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In an experiment, volunteers walked individually through a dark, abandoned theater. Half of the volunteers had been told that the theater was haunted and the other half that it was under renovation. The first half reported significantly more unusual experiences than the second did. The researchers concluded that reports of encounters with ghosts and other supernatural entities generally result from prior expectations of such experiences.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the researchers' reasoning?
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
| In an experiment, volunteers walked individually through a dark, abandoned theater. |
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| Half of the volunteers had been told that the theater was haunted and the other half that it was under renovation. |
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| The first half reported significantly more unusual experiences than the second did. |
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| The researchers concluded that reports of encounters with ghosts and other supernatural entities generally result from prior expectations of such experiences. |
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The argument starts with an experiment that tests whether expectations influence supernatural experiences. It shows that people told a theater was haunted reported more unusual experiences than those told it was under renovation. From this single experiment, the researchers make a sweeping conclusion about all ghost encounters.
Reports of encounters with ghosts and other supernatural entities generally result from prior expectations of such experiences.
The researchers use one controlled experiment as evidence to support a very broad claim about all supernatural encounters. They're saying: if expectations caused more ghost reports in our theater experiment, then expectations probably cause ghost reports everywhere.
Weaken - We need to find information that would reduce our belief in the researchers' conclusion that ghost reports generally result from prior expectations
The conclusion makes a sweeping generalization from one theater experiment to ALL ghost encounters everywhere. The key claim is about causation - that expectations cause ghost reports in general
To weaken this reasoning, we need to find scenarios that either:
This choice tells us that none of the renovation group believed their unusual experiences were supernatural. But this doesn't weaken the researchers' reasoning at all - in fact, it's somewhat expected since they weren't told to expect supernatural experiences. The researchers' conclusion is about expectations causing reports of supernatural encounters, and this choice doesn't challenge that relationship.
This is a devastating blow to the researchers' reasoning. If all the volunteers in the 'haunted' group believed the researchers were lying about the theater being haunted, then they didn't actually have prior expectations of supernatural experiences. Yet they still reported significantly more unusual experiences than the renovation group. This completely undermines the researchers' conclusion that prior expectations cause ghost reports, since the group with higher reporting rates didn't even have the expectations that supposedly caused their reports. Some other factor must explain the difference.
The fact that volunteers within each group varied in their supernatural beliefs doesn't weaken the researchers' reasoning. What matters for their conclusion is the different information given to each group (haunted vs. renovation), not the volunteers' pre-existing beliefs. The researchers could argue that regardless of prior beliefs, being told the theater was haunted created expectations that led to more unusual experience reports.
Learning that each unusual experience had a non-supernatural cause doesn't weaken the researchers' reasoning about what causes people to report such experiences. The researchers aren't claiming the experiences were actually supernatural - they're explaining why people report them. Whether the experiences had mundane explanations is irrelevant to their conclusion about expectations driving reports.
Whether the researchers themselves believed the theater was haunted is completely irrelevant to their reasoning. Their conclusion is based on the experimental results showing that different information given to volunteers led to different reporting rates. The researchers' personal beliefs don't affect this relationship between volunteer expectations and reported experiences.