Q9 - Reducing stress lessens a person's

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Necessary Assumption

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: Less stress leads to less sensitivity to pain.
Evidence: People who listened to only music before/after surgery needed less anesthesia / pain meds than people who listened only to conversation before/after surgery.

Any prephrase?
There is a HUGE gap here. The conclusion is about "reducing stress", but NOTHING in the evidence comes close to talking about reducing stress. But we can find the intended match, by connecting the two claims that DID match: "less sensitivity to pain" is a decent match for "required less anesthesia and painkillers". Those are NOT equivalent, so there are assumptions being made there as well (such as "requiring less anesthesia at least sometimes indicates less sensitivty to pain"). But the HUGE missing gap is connecting "listing to music before/after surgery" with "reducing stress".

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
A) Red flag: "All". This doesn't need to be true. We only heard about how the music-music and talk-talk group compare, but it's possible there was also a music-talk and talk-music group. Having those other two groups in the study doesn't impact the author's argument at all.

B) Red flag: "no less stressful". Was the author making some crucial comparison between the stress of anticipating surgery vs. the stress of recovering? Not at all. It wouldn't make any difference to the argument whether anticipating was more stressful, less stressful, or equally stressful.

C) Correct! This speaks to where the author got this totally random "reducing stress" idea in her conclusion. If we negated this, and there were NOT a connection between listening to music and reducing stress, then the author has literally no information in her evidence that addresses stress reduction.

D) Tempting "ruling out" language. What if the psychological effects of music ARE changed by anesthesia or painkillers? How would that be an objection to the argument? This is actually an extreme assumption since "are not changed" means "identical". Does the author need to assume that listening to music un-drugged is identical to listening to music drugged?

E) The author sees this causal chain happening: listened to music -> less stress -> less need for anesthesia/painkillers. This answer choice accuses the author of thinking: more anesthesia and painkillers --> less stress. That isn't reflected in the author's thinking at all.

Takeaway/Pattern: When there is such a glaring new term in the Conclusion, such as "Reducing stress", we should try to find its intended match in the Evidence and antipicate a Bridge answer (though we should remain mentally flexible if they don't deliver on that type of answer). We can find what idea is meant to accompany the New Guy in the Conclusion by focusing on the Overlapping Ideas. "Less stress = less sensitivity to pain" and "listening to music before/after = less need for pain relief".

#officialexplanation

[peg_city]

Why is A wrong?

We are looking for a necessary assumption.

If A is wrong then wouldn't that bias the study. If they listened to music before and a conversation after (or visa-versa) then how would we know the reasoning for the lesser anesthesia.

Thanks

[theaether]

We know for sure that some patients listened to a tape of music and another group listened to a tape of conversation. Choice A would be arguing with the premises, which is not good. It says everybody listened to the same tape, and doesn't allow for 2 different tapes.

Premise: Those who listened to music instead of conversation required fewer painkilling things.

Conclusion: Reducing stress lessens the pain sensitivity.

The gap here is definitely C: music reduces stress. We have to link music with stress to shore that hole in the argument. Imagine if music elevated stress. That would absolutely destroy the argument. Other assumptions could be "conversation does not reduce stress more than music." And tons of others.

[nflamel69]

totally agree with the above post. Except when you said imagine if music elevated stress.. that would the polar opposite. For the negative, a logical opposite would be imagine if music does not lessen stress.

[shirando21]

The conclusion is : Reducing stress lessens a person's sensitivity to pain.

The evidence is the research that shows people who listened to music required less anesthesia and fewer pain killer, in other words, less sensitive to pain.

The new term in the conclusion is "reducing stress".

You need to bridge the gap from listening to music makes people less sensitive to pain, to reducing stress lessens a person's sensitivity to pain. clearly C does the job.

[ohthatpatrick]

Awesome replies, particularly about the "new guy" in the conclusion. I use that shortcut on the regular when it comes to Assumption family questions.

Let me just offer a different interpretation of why (A) is wrong.

Nothing in the argument ever says that all the subjects in the study either listened only to music or only to conversation.

It's possible there were all four of these groups:
1. music before, conversation after
2. conversation before, music after
3. music before, music after
4. conversation before, conversation after

It's possible that only group 3 and group 4 existed.

