Q24 - Human tears and emotional stress

[antarias90]

The answers were all very complicated and convoluted on this one, throwing me off. Can someone tell me how they'd go about tackling the answer choices and diagramming the relationship given in the prompt?

[rinagoldfield]

Tough question!!!

This one benefits from having a strong understanding of the argument core and its attendant flaws, since the answer choices are... rather obtuse.

The argument core has three parts:

Tears contain many of the same hormones that the body produces in times of emotional distress
-->
Shedding tears removes significant quantities of these hormones from the body
-->
Crying must reduce emotional stress

Here’s an analogy for this argument:

Eating chocolate releases many of the same endorphins that a person produces when s/he is in love
-->
Eating lots of chocolate must release a significant amount of love-endorphins
-->
Eating lots of chocolate must increase the amount of love a person feels

The argument’s biggest flaw is its causation/ correlation collapse. Eating chocolate could increase love only if endorphins cause love; crying out stress-related hormones could lower stress only if the hormones cause stress. Yet the reader only knows that "the human body produces [the hormones] in times of stress." Perhaps the stress causes the hormonal production, or perhaps there’s a third cause of both the stress and hormonal production. In either case, crying out the hormones wouldn’t impact stress levels.

This argument has a second, smaller flaw: its assumption that crying will shed "significant quantities" of the hormones.

The language in the answer choices is difficult. Try to replace abstract terms with concrete nouns whenever possible.

(E) exactly matches the big flaw, albeit in abstract language. "Certain substances" = hormones and "a condition" = stress. The argument does indeed take for granted that hormones cause stress.

(A) assumes that crying reduces emotional distress. This is exactly the conclusion the author has failed to prove; the right answer won’t simply accept its truth. (A) is out.

(B) is out; there’s nothing about requirement in this argument.

(C) is tempting, since it also talks about causation. But while one could (maybe) argue that stress is a phenomenon, hormones certainly aren’t. Also, the argument doesn’t need to address the possibility of mutual causation (i.e. that hormones cause stress and stress causes hormones). It needs to address whether or not hormones cause stress at all.

(D) discusses variables that don’t exist in the argument. I’m not sure what the "two distinct factors" are... maybe hormones and crying? Regardless, the argument doesn’t fail to distinguish between these two things.

[lawschooldreams]

(A) assumes that crying reduces emotional distress. This is exactly the conclusion the author has failed to prove; the right answer won’t simply accept its truth. (A) is out.

I'm not convinced on this explanation - could you please clarify?

Question asks us to identity how the argument's REASONING is most vulnerable. The reasoning encompasses how they got from premise to sub-conclusion, or sub-conclusion to the conclusion.

Looking at the last two sentences of the stimulus, I see a jump from "shedding tears" to "crying." The author seems to be assuming that shedding tears implies crying, but this need not be the case and (A) brings this up. It's a subtle scope shift, but it's still a shift. Any advice would be helpful!

[gaheexlee]

Could someone clarify and expand on Rina's explanation, especially on answer choice (C)?

I knew the flaw was correlation-causation and so had it down to (C) and (E). I ended up going with (C) as I thought the author needed to have addressed that emotional stress could be inducing the crying instead.

I realized after checking my answer that I had eliminated (E) because I substituted in the wrong concrete terms for the abstract words. I thought the phrase "whenever a condition occurs" referred to crying, not being stressed. How did those who get the question correct know to substitute the correct terms in?

Lastly, any advice for what to do when you get a descriptive flaw question and you just have no idea?

[brandoncbias]

Could someone clarify and expand on Rina's explanation, especially on answer choice (C)?

I knew the flaw was correlation-causation and so had it down to (C) and (E). I ended up going with (C) as I thought the author needed to have addressed that emotional stress could be inducing the crying instead.

I realized after checking my answer that I had eliminated (E) because I substituted in the wrong concrete terms for the abstract words. I thought the phrase "whenever a condition occurs" referred to crying, not being stressed. How did those who get the question correct know to substitute the correct terms in?

Lastly, any advice for what to do when you get a descriptive flaw question and you just have no idea?

I think a better way of eliminating C is realizing that this is kind of synonymous to the argument being made. One could debate that the production of hormones can be considered a phenomenon, however, this doesn't mean that this answer choice is a good one.

The argument is saying that because hormones and stress are correlated and crying releases hormones, it relieves stress. This claim erroneously assumes that hormones cause stress.

C is saying that it fails to consider that hormones and stress could cause each other. Well this is erroneous as well! Where in the argument do you get the idea that they can cause each other?! By choosing this answer you are making the same mistake as the argument does by thinking correlation could imply causation. Not to mention that would entail the conclusion still being true in a sense.

You need an answer choice that calls out this use of correlation to arrive at a causal conclusion and E does that perfectly.

