Symbolic psycho-logic: A model of attitudinal cognition

Abstract

When Euler taught logic to the Princess by drawing the overlapping circles and circles within circles, he was also illustrating the well-known fact that human beings have to learn the principles of formal logic. They do not, it is generally agreed, always or even often think logically. So, if behavioral scientists are to study and understand the processes of ordinary, everyday thinking, they must develop new approaches, including the recognition that thinking is colored by emotional attitudes. By using a system based on a definition of cognitive elements and the relations between them, a psychological mathematical model has been constructed for use in the rigorous experimental analysis of attitudinal cognition.