Psychologists have long known that humans can have perfectly contradictory beliefs, simultaneously.
Now, some people have doctrinaire beliefs; and, instead of processing 'feedback' from the real world appropriately, observations that negate the doctrine, they can take data and feelings either as outright confirmation of their doctrine or as weakness of their own heart, "temptations".
Over at Pam's House Blend, though, one gets a near PERFECT example of something less cognitive, maybe, than that, even.
This is how people can both feel compassion and revulsion at the same time, perhaps because they never really examined their feelings in any rational context. It really is an amazing thing.
Can we call it the Andrea Peyser phenomenon, as a pedagogical tool? Probably.
Friday, October 8, 2010
The Elasticity of the Human Mind: The Andrea Peyser Phenomenon
