LSAT Reading : Effects of New Information in Social Science Passages

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for LSAT Reading

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Example Questions

Example Question #72 : Lsat Reading Comprehension

The desire for a good meal is a near universal fact of human existence. Yet precisely what makes a meal “good” is highly dependent on personal preferences, cultural traditions, and the particular circumstances surrounding the search for a satisfying dining experience. The quality of the food being eaten might not even be the number one criteria in making a diner find a meal enjoyable, although it would be the main driving force in choosing what to eat and why. Certainly, the environment plays a large part in creating feelings of satisfaction during a meal, as no one has ever enjoyed a meal in a mood of anxiety and stress or in a setting which was uncomfortable. Even the most basic meals are enhanced when they are served by beloved family members in a festive setting. Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners are always well remembered, even when the turkey and dressing are premade, reheated items. The principle of dining environment also extends to eating out, as a restaurant can serve mediocre food in a pleasant environment with tremendous service and do quite well for itself. Of course, the restaurant with remarkable service in an enjoyable setting that also has high quality food will beat everything. Well flavored and perfectly cooked food hits the basic pleasure centers of the brain in a straightforward way, and any good tasting food will make a person much happier and satisfied. If it comes from a roadside shack, a family diner, or a three star Michelin restaurant can make no difference to the tastebuds. The overall atmosphere and experience is what makes good food into a great meal, and what causes this transformation depends on the background of the individual doing the eating. A person born and raised in Alabama who grew up regularly going to a shack serving excellent barbecue in its back yard will consider this the ideal dining experience. A native Osakan who once a week went to a ramen shop will find slurping noodles to be impossible to surpass as a meal. Meanwhile, a native Lyonnais will desire the finest gastronomic creations served in the fanciest restaurants to be the only acceptable good dining experience. The beauty of human interaction with food is that it is both one of the most elementary and universal experiences of the human condition, while also being absolutely particular to an individual’s culture, experience, and desires.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the author's argument?

Possible Answers:

A small diner is just as likely statistically to be a long term financial success as a fine dining establishment.

When asked about dining preferences, most people respond with a range of different experiences they appreciate.

The list of best restaurants in the country is dominated by traditional French fine dining restaurants.

None of these answers is accurate.

Making different styles of cuisine in a restaurant kitchen requires varying skills and costs for the restaurateur.

Correct answer:

The list of best restaurants in the country is dominated by traditional French fine dining restaurants.

Explanation:

As the author's argument is that a good dining experience is variable depending on circumstances and is therefore relatively unpredictable, a statement that weakens this argument needs to directly address this argument. The only answer choice which appropriately does this is "The list of best restaurants in the country is dominated by traditional French fine dining restaurants."

Example Question #73 : Lsat Reading Comprehension

"Team Sports" (2016)

Sports may seem to rule the world. The World Cup for association football, better known as soccer in North America and simply football in Britain, is the most watched event across the globe every four years. The Super Bowl, the championship for American football’s National Football League, has become a topic of conversation internationally, despite the localized reach of its parent league. The Indian Premier League tapped into a cricket mad population of over one billion, giving India a new national obsession in the twenty-first century.

Despite their ubiquity in our modern society, organized team sports are largely the invention of, to borrow from Sir Winston Churchill’s history writing, English speaking peoples during the nineteenth century. This is not to say that certain kinds of large scale games were never played, but they were seen primarily as children’s diversions. When played by adults, they took an informal, chaotic nature. “Football” often merely described a game played on foot rather than horseback, and it often had a simple target of one group of men attempting to get a ball past a parish or county boundary, with their opposition able to stop them anyway they saw fit. Cricket, the game of the upper classes that could play on days other than Sunday, was early developed compared to other sports, but it only had set numbers of players and regular length of games beginning in the mid-eighteenth century.

The nineteenth century saw a positive flood of rules for what were previously considered ways to keep kids amused during an afternoon. In New York, a men’s society calling themselves the Knickerbocker Club set down a firm set of rules for baseball, so that they could play it among themselves and against other teams. At England’s Cambridge University in 1848, a large group of students put together their different forms of football to create a more universal set of rules. The Melbourne Football Club from Victoria, Australia officially set down their own rules for their particular form of football in 1859, giving rise to the game now known as “Australian football.” The late nineteenth century saw the holdouts against the original Cambridge rules develop Rugby football on the principle that the ball should be handled occasionally, which would be modified into Rugby Union in the south of England, Rugby League in the north of England, and American and Canadian football in North America.

This obsession with rules might seem like a particularly Victorian pastime, making sure everything had its place and never allowing anything to get out of order. Yet it was also borne out of the fact that railroads meant that what used to be county pastimes could now be played at a national and even international level and newspapers allowed the stories of far away games to be transmitted almost instantaneously. The extra component that made organized team sports come into being would appear to be the will of the British and their former and current colonies to exert control and authority over every element of life.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the author's argument?

