If you’re just beginning your LSAT journey, you’re no doubt aware that big changes have come to the test: as of August 2024, the exam no longer includes the longstanding analytical reasoning (AKA “logic games”) section. That leaves just two section types—Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension—to study for. Logical Reasoning will comprise two of the three scored sections, but it would be a mistake to neglect Reading Comprehension. The fourth “experimental” section, which is unscored, could be either type, meaning you could encounter two Reading Comprehension sections on exam day without knowing which of them will count. If you don’t feel 100% comfortable with this material, such a scenario could easily upset your equilibrium and knock you off your game.
The LSAT’s Reading Comprehension section is challenging for a host of reasons. You’ll be tasked with digesting four dense passages with the acuity of a lawyer, one capable of discerning nuanced argumentative structures beneath the surface of the text. Making matters more difficult is the fact that each of the four passages will come from a different discipline: the humanities, the social sciences, the biological and physical sciences, and the law. That means no matter what you chose to study as an undergraduate, you can be sure to encounter at least a couple of passages from fields with which you are unfamiliar. For many test-takers, the inevitable humanities passage—centered on a topic in art, literature, philosophy, or the like—will be one of those unfamiliar encounters. But fear not: if you can master the logic of the test, you can stride into any humanities passage with confidence.
Spoiler Alert: this blog post will explore a passage from PrepTest 140 as an example. If you haven’t already taken this test under timed conditions, you may wish to do so before returning to read this analysis.
Let’s look at just one paragraph from this art history passage, which centers on the abstract painter Sam Gilliam.
Gilliam’s participation in the Color Field movement was motivated in part by his reaction to the art of his African American contemporaries, much of which was strictly representational and was intended to convey explicit political statements. Gilliam found their approach to be aesthetically conservative: the message was unmistakable, he felt, and there was little room for the expression of subtlety or ambiguity or, more importantly, the exploration of new artistic territory through experimentation and innovation. For example, one of his contemporaries worked with collage, assembling disparate bits of images from popular magazines into loosely structured compositions that depicted the period’s political issues—themes such as urban life, the rural South, and African American music. Though such art was popular with the general public, Gilliam was impatient with its straightforward, literal approach to representation. In its place he sought an artistic form that was more expressive than a painted figure or political slogan, more evocative of the complexity of human experience in general, and of the African American experience in particular. In this he represented a view that was then rare among African American artists.
Now let’s work through one of the questions the exam writers came up with to test your comprehension of this passage.
The passage most strongly suggests that Gilliam’s attitude toward the strictly representational art of his contemporaries is which of the following?
1. Derisive condescension
2. Open dissatisfaction
3. Whimsical dismissal
4. Careful neutrality
5. Mild approval
The passage tells us that Gilliam’s attitude toward representational art was a negative one. He found it “aesthetically conservative” and, based on some other statements in the passage, we can infer that, for Gilliam, aesthetic conservatism was not a good thing. He was “impatient” toward it, and “in its place” he sought something different. So that rules out choices D and E: if his attitude was negative, then it was neither neutral nor approving.
“Condescension,” “dissatisfaction,” and “dismissal” are all negative and thus potentially correct, so to evaluate choices A, B, and C it is necessary to consider their preceding adjectives. “Whimsical” doesn’t work; the passage presents Gilliam’s attitude as serious and considered, not playful or capricious. So that rules out choice C. Looking at the remaining choices, A is far more extreme in its negativity than B. “Derisive condescension” implies feelings of contempt and superiority. Did Gilliam harbor such feelings? Possibly, but it is difficult to find a phrase from the selection that would definitively support drawing such a strong conclusion. As a general rule on the LSAT, when deciding between two options that differ markedly in intensity, go with the milder option unless you find very concrete evidence to support the stronger one. That leaves choice B, “open dissatisfaction,” which is indeed the correct answer.
But wait, you might think, was Gilliam’s dissatisfaction really “open?” After all, the passage doesn’t quote him ever stating his views publicly. It only tells us what “he felt,” and that he consequently chose to make art of a different type. You might begin to second-guess yourself, wondering if an alternative like “derisive condescension” or even “careful neutrality” might be the right answer after all.
Students of the humanities are unlikely to fall into this trap, because they’ll have been trained to parse the meaning of the paragraph’s final sentence: “in this”—that is, through his work—Gilliam “represented a view that was then rare among African American artists.” In the world of art, it is possible to “openly” establish a position or attitude through the objects that one makes, regardless of what, if anything, one says.
Understanding that core humanities tenet makes it a lot easier to identify the correct answer to this question, but the point is, you don’t need to be familiar with it to arrive at the right choice. On the contrary, you can do so simply by using the process of elimination outlined above: ruling out the options that directly contradict the content of the passage, followed by the ones that introduce inappropriate adjectives, followed by the ones that err toward an unsupported extreme. Once you grasp the logic of the test in this way, it becomes easy to confidently choose right answers despite the test writers’ propensity to insert a seed of doubt.
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