Concerned about various forms of workplace harassment, a city attorney

Question

Concerned about various forms of workplace harassment, a city attorney’s office instituted a publicity campaign last year encouraging victims of such harassment to come forward and file reports of the harassment. During the year following the inception of the publicity campaign, the frequency of harassment reports filed with the city attorney’s office tripled. The publicity campaign has therefore been successful, in that it has inspired more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints.

Which of the following most seriously weakens the conclusion of the passage above?

A. The increase in harassment complaints has consisted almost exclusively of additional complaints of racial harassment; complaints of other varieties of harassment have not increased significantly.

B. Although the number of complaints has tripled, the number of complaints that have resulted in successful prosecutions or civil penalties for the harassers has not increased significantly.

C. Many individuals who have brought complaints within the past year were previously unaware that the behavior to which they had been subjected was regarded legally as harassment.

D. The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid.

E. The city attorney’s office originally instituted the campaign in response to falling numbers of workplace harassment complaints.

IanStewart · Accepted Answer

Just because nothing bad will happen for doing something is no reason to think people will do it. Something good needs to happen. To give an absurd example, if I tell you 'eat this piece of scrap metal, nothing bad will happen', knowing that nothing bad will happen is not going to make you any more likely to eat the metal. The same is true in this question. That there are no negative consequences for filing a false harassment claim is no reason to think false claims will be filed. There would need to be some benefit to the person filing the false claim, and I can't see what that benefit could possibly be. If the claim is false, the person filing the claim is not going to receive any kind of compensation or other benefit. There's sure to be paperwork and tribunal appearances that would consume the complainant's time. Most importantly, accusing someone of racial or sexual harassment is an extremely serious thing to do; it can very easily ruin that person's career. It's not the type of thing people do frivolously, though you'd need to assume that people would for D to be the answer here. That's why I said above that D requires one to make some absurdly cynical assumptions about human behaviour.

Further, one could easily contend that D actually strengthens the argument. Some people who are  legitimate  victims of harassment might, in the past, have been reluctant to pursue a claim because they were concerned they lacked the evidence to prove their case. That is, they might have been concerned that their claim woud be deemed 'invalid'. Knowing that there will be no negative consequences if they are unable to prove their case might make it  more  likely that these  legitimate  victims of harassment will file a claim. The conclusion of the passage has nothing to do with the number of claims which are actually  proven  or found to be valid - the conclusion is simply that more legitimate victims have come forward with their complaints. If answer D is true, it may in fact be the  reason  that so many new legitimate victims came forward, and rather than weaken the argument, it may actually explain why the facts presented in the argument are true.

One final point: we aren't concerned here with whether the number of legitimate complaints actually  tripled . The argument is true as long as the number of legitimate complaints  increased . So to weaken the argument, it is not enough only to establish that there were false claims; you'd need to establish that a full  two thirds  of complaints were illegitimate. That is, for D to be the answer here, the campaign publicity would need to have inspired so many false complaints as to cause the total number of complaints to triple. As I discussed above, I can't see how one could reasonably think that could be the case.

So I stand by what I said above. I think it's a very poorly contrived question; it's illogical, and requires one to introduce assumptions which I find completely unreasonable.

saxenashobhit · Answer

IMO D

whiplash2411 · Answer

The conclusion of the stimulus instigates that the reason for the increase of complaints was because of the success of the campaign. This is the argument we are trying to weaken.

IanStewart · Answer

This is a terrible question. Where is it from? For the original argument to be valid, we only need to know that the number of legitimate complaints increased. For D to be a good answer, we need to assume that enough people had the thought 'Oh, nothing bad will happen to me, so I'm going to file a bogus harassment complaint!' for the number of complaints to  triple . That seems preposterous to me, and requires one to make some pretty cynical assumptions about humanity. There are no other good answers here, so I imagine the OA is D, but it's not a good answer, since it barely weakens the argument; that the campaign emphasized that people would face no negative consequences for making bogus complaints is not evidence that the number of bogus complaints actually increased.

Orange08 · Answer

Hello all,
OA is D.

Hi Ian,
I completely agree with you. Not only this, there were couple of other CRs in the same MGMAT online test that had similar weak options. I got few incorrect and believe me, though I have pretty good confidence in CRs, after facing such questions,my confidence has been shaken of no reason.

