Passage analysis Psychologist: In a study, researchers gave 100 volunteers a psychological questionnaire designed to measure their self-esteem.
According to a psychologist:
A study was conducted on 100 volunteers.
Each was given a list of psychological questions.
The aim of the questionnaire was to measure the self-esteem of the volunteers.
The researchers then asked each volunteer to rate the strength of his or her own social skills.
After that, each volunteer was asked to rate himself on his/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.
The volunteers who had scored high on self-esteem invariably rated themselves as having much better social skills.
The volunteers who had scored low on self-esteem were not as consistent in rating themselves as having good social skills.
We can infer that volunteers with low self-esteem likely were not very sure of their social skills.
This suggests that attaining an exceptionally high level of self-esteem greatly improves one’s social skills.
It can be therefore concluded that:
Obtaining extraordinarily high level of self-esteem causes great improvement in one’s social skills.
Conclusion
An extraordinarily high level of self-esteem greatly enhances one’s social skills.
Prethinking
Weaken Framework
Now per our understanding of the passage, let’s first write down the weaken framework:
What new information will make us believe less in the causality
Cause: an exceptionally high level of self-esteem
Effect: great improvement in social skills.
Given thatA study was conducted on 100 volunteers
They were given a list of psychological questions to answer
The aim of the questionnaire was to calculate the self-esteem of the volunteers.
The volunteers were then asked to identify/rate the strength of his/her own social skills.
The volunteers with the highest levels of self-esteem always rated themselves as being better socially skilled than the volunteers with moderate levels of self-esteem did.
Thought process The Causality is established based on the outcomes of the experiment.
The aim of the experiment----to assess one’s self-esteem.
What was the outcome? People whose self-esteem scores/ levels were high had consistently rated themselves as having much better social skills
People whose self-esteem scores/ levels were lower had not as consistently rated themselves as having better social skills.
The self-esteem was measured by the questionnaire. So, self-esteem levels have been measured by an outside and impartial medium (the questionnaire).
But the ratings on social skills were done by different individuals (their chances of being impartial would be significantly lower).
What if people who had high self-esteem thought themselves to be superior and therefore rated themselves as having better social skills, even though they might not be actually having better social skills?
It is possible that people with lower self-esteems, though possessing much better social skills, were too modest to rate themselves as good as they really were.
WeakenerSo, if an option suggests that people with high self-esteem often have inflated ideas about their social skills, it will weaken the causality.
Which option do you think is in line with this pre-thinking?
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