Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Affect heuristic
First formally identified by Epstein (1994), the role of affect in decision-making had been inferred by a few other studies (see Mowrer, 1960; Zajonc, 1980; Shafir, Osherson and Smith, 1989; Damasio 1994, Sloman,1996, Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, Welch, 2001) . However, it was first related to risk perception by Finucane, Alhkami, Slovic and Johnson (2000). In their article, the authors state “images, marked by positive and negative affective feelings, guide judgments in decision-making” (p.415). In other words, representations of objects and events are stored in the memory with a positive or negative tag. When people consult the memory for these objects or events, are actually consulting an “affective pool” that contains all positive and negative tags associated to the objects or events stored in the memory. The authors suggest that these positive and negative affective associations have different degrees.
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