That's the only reason that I had put this question in the forum. I wanted to see if others felt the same as I had.

hemanthp · Answer

Ian and Orange, 
I can see your point but there is nothing cynically preposterous in the argument in support of D. If the reprisals are removed it would make people to make the meekest of complaints which they otherwise would not have made as they would introspect and realize its not worth it (I am not saying that they would ignore it... but just that they might talk to some colleagues, discuss with family before filing a case). But now they need not really do that.

I definitely don't think this is a ridiculous question. Just my thought though.

Thanks.

geturdream · Answer

D says that there will be no negative consequences for false complaints. So it actually encourages all the people to lodge complaints even if they are false. This actually weakens the argument which claims that the number of complains have tripled in the last year. Because most the complaints are false and the the actual number of complaints hasn't increased a lot. So the publicity campaign has not been as successful as they are claiming.

So D is the correct answer

So D is the correct answer

Sovjet · Answer

Our conclusion is "The publicity campaign has therefore been successful, in that it has inspired more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints."

We could weaken this if we could prove one of the following:

- The publicity campaign was not the reason for the increase in complaints.
- It has inspired less victims to pursue their complaints.

(A) Racial harassment can occur at work, which would supportthe conclusion.
(B) Irrelevant information. The campaign's goal was to increase the number of complaints. The attorney's office could still claim that the campaign was successful, and therefore this does not weaken the argument.
(C) This implies that victims who would not have come in previously (due to their ignorance of the legal definition of harassment) will now begin to file complaints. This can be considered a victory for the attorney's office - and therefore strengthen the argument.
(E) This adds new, but irrelevant, information. The reason behind the campaign isn't being discussed, this simply widens the scope.

Answer (D): The easiest way to reach this conclusion is to rule out the other 4 choices. While this isn't an ideal "weakening", it is the most likely to weaken the argument. What this statement suggests is that while there may be an increase in overall claims, it may not lead to an increase in claims made by actual  victims . Rather, it may increase false claims, while leaving the number of victim claims the same, or lower.

Note:  I had originally chosen (C) as my answer. See reasoning in quote (by optimusprime) below. I have changed my response to reflect the solution, and to ensure that no one is led astray by my initial response.

Vercules · Answer

Hi mun23,

Lets first simplify the stimulus,

Premises:   City attorney's campaign encouraged victims of harassment to report it, then the filed reports increased.

Conclusion:   Increase in the reports filed is because of the campaign.

This is a typical "cause and effect" argument. The cause is "attorney's campaign" and the effect is "increase in filed reports"

In most cases the choice that weakens a "cause and effect" argument is either

i) The one that shows that the causality is happening in the opposite direction i.e. the cause is the effect

or

ii) The one that shows that the effect is caused by a cause other than the one mentioned in the argument.

(D)The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid.

This answer choice is the second of the two weakeners types mentioned above. This choice shows that the effect i.e. "increase in filing of reports" is cause by a different cause i.e. "no negative consequences of complaints". If offenders will face little danger of being punished then they will be encouraged to harass and victimize even more people, so the likely cause of increase in harassment reports is due to this fact and not because of the campaign, thus, weakening our conclusion. 
 
Hope this helps,

Vercules

egmat · Answer

Hi, Let's first understand the argument. Premises: 1. Attorney instituted a campaign to encourage victims to report incidents of harassment. 2. Next year, the number of harassment reports tripled Conclusion: Campaign successful - because it has inspired more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints (pay attention to the underlined word. It'll come in handy in understanding choice D) Let's look at Option D: (D)The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid. - Read the underlined parts carefully. What do they lead to? Will it make more people to file frivolous (false) harassment complaints? If yes, then the tripling of harassment reports doesn't necessarily mean that more victims are inspired to pursue their complaints; rather, it could mean that many more false complaints are being filed since people are not afraid anymore of the implications of filing false complaints. Thus, this weakens the conclusion. Hope this helps

Thanks, Chiranjeev

Practicegmat · Answer

But I yet not convinced .
"The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid."

That means that it is because of the publicity campain only that the people came to know that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid.
Hence indirectly the publicity campaign only helped the increase.. right ?

Please clarify

egmat · Answer

Hi,

The answer to your question is Yes. Directly or indirectly, the publicity campaign led to the increase in the number of complaints. I agree with this.

But does this means that more victims have filed complaints? I am asking this because the conclusion of the passage says "The publicity campaign has therefore been successful, in that it has inspired  more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints ."

After reading option D, we can't be sure that more victims filed their complaints. Since the campaign so much emphasized that no action will be taken against frivolous complaints, the increase in the number of complaints was probably due to extraordinary increase in bogus complaints. In other words, probably, victims didn't file more complaints.

