Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/168

158 present instance; they have been gone over again and again, and as a result we think we have gathered some information about the sources through which a mistake in reasoning produces an unpleasant effect upon the mind. These sources, as they appear from the introspections of our observers, we shall now discuss one by one.

(a) The content of the ideas contained in the syllogism. By this is meant that in a certain number of cases, the first .affective reaction of the observer was to the agreeable or disagreeable character of one of the terms of the argument, or some directly suggested idea; and in other cases this was one of the sources of pleasantness or unpleasantness. For example, in (3), the idea of criminals, or of the insane, was unpleasant; in (2), the idea of day-laborers and in (5), the idea of mathematics were disagreeable. The number of observers reporting this as an important source of their affective reaction was for (2), eight; for (3), four; for (4), one, and for (5), five. Evidently such a source of pleasantness or unpleasantness as this is not in any way characteristic of the reasoning processes as such. The ideas of mathematics or of criminals would have been just as unpleasant if they had been suggested outside of any argumentative context, for instance, in a series of disconnected words. In the case of the first argument, a special instance of affective reaction determined by the content of the idea was the unpleasantness experienced by many of the observers on account of the incongruous images suggested by 'tree' and 'vegetable.' Eight persons gave this as the only reason for finding the syllogism unpleasant, and two of these said that as soon as 'vegetable' was understood in the scientific sense the argument became pleasant; thus evidently wholly overlooking the fallacy. Fifteen others found the incongruity one among various reasons for the unpleasantness of the syllogism. Incongruity, as a source of unpleasantness, is evidently 'relational' in character; it involves what is commonly known as thought rather more than do the other instances of the content of ideas as affective source, where nothing more than the mere reproduction of an image is necessary.

(b) The truth or falsity of the statements. In the case of the second argument twelve persons reported that they found it unpleasant merely because they denied the truth either of the conclusion, or of the conclusion and one of the premises. Eight persons gave the falsity of the conclusion in (3) as their only reason for disliking the syllogism, and three mentioned it as one among other reasons. Three observers reported the falsity of the conclusion, in (5), as the only source of unpleasantness, and five gave it as one source. What mental processes are involved in recognizing that a statement is false? Our data throw light on this problem in a few cases only. The conclusion of (2), that day-laborers are virtuous, aroused in those observers who analyzed their consciousness of its falsity a sense of the incongruity of the subject and predicate; several reported that they had a mental picture of a gang of workmen, dirty, quarrelsome, and disorderly. In other cases it is probable that the consciousness of incongruity was present without involving any images. The conclusion of (3), that only criminals should be put under restraint, instantly suggested to most of the observers who were disturbed by its falsity the idea of insane persons at large; in three cases the idea of a particular insane person. Here the hitch came between the word 'only' in the conclusion and the thought of the insane, and the feeling not merely of incongruity but of incompatibility or contradiction was aroused. Into the more ultimate nature of these "feelings' our data do not allow us to go. In the case of (5), those observers who were disturbed by the falsity of the conclusion that logic does not improve