Affect –> Negative or Positive Emotion x Intensity

Attitude = Belief x Affect

Is a thing true or false, and if true, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

So

Belief +/- contributes to Attitude.

Beliefs have also two properties: early or late establishment (primacy) and importance – degree of relevance (to survival).

The really evil thing about a misguided belief (via disinformation or the manipulation of perception) is that if set in early (e.g., childhood indoctrination), all that follows may be made to set atop what have become basic principles.

George Orwell’s _Animal Farm_ uses “Two legs good, four legs bad” to make about the same point.

In social psychology, the term for look-up would be “Attitude-Behavior Correspondence”.

It has been a rich field for the narrowed.

Atheist Christopher Hitchens has in his decease on offer a marvelous volume about adherence to basic principles and related observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters

Kind words — actually: civil conversation — makes possible reconciliation by allowing discomfiting discoveries to be shared with one’s adversary, and later, former adversary, without fear of disaster or punishment. While its true that in much of the world, the “loyal lie” may account for one’s lifestyle and very life itself, the principle of facing an uncomfortable truth proves stronger than lies over time.

---

On many of these posts, the conversational partner has been Mohammed Dajani Daoudi who has been exploring a middle way in Islam beneath the banner of his Wasatia Movement.

–33–