As a politician who has increasingly marginalized blacks, "he is the worst possible choice for mayor of this city," says Bill Tatum, the 65-year-old publisher of the New York Amsterdam News, a weekly that caters to a black readership. "He has been lulled by a white majority into what psychologists call the logic-tight compartment that says: 'I am right and no other opinion can enter here.'

This case, therefore, does not become easier because respondents were convicted for their "actions" in refusing to send their children to the public high school; in this context, belief and action cannot be neatly confined in logic-tight compartments.

Beyond the power of emotions and the role of our prejudice, there are several other aspects of human personality functioning which affect our human relations. One psychological mechanism that is often apparent is the "logic-tight compartment" which is a means for us to conceal from ourselves logical inconsistencies in our thoughts and behavior.