Relationship Advisor: The statistics show that couples who live

Question

Relationship Advisor: The statistics show that couples who live together before getting married are more likely to get divorced. Clearly, living together before marriage increases the chances of divorce.

Which of the following, if true, is most damaging to the relationship advisor’s conclusion?

(A) The more time a couple spends together, the lesser the novelty factor becomes.

(B) In some countries the divorce rate has steadily decreased over the past 30 years.

(C) Couples who live together before getting married have an opportunity to learn about each other before they get married.

(D) In comparison with people with conservative mindset, people with liberal mindset are both more open to living together before marriage and less open to making compromises required for the sustenance of the marriage.

(E) For many couples who live together before getting married, marriage does not immediately lead to significant changes in their lifestyles.

Source: TTP Beta Testing

OC2910 · Answer

live in relations tend to cause more divorce rate
we need an alternate cause for the same

only D does that :that people who stay in live in are not ready to compromise 
so its is lack of compromise rather than the living in Live in

GittinGud · Answer

Wait, what does being liberal or conservative have to do with the argument? I thought a weakener would be some other cause that lead to divorce. Please explain.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

When we have a cause-and-effect conclusion, there are five possible realities:

- The cause that the conclusion says is the cause of the effect is the cause of the effect.

- There is another cause that actually causes the effect.

- There is a third factor that causes both the supposed cause and the effect.

- The cause and effect relationship is reversed. The supposed effect causes the supposed cause.

- There is no clear relationship between the supposed cause and the effect. The two are correlated for no apparent reason.

In the case of this question, the OA is (D).

(D) In comparison with people with conservative mindset, people with liberal mindset are both more open to living together before marriage and less open to making compromises required for the sustenance of the marriage.

This choice indicates that there is a third factor, people's being liberal or conservative, that affects both whether people live together before marriage and whether they get divorced.

So, given what (D) says, it could be that the correlation between living together before marriage and getting divorced is not the result of a cause and effect relationship between the two, but rather the result of the effects of a third factor that affects both of them, mindset, which can be relatively conservative or relatively liberal.

Thus (D) serves to call into question the conclusion of the argument.

Relationship Advisor: The statistics show that couples who live

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Relationship Advisor: The statistics show that couples who live

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

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From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

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