The above reasoning makes us unsure of the statement that the campaign was successful for the reason given. Therefore, this option weakens the conclusion.

Does this explanation make sense?

If it still doesn't help, let me know your specific problem with the reasoning above.

Thanks,
Chiranjeev

Wonderwoman31 · Answer

Hi  nightblade354 ,

Please let me know whether my understanding is correct for this question. Now the question says that the number of harassment reports tripled in the year following the year of inception. So, basically, if the program was incepted in 2018, the rise was experienced in 2019 i.e. not in the same year.

My assumption :-

1. There must be some change from year 1 to year 2 that encountered for this change in behaviour..But the option D nowhere states that the fact was emphasized in the second year.

2. But Option B clearly captures the gap. So, there is an increase in the reports of harassment. But we are concerned about workplace harassment only.

Let me know your thoughts on it.

Wonderwoman31 · Answer

Hi  nightblade354 ,

Please let me know whether my understanding is correct for this question. Now the question says that the number of harassment reports tripled in the year following the year of inception. So, basically, if the program was incepted in 2018, the rise was experienced in 2019 i.e. not in the same year.

My assumption :-

1. There must be some change from year 1 to year 2 that encountered for this change in behaviour..But the option D nowhere states that the fact was emphasized in the second year.

2. But Option B clearly captures the gap. So, there is an increase in the reports of harassment. But we are concerned about workplace harassment only.

Let me know your thoughts on it.

nightblade354 · Answer

Wonderwoman31 , The reason B is incorrect is because we do not care about resolutions. See the final sentence: "The publicity campaign has therefore been successful, in that it has inspired more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints". We are not concerned about successes vs. failures, but only whether people come forward as victims.

You seem to be focusing on the yearly difference, but I think you ignored what you needed to weaken. D says that people will not be punished for lying if they come forward. So this would weaken the argument because it may not be that more victims are coming forward. I admit this not an air-tight solution, as there is the possibility that it won't affect the outcome, but it is by far the best option.

Kritisood · Answer

Hi  nightblade354  I understand why D is correct but why is A incorrect? If the increase in harassment complaints consisted almost exclusively of additional complaints of racial harassment; this could mean that there might have been some other trigger for this and not the actual campaign.

nightblade354 · Answer

That is technically correct and this question is not air-tight. But, because we cannot know for certain whether it is or is not the campaign, we cannot assume that it is one or the other. As a result, there is no way this could weaken the argument. Thus, given the parameters it is at worst a neutral and at best a strengthener.

LIBERTYRodP · Answer

WEAKEN

Pre-thinking: It is a fact that the number of complaints filed to the attorney's office has tripled. The conclusion says that "the campaign has   inspired   more victims of workplace harassment to pursue their complaints." . Therefore, we can attack this in the following way:

1. Cause effect - saying that the people who reported this harrassment were inspired by something other than the campaign, or that now, somehow, it has become easier to file a complain.

2. Showing that these people who report are not actual " victims of workplace harassment ". And thus, this reports are being used unfairly.

A. The increase in harassment complaints has consisted almost exclusively of additional complaints of racial harassment; complaints of other varieties of harassment have not increased significantly.   ----- This strengthens the argument because it insinuates that the campaign was effective at making people more aware of racial harassment.

B. Although the number of complaints has tripled, the number of complaints that have resulted in successful prosecutions or civil penalties for the harassers has not increased significantly.  --------- Out of scope. The conclusion does not state that more violators are being punished, but that people now, because of the campaign, are more willing to report this cases.

C. Many individuals who have brought complaints within the past year were previously unaware that the behavior to which they had been subjected was regarded legally as harassment.   ---------- This strengthen the conclusion. If people were unaware in the past, then it could mean that the campaign has made them aware now and that's why they are filing more reports.

D. The publicity campaign has emphasized the fact that there will be no legal reprisals or other negative consequences for complainants whose complaints are deemed false or invalid.    ------ CORRECT. The reports are being filed by people who are not really being harassed. This campaign has made anyone be able to use this system unfairly, and is not necessarily helping the actual victims of harassment.

E. The city attorney’s office originally instituted the campaign in response to falling numbers of workplace harassment complaints.   -------- Out of scope. We do not care about the motivations to come up with the campaign.

MPRS22 · Answer

I don't agree with the OA. If cases of racial harassment goes up, these could be completely unrelated to workplace as far as we know.

I don't disagree with D, I just think A could work too

AndrewN

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Concerned about various forms of workplace harassment, a city attorney

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Concerned about various forms of workplace harassment, a city attorney

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