← all facts
emotion
Your current mood dictates your tolerance for risk.
The affect heuristic means that your feelings act as a shortcut for making complex decisions.
When you feel positive, you perceive benefits as high and risks as low. When you feel negative, you perceive benefits as low and risks as high. You are not evaluating the facts; you are evaluating your emotional state.
Your gut feeling is often just a reflection of your mood, not the data.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Slovic, Finucane, Peters, and MacGregor, 2007, European Journal of Operational Research
- What the check found
- The definition is accurate and aligns with the seminal work by Slovic et al. (2007) in the European Journal of Operational Research. The 'not evaluating facts' phrasing describes the shortcut nature of the heuristic.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.