Affect Heuristic

Definition

A judgment is said to be based on a heuristic when a person assesses a specified target attribute (e.g., the risk of an approaching stranger in the street) by substituting a related attribute that comes quickly to mind (e.g., intuitive feelings of fear or anxiety) for a more complex analysis (e.g., detailed reasons or calculations indicating why the risk is high or low).

The affect heuristic describes an aspect of human thinking whereby feelings serve as cues to guide judgments and decisions. In this sense, affect is simply a feeling of goodness or badness, associated with a stimulus object. Affective responses occur rapidly and automatically—note how quickly you sense the feelings associated with the word treasure or the word hate. Reliance on such feelings can be characterized as the affect heuristic.

Examples and Implications

A cartoon by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau shows two rather innocuous-looking strangers approaching each other on a street at night and trying to decide whether it's safe to acknowledge the other with a greeting. The bubbles above each man's head give the reader a view of their thought processes as they decide. Both are going through a checklist of risk factors (race, gender, hair length, style of dress, etc.) pertaining to the approaching person and a checklist of risk-mitigating factors (age over 40, carrying Fed Ex package, carrying briefcase, etc.). For both, the risk-mitigating factors outnumber the risk factors 4 to 3, leading the risk to be judged acceptable. The men greet each other.

What is interesting and perhaps amusing about this cartoon is that no one would judge the risk of meeting a stranger on a dark street this way, even if his or her life depended on making the right judgment. Instead [Page 16]this “risk assessment” would be done intuitively. The features of the approaching stranger would trigger positive or negative feelings, of reassurance or alarm. These feelings would be integrated quickly into an overall feeling of safety or concern, and that feeling would motivate behavior—“Good evening,” eye contact or not, perhaps even crossing the street. Reliance on feelings is an example of the affect heuristic.

The cartoon is psychologically important because it acknowledges, in part implicitly, that there are two ways people process information when making judgments and decisions. One way, called the analytic system, is conscious, deliberative, slow, and based on reasons, arguments, and sometimes even formulas or equations (e.g., the risk checklist). The other is fast, intuitive, based on associations, emotions, and feelings (affect); it is automatic and perhaps at an unconscious level. This is called the experiential system.

The experiential system and the analytic system are continually active in one's brain, cooperating and competing in what has been called “the dance of affect and reason.” Philosophers have been discussing the intricacies of this dance for centuries, often concluding that the analytic system enables one to be “rational,” whereas feelings and emotions “lead one astray.”

Today, this interplay between “the heart and the mind” is actively being studied by social and cognitive psychologists, decision theorists, neuroscientists, and economists. This scientific study has led to some new insights into thinking and rationality. Researchers now see that both systems are rational and necessary for good decisions. The experiential system helped human beings survive the long evolutionary journey during which science wasn't available to provide guidance. Early humans decided whether it was safe to drink the water in the stream by relying on sensory information, educated by experience. How does it look? Taste? Smell? What happened when I drank it before? In the modern world, people have come to demand more of risk assessment. Scientists now have tools such as analytic chemistry and toxicology to identify microscopic levels of contamination in water and describe what this means for people's health, now as they drink it and perhaps even decades into the future.

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