VALIDITY JUDGMENTS OF SYLLOGISMS IN RELATION TO TWO SETS OF INDIVIDUAL TERMS.

The syllogism was used as a vehicle to study the effects of formal logical quantifiers and affective verbal stimuli upon errors, time, and sureness ratings of validity judgments. Individual words were first rated by 70 subjects on Semantic Differential evaluative scales to obtain their affective values they were then combined in syllogisms to yield three levels of response incompatibility. Subjects also rated words on belief scales and, in a later session, the syllogistic conclusions containing incompatible or compatible word combiinations were rated on both belief and evaluative scales. The group which received relevant training showed relatively more improvement in their validity judgments of syllogisms with particular conclusions even though both groups had been told the usage of the formal logical quantifiers. Results indicated that two kinds of responses occurred during reasoning responses controlled by formal structural terms and responses controlled by affective terms. The former were relatively sensitive to training and exhibited gross changes. The latter were little influenced by training and exhibited moderate but stable response characteristics.