You don't need to substitute anything in. C's dual causality between hormones and stress should raise a red flag immediately. Critique the argument core, abstractly word the flaw, and then read E.

Embrace the abstract wording of answer choices and try to understand what type of flaw it is describing, then apply that to your idea of the flaw from your assessment of the argument core. You should have an abstract and a contextual understanding of the flaws when you critique arguments. It will help you to avoid eliminating valid answer choices and gravitating towards attractive ones that use word traps. All of this is covered in detail in the Manhattan LR guide!

[pewals13]

Just to add:

Let's imagine with (C) that emotional stress could cause the hormones

Or even that reducing emotional stress can cause crying

Do either of these impact our conclusion that "crying must have the effect of reducing emotional stress?"

No, just because the arrow of causation can go one way does not have any bearing on whether it can go in reverse

[christine.defenbaugh]

Lots of great discussion here on a very tough question!

I'd like to touch on something that gaheexlee raised:

I realized after checking my answer that I had eliminated (E) because I substituted in the wrong concrete terms for the abstract words. I thought the phrase "whenever a condition occurs" referred to crying, not being stressed. How did those who get the question correct know to substitute the correct terms in?

This is a really interesting, and important, question. When flaw answer choices are written in abstract terms, sorting out what they are actually saying can be a significant challenge. I find that what helps me is to first sort out the overall structure of the answer choice. Also, remember that arguments are fundamentally flawed because they assume things. In other words, arguments are flawed because they fail to consider the possibility that the premise could be true, and yet the conclusion still might not follow.

For instance, with (C), the answer is saying that the argument fails to address the possibility that even if [blahblahblah], it may be true that [blehblehbleh]. The 'even if' part has to be the premise! That's what we've already accepted as true. And to destroy an argument, I'd want to show that EVEN IF the premise is true, the conclusion still might not be. So, this answer choice structure really ought to be:

"fails to address the possibility that even if [the premise is true], it may be that [thing that would destroy the argument may be true]."

Now, since the premise is the thing that I know, I'm going to line that up first! The only premise we have with a causal contribution is that [stress causes hormone production], making "stress" = "one phenomenon" and "hormones" = "second phenomenon". So, the second half of (C) would mean that [it may be true that hormones cause stress]. Would that destroy our argument?

NOPE! That would actually totally SUPPORT our argument!

Let's apply the same analysis to (E): "takes for granted that because [blahblahblah], it's true that [blehblehbleh]". Okay, this is classic assumption language. Arguments are flawed because they 'take for granted' that because a premise is true, it must be that the conclusion is true!

Okay, so "certain substances are present whenever a condition occurs" has to match the premise; we're looking for "if condition, then substance". This can't be 'crying' - the premises never told me that crying always has certain substances present! But the premises did say that hormones are produced when we have stress! So, if stress --> hormones!

Now we know that "stress" is the condition, and "hormones" are the substance. Restating (E) gives us:

takes for granted that because hormones are present whenever we have stress, hormones must cause the stress.

"hormones cause stress" is exactly the assumption we're looking for!

It can be incredibly helpful to take a moment to unwrap the basic structure of the abstract flaw answer without focusing on content first, so that you can make clear decisions about which content has to match with which abstract phrases. And remember, arguments are fundamentally flawed because they assume that just because the premise is true, that must mean the conclusion is true!

Keep up the great discussion all!

[frank0478]

Can someone check this?

Tears have X
Stress cause X (stress -> x)
Crying means removal of X (crying -> removal of X)
So crying reduces stress (crying -> removal of x -> reduce stress)

Stress cause X does not mean that removal of X causes removal of stress.

Fire causes burned skin (fire -> burned skin)
Healing creaming causes reduce of burned skin (healing cream -> reduce burned skin)
So healing cream causes reduction of fire. (healing cream -> reduce burn skin -> reduce fire)
Takes for granted that because something is present [burned skin] whenever a condition occurs [fire], those substances [burned skin] causes that condition [fire].

[andrewgong01]

I understand the correct answer choice (e) but for "C" couldn't we think of the second part of it "the second phenomenon may causally influence the first as well" being to mean that the argument assumes that when you have less hormones ( the second phenomenon) you in turn cause your self to have less stress (the first phenomenon) - semantics aside about wether or not hormones are a phenomenon?

That said, I don't think "C" appears as a flaw because i do not recall every choosing or seeing this answer choice in other flaw questions ?

[ohthatpatrick]

I agree with your sentiment that I don't think (C) has ever been an answer (although that doesn't mean it couldn't be).

You'd have to have an argument that says,
Since X has an influence on Y,
Y must have no influence on X.

As I read (C) and try to match it up with our argument, I am leaning on the fact that answer choice would only be correct if it were saying,
"fails to consider that even if [premise], it may be that [anti-conclusion]."

