2 assumptions -
1) As mentioned in C
2) What if its the other way round - High Social Skills increase Self-Esteem

And it was the 2nd pre-thinking that got me stuck with option B, is it not talking about how this group already had greater self-esteem before attaining better social skills.
Now between option C & B, I rejected B by thinking - even if Greater Social Skills increases Self-Esteem, this option does not conclusively say that increase in self esteem does not improve Social Skills. Also, C breaks down the argument better than B.

Was my understanding of Option B correct? If so, my method of rejecting B was time consuming. Is there anyother way to look at this.
If my understanding was incorrect? What did this option exactly mean?

Generally in CR questions, it is equally important to analyse the question stem.

The question stem clearly states , " The psychologist’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

This means that we cannot change the basis or the data mentioned in the argument. The argument(made by the psychologist) considers a sample of 100 people sufficient enough to conduct an experiment ie. 100 people are solid enough to conclude what the psychologist has concluded. We cannot change that. Hence option D is incorrect

Also, the experiment/research mentioned in the argument considers social skill as the only parameter, we simply cannot change that. Why? again!, because the question stem says so. Hence Option E is incorrect.

Option A is purely irrelevant as it doesn't really affect the causality mentioned in the argument. It simply doesn't really impact the conclusion.

Option B is incorrect. So what if the volunteers already had decent social skills, even before the volunteers attained their high levels of self-esteem.. The argument is precisely about increasing the current level of self esteem. Also, if you look closely, option B lies within the same causality framework as the conclusion. Hence incorrect.

We are left with Option C and that obviously is the answer. As per my analysis, the reason option C is absolutely fine is that it states an Alternate effect, another way to weaken an argument ie. people with very high levels of self-esteem may tend to have a less accurate perception of the strength of their own social skills

AjiteshArun GMATNinja is my analysis okay? Please comment. Also, the way i have eliminated option B is correct???

i look forward to hearing from you guys.

Best Regards,
Adit

Psychologist: In a study, researchers gave 100 volunteers a psychological questionnaire designed to measure their self-esteem. The researchers then asked each volunteer to rate the strength of his or her own social skills. The volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem consistently rated themselves as having much better social skills than did the volunteers with moderate levels. This suggests that attaining an exceptionally high level of self-esteem greatly improves one’s social skills.

The psychologist’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of the following grounds?

Pre-thinking:
Here we have a cause-effect relation where:
Cause: self esteem
Effect: improvement of social skills
Our tsk here is to weaken this relation and that can be done in several ways. One way is the "no cause, still effect". Let's say that one or two people interviewed would report levels of social skills as high or higher than the ones with the highest self esteem (note that I used "reported and not ranked here). In this case the relation would be weakened.
Another weakener could be the following: because of the high level of self esteem people tend to overrate their social skills.
Let's now analyze the answer choices.

(A) It fails to adequately address the possibility that many of the volunteers may not have understood what the psychological questionnaire was designed to measure.
People understanding of what is measured is irrelevant to the argument. Hence incorrect

(B) It takes for granted that the volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem had better social skills than did the other volunteers, even before the former volunteers had attained their high levels of self-esteem.
The fact that self esteem levels or social skills level may have varied before the questionnaire is irrelevant to the argument. Hence incorrect

(C) It overlooks the possibility that people with very high levels of self-esteem may tend to have a less accurate perception of the strength of their own social skills than do people with moderate levels of self-esteem.
This is in line with our pre-thinking. Hence correct.

(D) It relies on evidence from a group of volunteers that is too small to provide any support for any inferences regarding people in general.
The size of the experiment is irrelevant to the argument. Hence incorrect

(E) It overlooks the possibility that factors other than level of self-esteem may be of much greater importance in determining the strength of one’s social skills.
The argument is focused on a specific relation. The fact that there might be other factors to influence social skills, whether true or false, is out of the scope here. Hence incorrect

Researchers measured self-esteem using questionnaire
They then asked each volunteer to rate the strength of his or her own social skills
Volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem consistently rated themselves as having much better social skills

Conclusion: Attaining an exceptionally high level of self-esteem greatly improves one’s social skills.

Some pre-thinking: We are concluding that self esteem improves social skills. But note that the strength of social skills is judged by the volunteers themselves, not the researchers. We don't know whether people with high self esteem actually do have better social skills. We also don't know whether self esteem improves social skills or social skills improve self esteem.

(A) It fails to adequately address the possibility that many of the volunteers may not have understood what the psychological questionnaire was designed to measure.

Irrelevant. In fact, we would much rather they do not know what we are testing so that they cannot "game" the result.

(B) It takes for granted that the volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem had better social skills than did the other volunteers, even before the former volunteers had attained their high levels of self-esteem.

It does not assume that people with high levels of self esteem had better social skill before they got high levels of self esteem. In fact, our argument is saying that attaining high levels of self esteem makes them have better social skills.

(C) It overlooks the possibility that people with very high levels of self-esteem may tend to have a less accurate perception of the strength of their own social skills than do people with moderate levels of self-esteem.

Correct. As discussed in our pre thinking, people with high self esteem rate themselves on their social skills. Due to high self esteem, they may be rating themselves better than their actual social skills. So self esteem may not have developed their social skills, it may have just developed their perception of their social skills.

(D) It relies on evidence from a group of volunteers that is too small to provide any support for any inferences regarding people in general.

We don't know the appropriate size of volunteer group.

(E) It overlooks the possibility that factors other than level of self-esteem may be of much greater importance in determining the strength of one’s social skills.

It does not overlook that other causes could be present.
The argument says: This suggests that attaining an exceptionally high level of self-esteem greatly improves one’s social skills.
We don't know what else could greatly improve one's social skills. It just says that self esteem is a contributing factor. It does not say that it is the only contributing factor.

Answer (C)
_________________

I still have an issue with the option C- the stem states that higher self esteem leads to a GREAT improvement in social skills, option C says that the high self-esteem group has a lower accuracy in perception of their level of skills. How can you assume that lower accuracy in perception=lower levels of self esteem? What I am trying to say is that lower accuracy in perception may also mean a very high level of social skills and this option may be slightly strengthening the argument.

Option E on the other hand does a better job at weakening the argument by providing an alternate cause which has a GREATER impact on the level of social skills than high levels of self esteem.

Thanks GMATNinja looks like I overlooked the word "overlook".

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