Feeling
and
Thinking
Preferences
Need
No
Inferences
R. B.
ZAJONC
University
of
Michigan
ABSTRACT:
Affect
is
considered
by
most contempo-
rary
theories
to be
postcognitive, that
is, to
occur
only
after
considerable cognitive operations have been
ac-
complished.
Yet a
number
of
experimental
results
on
preferences,
attitudes,
impression formation,
and
de-_
cision
making,
as
well
as
some
clinical
phenomena,
suggest
that
affective
judgments
may be
fairly
inde-
pendent
of,
and
precede
in
time,
the
sorts
of
percep-
tual
and
cognitive
operations
commonly assumed
to be
the
basis
of
these
affective
judgments.
Affective
re-
actions
to
stimuli
are
often
the
very
first
reactions
of
the
organism,
and for
lower organisms they
are the
dominant reactions.
Affective
reactions
can
occur
without extensive perceptual
and
cognitive
encoding,
are
made with greater
confidence
than cognitive
judg-
ments,
and
can be
made sooner. Experimental
evi-
dence
is
presented demonstrating that reliable
affec-
tive discriminations
(like-dislike
ratings)
can be
made
in the
total absence
of
recognition memory (old-new
judgments).
Various
differences
between judgments
based
on
affect
and
those
based
on
perceptual
and
cognitive processes
are
examined.
It is
concluded
that
affect
and
cognition
are
under
the
control
of
sepa-
rate
and
partially
independent
systems that
can
influ-
ence
each other
in a
variety
of
ways,
and
that both
constitute independent sources
of
effects
in
information
processing.
The
intellectual contact between psychology
and
poetry
is
scarce
and,
when
it
takes
place,
often
tends
to be
exploitative.
If we
happen
to
come
across
a
poem
that
appears
to
support
one of our
favorite
generalizations,
we are
tempted
to
cite
it
(not
as
evidence,
of
course,
but
more
in the
form
of a
testimonial).
Or we
might
confer
upon
it the
status
of an
epigraph
in one of our
forth-
coming
chapters (commonly,
to the
detriment
of
both
the
poem
and the
chapter),
But
when
poetry
disagrees with
us we are
apt
to
ignore
the
conflict
altogether.
Nevertheless, this paper begins with
a
poem
by E. E.
Cummings
(1973),
the first
stanza
of
which
affirms
a
premise tacitly
rejected
by
psychology many decades
ago:
Vol.
35,
No.
2,
1S1-17S
since
feeling
is first
who
pays
any
attention
to the
syntax
of
things
will never wholly
kiss
you (p.
160)
In it,
Cummings takes
for
granted that
feelings
are
primary
and,
by
implication, that they
are
fundamental.
They
are
precedent
to the
intellec-
tive
qualities
and
elements
of
experience,
and
they
are
nearer
to its
essence: They
are
nearer
to an
inner
"truth."
In
contrast,
contemporary psychology regards
feelings
as
last.
Affect
is
postcognitive.
It is
elicited
only
after
considerable processing
of in-
formation
has
been accomplished
(see
Figure
1).
An
affective
reaction, such
as
liking, disliking, pref-
erence, evaluation,
or the
experience
of
pleasure
or
displeasure,
is
based
on a
prior cognitive
pro-
cess
in
which
a
variety
of
content discriminations
are
made
and
features
are
identified,
examined
for
their value,
and
weighted
for
their
contributions.
Once this analytic task
has
been completed,
a
computation
of the
components
can
generate
an
overall
affective
judgment.
Before
I can
like
something
I
must have some knowledge about
it,
and in the
very
least,
I
must have
identified
some
of
its
discriminant
features.
Objects must
be
cognized
before
they
can be
evaluated,
Most
of us
will
not be
deeply distressed
by
dis-
covering
that
our
current theories
are in
conflict
This
article
was the
Distinguished
Scientific
Contribution
Award address given
at the
meeting
of
the
American
Psychological Association,
New
York,
New
York,
Sep-
tember
2,
1979.
It was
prepared with
the
support
of a
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
I
benefited greatly
by
discussing
these
ideas
with
several
people,
and I am
very indebted
to
them.
I am
especially
grateful
to
Hazel
Markus,
Phoebe Ellsworth,
Allan
Paivio,
and
Robyn
Dawes,
who all
made extensive
and
helpful
comments
on an
earlier
draft.
Requests
for
reprints
should
be
sent
to R. B.
