Many economists claim that financial rewards provide the strongest incentive for people to choose one job over anothe...

Naz on September 25, 2014

The conclusion of the argument is: "economists overestimate the degree to which people are motivated by money in their job choices."

Why? We are told that many economists claim that financial rewards provide the strongest incentive for people to choose one job over another. But, a lot of surveys show that the majority of people are not naming high salary as the most desirable feature of a job.

Where is the gap here? We are using evidence about "not naming high salary" to conclude that people may not be as motivated by money in their job choices. Your first thought should be: aren't there other types of financial rewards in a job other than high salary? For instance: yearly bonuses, sales incentives, tips, health insurance packages, retirement packages etc.

Answer choice (C) points out this exact issue: "Jobs that pay the same salary often vary considerably in their other financial benefits."

So, it's possible that people are not as concerned with high salary, but they may still be concerned with how big their year-end bonus will be, or what type of retirement plan they will be offered; these are all types of financial rewards. People could look at various jobs with the same salary and not name a high salary as a concern, but at the same time could consider these jobs' various financial incentives important and use them to compare the different positions.

Thus, answer choice (C) shows that the economists' claim could still be valid, i.e. the economists did not necessarily overestimate the degree to which people are motivated by money in their job choices.

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

TheFacu on November 29, 2015

Why not B? Thank you

Mehran on December 3, 2015

Hi @TheFacu, thanks for your question. Answer choice (B), even if true, does not weaken the argument. It could be true that many people would prefer a high-wage job to an otherwise identical job with lower wages, but that doesn't mean that high salary is the MOST desirable feature of a job, and it doesn't weaken the argument that those economists who claim that financial rewards provide the strongest incentive in choosing one job over another are in fact overestimating the degree to which people are motivated by money. Answer choice (B) is consistent with people being motivated by money, but it is not inconsistent with the argument's conclusion that certain economists OVERESTIMATE just how motivated people are by money.

For more analysis, please refer back to Naz's post above.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Reina on April 16, 2020

@mehran for weaken questions, what should we be asking ourselves after reading the question stem? What statement will weaken the conclusion?

BenMingov on April 26, 2020

Hi Reina, thanks for bringing this up.

It is definitely good practice to think about what the question stem wants you to find and proactive attempt to predict an answer. It isn't necessary that you will succeed in coming up with the correct answer choice before examining them, but having an idea in mind of what does and doesn't work for your specified task will increase your understanding of the information you just read, and will result in quicker analysis of the answer choices.