Married Women’s Sleep

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Women who are married sleep more soundly than women who have never married or lost a partner, according to research from an eight-year study. Furthermore, it is well established that sleeping less than six hours a night makes you 12% more likely to die prematurely than someone who sleeps up to eight hours. Therefore, getting married increases a woman's life expectancy.

Which of the following, if true, does NOT strengthen the argument above?

Review: Married Women's Sleep


Explanation

Reading the question: Usually, in a strengthen question, we will look for the greatest weakness and then a strengthener that patches that weakness, because there is no greater way to strengthen an argument. But here we have a NOT question, so the correct answer is likely to be a weakener or be irrelevant. We'll use a basic filter: what answer choice weakens the idea that getting married makes a woman sleep longer and hence live longer?

Applying the filter: (A) patches a weak connection between dying prematurely and having a longer life expectancy. So (A) is a strengthener and hence is NOT the answer. Choice (B) also strengthens the argument, because it removes a problem and the prompt mentions specifically sleeping "up to 8 hours." So (B) is out. Choice (C) also removes a problem, that of an unintended consequence. So (C) is out. Choice (D) patches a weak connection between soundness of sleep and amount of sleep, so it's a strengthener and is out. Choice (E) may sound irrelevant initially, but it weakens the argument. It's saying that getting married isn't the cause of sleeping better; the cause, rather, is being the type of person, psychologically, who's likely to get married. It weakens the causal argument by establishing a different cause than the one given. The correct answer is (E).


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