A recent study proves that at least some people possess an independent "sixth sense" that allows them to detect wheth...

Shunhe on May 27, 2020

Hi @hkolon,

Thanks for the question! First, let’s take a look at the stimulus. We’re told that a study proves that people have a “sixth sense” that lets them know when people are watching. In this study, people were seated facing away from a window, and guessed correctly 60% of the time correctly about whether or not they were being watched.

Now we’re asked for something that, if true, most supports the conclusion. In other words, we’re being asked to strengthen the argument here. There’s a number of ways to do that, but it’d be helpful to anticipate a few. One way, for example, would be if there were other studies that had different ways of watching people (maybe outside in a field, or through a one-way mirror). That would help eliminate the possibilities of bad study design in this particular study (maybe the subjects saw shadows or heard whisperings behind the wall). You could show that there’s a large sample size, or otherwise show that these results are statistically significant (though you don’t have to know too much about statistics for the LSAT).

Now let’s take a look at (A), which tells us that most of the time, subjects said they were being watched. This actually might weaken the argument, not strengthen it. Let’s say that subjects just said they were being watched most of the time. If the study had them watched over half the time, then that would artificially increase the rate at which the subjects guessed correctly, without relying on any sixth sense.

(C), on the other hand, does strengthen the argument. It tells us that a similar result was found when subjects were watched from another room on a video monitor, which matches one of the possibilities we anticipated earlier—results from another study that corroborate these, and that have a different method of watching. The second study helps eliminates certain possibilities—somehow seeing or hearing the people on the other side of the window—since the observers in this study are in another room entirely. So it strengthens the idea that there actually is a sixth sense responsible for people’s better-than-chance accuracy.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.