Possible Answers:

The official rules for a large number of team sports were created in the sixteenth century in Southern Europe

There is little evidence of organized team sports in locations before being introduced by English speaking peoples

English speaking peoples created a wide variety of organizations and structures during the nineteenth century

Organized team sports share many commonalities with less organized, older games played in past centuries

Different sports are more popular in different parts of the world based on cultural preferences

Correct answer:

The official rules for a large number of team sports were created in the sixteenth century in Southern Europe

Explanation:

The author's argument is that organized team sports as they are known in modern society are the result of English speaking peoples during the nineteenth century. If there was evidence that a large number of sports were created earlier in a place where there were not English-speaking peoples, this would directly undermine the author's argument.

Example Question #11 : Effects Of New Information In Social Science Passages

Adapted from The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James (1902)

Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. Some of these would-be definitions may possibly come before us in later portions of this course, and I shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now. Meanwhile the very fact that they are so many and so different from one another is enough to prove that the word "religion" cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name. The theorizing mind tends always to the oversimplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested.

Let us not fall immediately into a one-sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one essence, but many characters which may alternately be equally important to religion. If we should inquire for the essence of "government," for example, one man might tell us it was authority, another submission, another police, another an army, another an assembly, another a system of laws; yet all the while it would be true that no concrete government can exist without all these things, one of which is more important at one moment and others at another. The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition that shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening. And why may not religion be a conception equally complex?

The author's most likely response to a government recognizing religion as any belief system with regular rituals would be which of the following?

Possible Answers:

Such a definition excludes many groups that could legitimately be called religions.

The definition of religion should be simpler and more concrete than the government's definition.

Religion is not the kind of subject which a government should be defining in any way whatsoever.

The government must take such action to appropriately define religion.

An official authority defining religion will do a great deal of good in advancing a clear definition.

Correct answer:

Such a definition excludes many groups that could legitimately be called religions.

Explanation:

The author's main point is that "religion" is a concept that needs a multifaceted and fluid definition. If a government defined religion with broad yet simplified terms, the definition would go against what the author views an appropriate definition. One cause of such a definition would be that some groups would not be encompassed in the government's official definition.

Example Question #1 : Other Effects Of New Information In Social Science Passages

Adapted from The Family Among the Australian Aborigines: a Sociological Study by Bronislaw Malinowski (1913)

It seems beyond doubt that in the aboriginal society the husband exercised almost complete authority over his wife; she was entirely in his hands and he might ill-treat her, provided he did not kill her. Out of our thirty statements, in six cases (Kurnai, Bangerang, Lower Murray tribes, according to Bonney, Geawe-Gal, Port Jackson tribes, North-west Central Queenslanders) the absolute authority of the husband is explicitly affirmed. We read in them either the bare statement that the husband had an absolute power over his family; or, in the better of them, we are more exactly informed that he had only to abstain from inflicting death on his wife. It was the latter's kinsman who would avenge her (Kurnai, Bangerang, North-west Central Queenslanders). It is difficult to ascertain in what form society would interfere with the husband if he transgressed the limits of his legal authority, i. e. killed his wife. Curr informs us that the woman's relatives would avenge her death. Howitt says that there would ensue a blood feud, which comes nearly to the same. It is very probable that the woman's kin retained some rights of protection. The remaining statements implicitly declare that the husband's authority was very extensive. (Encounter Bay tribes according to Meyer; New South Wales tribes according to Hodgson; Port Stephens tribes according to R. Dawson; Arunta; Herbert River tribes; Queenslanders according to Palmer; Moreton Bay tribes according to J. D. Lang; South-Western tribes according to Salvado; West Australians according to Grey.) It is clear that wherever we read of excessive harshness and bad treatment, wounds, blows inflicted on women, the husband must possess the authority to do it; in other words, he does not find any social barrier preventing him from ill-treatment. Especially as, in these statements, such ill-treatment is mentioned to be the rule and not an exception. In two statements we can gather no information on this point. According to the statement of J. Dawson on the West Victoria tribes, the husband's authority appears strictly limited by the potential intervention of the chief, who could even divorce the woman if she complained. But Curr warns us against Dawson's information concerning the chief and his power. Curr's arguments appear to be very conclusive. Too much weight cannot be attached, therefore, to Dawson's exceptional statement. Discarding it, we see that we have on this point fairly clear information. We may assume that society interfered but seldom with the husband, in fact, only in the extreme case of his killing his wife. Six statements are directly, and the remainder indirectly, in favor of this view, and the only one contradictory is not very trustworthy.

If information were presented that showed some aboriginal societies gave women a large amount of authority, the effect on the passage would be to __________.

Possible Answers:

further help the author's portrayal of the nature of authority in Australian aboriginal society

cause the author to view Australian aboriginal marriage practices in a less favorable light

reinforce the point made in "Dawson's exceptional statement."

make it easier to compare Australian aboriginal marriage practices with other types of marriage practices

show a different form of authority in marriage than the one presented by the author

Correct answer:

show a different form of authority in marriage than the one presented by the author

Explanation:

The passage neatly outlines how authority is vested in husbands in Australian aboriginal marriages. A piece of information that highlights women's authority would contradict the main information presented in the passage; however, since the author portrays the information in a calm manner, it would have simply presented a new piece of evidence for the author.

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