The Affect Heuristic and Decision Making

The affect heuristic is a type of mental shortcut in which people make decisions that are heavily influenced by their current emotions. Essentially, your affect (a psychological term for emotional response) plays a critical role in the choices and decisions you make.

It might not come as much of a surprise to learn that your emotions influence all types of decisions, both big and small. After all, you might already know that you are more likely to take risks or try new things when you are happy, but less likely to go out on a limb when you're feeling glum. If you've ever gone with your "gut feeling" when faced with a difficult decision, you are probably relying on the affect heuristic.

In psychology, a heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to make decisions quickly and efficiently. In this case, it is the way you feel (your affect) toward a particular stimulus that influences the decisions you make.

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How It Works

Your feelings of the relative "goodness" or "badness" of a particular person, object, or activity impact the decisions that you ultimately make.

So how much of your emotions might influence your decision-making and what impact might it have on your life?

• Researchers have found that when you are in a positive emotional state, you are more likely to perceive an activity as having high benefits and low risks.
• If your emotional state is negative, on the other hand, you are more inclined to see the activity as being low in benefits and high in risk.

Example

Imagine a situation in which two children arrive at a local park to play. One child has spent a lot of time playing on swings at a neighbor's house, so he has nothing but positive feelings when he sees the swing set at the park. He immediately makes the decision that the swings will be fun (high benefit, low risk) and runs to play on the swings.

The other child, however, recently had a negative experience while playing on the swings at a friend's house. When he sees the swings at the park, he draws on this recent negative memory and decides that the swings are a bad choice (low benefit, high risk).

Impact of the Affect Heuristic

Much like other heuristics, the affect heuristic has its advantages and disadvantages. While such mental shortcuts allow people to make quick and often reasonably accurate decisions, they can also lead to poor decision-making.

Consider how advertising can sometimes make unhealthy activities such as smoking or eating unhealthy foods seem both positive and appealing. These ads can sometimes influence the emotions of consumers, which can lead to poor health decisions and risky behaviors that can have serious, long-term consequences.

A 1978 study by Fischhoff et al. played a significant role in the study of the affect heuristic. The researchers discovered that judgments of benefits and risks were negatively correlated—the greater the perceived benefit, the lower the perceived risk.

At the same time, the more risky behaviors seem, the less the perceived benefits were. Certain behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking were viewed as high-risk, low-benefit while other things such as antibiotics and vaccines were seen as high-benefit, low-risk.

Researchers have also discovered that emotions can also influence the judgments people make about statistical information. In one study, clinicians were presented with recidivism rates that were either presented as probabilities (such as 30%) or frequencies (such as 30 out of 100).

The clinicians rated mental health patients as presenting a higher risk when the numbers were presented as frequencies rather than probabilities. Why? Researchers suggest that presenting the data as frequencies lead to more extreme judgments on the part of clinicians because it creates a mental image of the individual lapsing back into their old behaviors.

A Word From Verywell

Clearly, the affect heuristic can have a powerful influence on decisions both large and small. So what can you do to prevent emotions from contributing to poor decision making? Simply being aware of the phenomenon might be helpful. Perhaps by being aware of your tendency to be swayed by your feelings and emotions, you will be better able to make more objective and clear-minded decisions in the future.

Research also suggests that talking to yourself in the third person can be an effective form of self-control. The next time you need to make a decision during an emotional moment, take a moment to talk silently to yourself using the third person. It might help you stay calm, collected, and level-headed, a strategy that may prevent bad decisions made in the heat of the moment.