Q17 - Psychiatrist: Psychological stress is known both

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
ID the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Overcoming negative emotions when they arise could cause one's health to improve.

Evidence: Psychological stress is known both to cause negative emotions and to impair physical health.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument is about cause and effect, so we need to break down the causal relationships presented. The premise tells us that psychological stress causes negative emotions and poor health outcomes: PS causes NE and PH. The argument concludes that overcoming negative emotions will improve health: -NE causes -PH. That's bogus reasoning! Just because two things are effects of the same cause doesn't mean that they are causally related. Global warming is causing both sea level rise and more destructive wildfires. But curbing wildfires won't impact sea levels, nor would a cessation of sea level rise mitigate wildfire risk.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Tricky! This is kind of the opposite of what we want. The argument presents two effects of the same cause, not two causes that contribute to the same effect.

(B) Shazam! There's our prephrase. If you didn't prephrase this, you might need to replace some of the abstract language in the answer with concrete language from the stimulus to evaluate it: It presumes, merely on the basis that negative emotions and negative physical health have a common cause (psychological stress), that negative emotions can causally influence physical health. That's a match!

(C) There's only one cause in our argument, not two. Eliminate!

(D) Again, there's one cause in our argument, not two. Goodbye!

(E) This one is trickier: The argument does take for granted that removing one condition suffices to eliminate another condition because it tells us that overcoming negative emotions will improve physical health outcomes. The only problem? Those two conditions are not established as causally contributing to one another before that conclusion is drawn. That makes the first part of answer choice E grounds for elimination.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Causation Flaws are not limited to Correlation vs. Causation! When you see an ID the Flaw question with a causal argument, take the time to break it down and articulate each purported cause, effect, and correlation, and whether they're presented as working independently or in tandem.

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