October 2002 LSAT Section 4 Question 16

People who do not believe that others distrust them are confident in their own abilities, so people who tend to trust...

Anthony-Resendes on December 10, 2020

Explanation

Ok, so is C the correct answer because if you believe that others trust you, you have confidence in your abilities. However, if you do believe that others do not trust you, therefore you do not have confidence in your abilities. So for the argument to be solid you have to believe that others trust you?? Therefore C would be the unstated premise?

Replies

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shunhe on January 7, 2021

Hi @Anthony-Resendes,

Thanks for the question! So this is a strengthen with sufficient premise question. First, we should identify the conclusion, which is the part in between the commas: people who tend to trust others think of a difficult task as a challenge rather than a threat. So right now we have:

P1: people who don’t believe others distrust them are confident
P2: People who are confident in their own abilities think of difficult tasks as challenges rather than threats
C: people who tend to trust others think of difficult tasks as challenges rather than threats

It looks like there’s a missing connection here. We need something to get “people who don’t believe others distrust them” to “people who tend to trust others.” And we get the connection in (C), which says that they’re the same thing. If that’s true, then we can get to our conclusion. It’s not an “unstated premise,” it’s a new premise we’re adding to make the argument valid.

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

Anna20 on January 29, 2021

Would you need to diagram this question using conditional logic? I picked B, but when I went back over the answers, I can see how C is correct if you need the missing premise (Tend to trust others --> do not believe others distrust them)?

Emil-Kunkin on June 2, 2024

You can't but don't have to, diagramming is one way of visualizing that there is a leap, but you can also get this by noticing the new and unsupported element of the conclusion.