The argument merely says that there was a statistically significant difference between group 3 and group 4. It doesn't exclude the possibility of group 1 or group 2.

Negating (A) would only give us the knowledge that there was also group 1 and/or group 2, but knowing that wouldn't weaken the argument in any way.

[al2568]

Could someone explain why D is wrong?

Negate it, with "the psychological effects of music are changed by anesthesia or (and?) painkillers."

I see that C is clearly the answer but, D would weaken/destroy C.

Is "changed" too weak and not specific?

Does not mentioning "listening" to the music factor in?

[ohthatpatrick]

I don't follow why negating (D) would destroy (C).

Let's assume for a second that listening to music, on its own, reduces stress.

Now let's say that the psychological effects of music ARE changed by painkillers.

Does that mean that listening to music no longer reduces stress?

It doesn't have to. It could be that, with painkillers added in there, listening to music reduces stress EVEN MORE than it did before. (That would be a 'change' in intensity)

It could also be that, originally, another one of the psychological effects of listening to music is increased memory retention.

Maybe adding painkillers to the mix negates this effect and causes the listener to have normal or impaired memory retention. (That would be a 'change' in the psychological effects that has nothing to do with reducing stress)

So, I think you were close when you were hitting on the ambiguity of "changed" ... that doesn't necessarily mean "all normal effects of music are eliminated" ... it could mean "some normal effects are intensified, some remain the same, some are no longer applicable", etc.

And I agree that "the psychological effects of music" is broader than "listening to music", which is all the author cares about for this argument, so the author only needs to assume things about the psychological/physiological effects of listening to music.

Overall, the wording of (D) is too fuzzy to lead to any strict interpretation when negated.

Meanwhile, as you were acknowledging, (C) is CRITICAL to this argument because the conclusion is about "reducing stress", and NOTHING in the premises ever mentions anything about reducing stress.

[obobob]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Necessary Assumption

E) The author sees this causal chain happening: listened to music -> less stress -> less need for anesthesia/painkillers. This answer choice accuses the author of thinking: more anesthesia and painkillers --> less stress. That isn't reflected in the author's thinking at all.


#officialexplanation

Hi, I was struggling between the answer choices (C) and (E).
I understand that the stimulus uses the result of requiring less anesthesia and painkillers for the group of patients who only listened to music tapes as an indicator supporting the conclusion (saying that "patients who listened only to music tape needed less anesthesia during surgery and fewer painkillers afterward than this who listened only to the former tape" to indicate that they were experiencing "less sensitivity to pain").

However, I am having hard time understanding how (E) is "accu[sing] the author of thinking: more anesthesia and painkillers --> less tress." Are you saying that the fact that lesser anesthesia and painkillers were needed is a result to support the conclusion (lessens sensitivity to pain)? So is the author basically saying: listened to music -> less stress -> less sensitivity to pain -> less need for anesthesia/painkillers, and (E) is messing up with this causal chain? (I just added "less sensitivity to pain" in between "less stress" and "less need for anesthesia/painkillers" from the casual chain that you wrote originally)

Also, the reason why I chose (E) originally is because I thought it wouldn't make sense if anesthesia and painkillers don't reduce stress, since if the stress isn't reduced, then the patients' sensitivity to pain should not be reduced also. I think I was confused with getting the core (premise and the conclusion) straight before going through the question and the answer choices. If what I've understood after reading @ofthatpatrick's explanation is correct, I think I see why was lead to (E)-- nothing needs to be true in relationship between anesthesia&painkillers and their ability to reduce stress in order for the conclusion need to be true.

Finally, (C) must be the answer, since if listening to music does not reduce stress, then the whole argument does not stand.

Please feel free to comment/mention anything if I am wrong with any of my thinking process stated above! Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

Whatever answer we pick on Necessary Assumption is something we're accusing the author of assuming/believing.

The phrase "tend to reduce" in (E) is causal, and I was representing that with causal arrows showing "painkillers --> reduce stress".

Was the author's paragraph assuming/believing that "painkillers lead to reduced stress"?

No she was assuming/believing that "reduced stress led to reduced painkillers". (E) describes a causal connection between painkillers and stress that is THE REVERSE of the causal connection the author was actually arguing.