Affect Heuristic

What is it?

The affect heuristic is the tendency to let a quick feeling of good or bad about something stand in for a careful judgment of its risks and benefits. Paul Slovic, Melissa Finucane and colleagues showed that when people like an activity or technology, they tend to see it as both low in risk and high in benefit; when they dislike it, as risky and of little use, even though risk and benefit are often unrelated in reality. In their experiments, information about an item's benefits alone also shifted judgments of its risk, and time pressure strengthened this link. The feeling arrives first and colours the analysis that follows. In decisions, it shapes how people judge investments in companies they admire, candidates they warm to, medical treatments or places to live. It tends to get worse under time pressure, when the option carries a vivid image or story, and when you are already emotionally invested in it.