So to match the premise half, I'm looking for anything in the evidence where we established that one phenomenon causally contributes to a second.

I can find:
"shedding tears" causally contributes to "removing hormones from the body".
or
"emotional stress" causally contributes to "production of certain hormones"

So (C)'s second half would have to be saying,
"Hey, author, it still may be true that 'removing hormones from the body' has a causal influence on 'shedding tears'."
or
"Hey, author, it still may be true that 'producing certain hormones' has a causal influence on 'emotional stress'."

Neither of those seem like objections, so (C) doesn't seem like a good answer.

[LolaC289]

For me this is the hardest question on this section. I first chose D and then changed to C. Even though I somehow had a sense that answer choice (E) is really good, I did not go with it. (for reason addressed at the bottom of this post)

This is correlation->causation flaw. Just because tears contain the same hormones our body produce under pressure, it doesn't mean shedding tears will reduce pressure.

It can be easily refuted. For example, one may say, quite oppositely, these hormones are produced to help us get rid of pressure! So by removing these hormones we are actually doing a disservice to our body! In other words, just because two things co-exist, how do you know there is causation, from either way to the other, exist?

(E) states this flaw by addressing this unsupported causation.

But because the language used in each answer choices is so abstract, it adds up the difficulty to identify the correct answer choice, which must be the only one that accurately addressing this flaw.

(A) is pressuring on the gap from “shedding tears” to “crying”. However, this is not the causation flaw that we are asks us to find. Even if we can get rid of tears by ways other than shedding tears, it is still unsupported that any of these ways to get rid of tears, will reduces stress. (Do you see that the causation relationship that needs further support is directly assumed as a premise in here?)

(B) is stating a sufficient/necessary condition flaw. Namely, A->B does not mean B->A. However, even if it is correct to say that crying is assumed to be a sufficient condition to reduce stress, it is not stated as a necessary condition in the first place! Note that the author never said it is necessary to shed tears in order to reduce stress, he just said we can. (Second sentence, “Hence, shedding tears removes significant……hormones.”)

(C), (D) and (E) are closer in that they all start to address the causation flaw.

(C) said “even if one phenomenon causally contributes to a second phenomenon……”, so the two phenomena has to be what has already been mentioned and accepted as premise. The author seems to assume that crying causally contributes to reducing stress, so (C) is saying but it can also be that reducing stress is causing people to cry.

As close as it gets, it still does not address the flaw. Even if reducing stress is causing people to cry, the assumed causation that hormone caused stress is still left uncovered. In other words, (C) assumes causation already exists, what is wrong is the direction of the cause to effect. But what we are trying to argue the causation may not exist at all! This is very subtle here. Crying is just a superficial action to distract us from the unsupported causation from Hormone->Stress.

(D) looks good at first glance, it seems to be saying that instead of causation, crying (reducing hormone) and reducing stress are jointly responsible for some other phenomenon (so there may be no relationship between them). But pay attention to how the present tense is used in here. “Fail to distinguish that two distinct factors that are jointly responsible for……”. Well, this is not given so we can’t assume that to to the fact. It is just a possibility, not a certainty.

Lastly, I didn’t go with (E) because I am so caught up with the crying/shedding tear thing and totally forgot about the hormones, so when I saw “the substances” in (E) I eliminated (E) immediately. Again, what we need to address is the unsupported causation from Hormone->Stress. Crying is just an outside action to get rid of the hormones.


In hard flaw questions (and there are plenty of them), first we must be very clear what the flaw is and not to be confused by other stuff that are just put in here to adds up the confusion. (Imagine if the whole “crying” and “shedding tear” thing are got rid of in here, it would be much easier, isn’t it?) And then we must match the abstract language to what the stimulus is actually saying, in order to get to the correct answer.

Hope this helps.

[LeonC641]

Let's apply the same analysis to (E): "takes for granted that because [blahblahblah], it's true that [blehblehbleh]". Okay, this is classic assumption language. Arguments are flawed because they 'take for granted' that because a premise is true, it must be that the conclusion is true!

Okay, so "certain substances are present whenever a condition occurs" has to match the premise; we're looking for "if condition, then substance". This can't be 'crying' - the premises never told me that crying always has certain substances present! But the premises did say that hormones are produced when we have stress! So, if stress --> hormones!

Now we know that "stress" is the condition, and "hormones" are the substance. Restating (E) gives us:

takes for granted that because hormones are present whenever we have stress, hormones must cause the stress.

"hormones cause stress" is exactly the assumption we're looking for!

This is a great explanation. However, I still have a question: if "whenever" here is a conditional language, then I find it very difficult to see how the author of the stimulus has made any conditional argument.
My understanding is that the language "take for granted" means the argument literally assumes it. So (E) would make more sense to me if it could be argued that "whenever" here refers to a certain time period.