affect heuristics

People encounter decision making and problem solving situations in every aspect of their lives, from cooking dinner to working on a project, from getting ready for a party to buying a new house, from gambling to exercising at the gym etc. They make use of ‘affect’ or emotional response, whenever such situations emerge. ‘Affect heuristic’ is a mental shortcut or a ‘rule of thumb’ that we use to make an instantaneous decision or judgement based on our present emotion. It saves time but can also lead to errors. People make decisions,usually without any further thinking and evaluation, about the goodness or badness of an act, object, person, event or situation. There may be more pros than cons to affect heuristics. However, the unexpected disadvantages of inaccurate heuristics are more alarming and detrimental when applied in the wrong situations.

People make judgements based on the negative and positive feelings that they associate with a stimulus. Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson (2000) claimed that affective sensitivities play a significant role in making risk/benefit judgements. Participants evaluated situations differently when presented information either about a possible benefit or a possible risk of nuclear power plants. When information indicating high benefit was presented, they inferred low risk (positive affect) and when high risk information content was presented, low benefit was perceived (negative affect). Similarly, when information indicating low benefit was presented, they inferred high risk (negative affect) and when low risk information content was presented, high benefit was perceived (positive affect) (Finucane et al.,2000).

We make many mistakes in emotionally based judgements because our feelings get in...

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...bs’ and ‘missiles’. Probably in a negative context. Now, think about the words ‘war horse’, ‘clean bombs’ and ‘peacekeeper missiles’. These words probably elicit more positive and less negative emotions, comparatively. The example above shows how explicitly affect heuristics influence our thought process and reasoning.

Your emotions override your rational thinking innumerable times a day. Many people are not even aware of the extent to which manipulation of affect heuristics influences them and their judgements. Sometimes, even the manipulation of the affect heuristics is delightful and satisfying, such as watching an entertaining commercial. However, people must also be aware of the pitfall of wrong and faulty judgements and decisions. They can change a most desirable outcome to a least desirable such as overspending on a product that may not be the best for you.