Zajonc,
Research Center
for
Group Dynamics, University
of
Michi-
gan,
Ann
Arbor, Michigan 48106.
AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST
•
FEBRUARY
1980
• 1S1
Copyright
1980
by
the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0003
-066X/80/3
S02-0151
$00.7
5
with
a
controversial poet
of the
1920s.
But
con-
temporary psychology
not
only contradicts
Cum-
mings,
it
also contradicts
one of its
very
own
founding
fathers.
Thirty years
before
Cummings
published
his
poem
on
feelings, Wundt (1907)
wrote
in a
similar vein:
When
any
physical
process
rises
above
the
threshold
of
consciousness,
it is the
affective
elements which
as
soon
as
they
are
strong
enough,
first
become
noticeable.
They
begin
to
force
themselves energetically into
the fixation
point
of
consciousness
before
anything
is
perceived
of the
ideational
elements^.
. . .
They
are
sometimes
states
of
pleasurable
or
unpleasurable
character,
sometimes
they
are
predominantly states
of
strained expectation.
. . .
Often
there
is
vividly
present
...
the
special
affective
tone
of the
forgotten
idea, although
the
idea
itself
still
remains
in the
background
of
consciousness.
...
In a
similar
manner
. . . the
clear apperception
of
ideas
in
acts
of
cognition
and
recognition
is
always
preceded
by
feelings,
(pp. 243-244)
Whatever happened
to
Wundt's
affective
pri-
macy
idea?
Is
there compelling evidence
to
reject
it? - Or to
accept
it, for
that
matter?
Strictly
speaking,
we
have
no
better evidence today than
Wundt
had in
1896. Perhaps
a
bit
better.
In
part,
my
concern
in
this paper
is
with
Wundt's
assertion. More specifically, building
on
the
scanty evidence
we now
have,
I
have tried
to
develop some
notions
about
the
possible
ways
in
which
affect
is
processed
as
part
of
experience
and
have attempted
to
distinguish
affect
from
process-
ing
of
information
that
does
not
have
affective
qualities.
This article
is
confined
to
those aspects
of
affect
and
feeling
that
are
generally involved
in
1
The
italics
are
mine.
The
original
is
even more
to
the
point.
"Affective
elements"
were
"Gefuhlselemente,"
and the
italicized part
of the
citation
was
"ehe
noch
von
den
Vorstellungselementen
irgend
etwas
wahrgenommcn
wird"
(Wundt,
1905,
p.
262).
2
It is a
fact
that
only
12
years
after
the first
edition
of
Wundt's
Grundriss
was
published,
Nakashima
(1909a;
1909b)
tested
Wundt's
assertion
by
collecting reaction
times
of
psychophysical
(pitch, hue, temperature, etc.)
and
affective
(preference)
judgments made
on the
same sets
of
stimuli.
He
did not find
shorter reaction times
for
judgments
of
preference than
for
judgments
of
pitch, hue,
temperature, etc.,
and
thus disagreed with
Wundt
with
regard
to the
primacy
of
feelings.
But his
study
alone
could
not
have buried Wundt's idea. Actually,
Naka-
shima's
data
were rather inconclusive, since
he
failed
to
control
for
levels
of
discriminability
associated with
the
two
types
of
judgments. Thus,
for
example, subjects
can
detect very small
differences
in hue yet
feel
quite indif-
ferent
in
their
preference
for
stimuli
that
differ
so
little.
Since
reaction times
for
comparisons vary
with
the
size
of
the
difference,
these times
can be
compared meaning-
fully
only
if the
stimuli
are
preselected
so
that
difference
thresholds
for the two
types
of
judgments
are the
same.
preferences.
These
aspects
are
reflected
in the
answers
to
such questions
as "Do you
like
this
person?" "How
do you
feel
about capital punish-
ment?" "Which
do you
prefer,
Brie
or
Camem-
bert?"
"Are
you
pleased with
the
review your
recent
book received?"
In
short,
I
deal with some
hot
cognitions
(as
Abelson [1963] christened
them)
and try to
distinguish
them
from
the
cold
ones.
The
class
of
feelings
considered here
is
that
involved
in the
general quality
of
behavior
that
underlies
the
approach-avoidance
distinction.
Thus,
for the
present purposes, other emotions
such
as
surprise, anger, guilt,
or
shame, which
have been identified
in the
literature
and
exten-
sively analyzed
by
Tomkins
(1962,
1963),
Izard
(1977),
and
others,
are
ignored.
Unlike experimental
psychologists,
3
social psy-
chologists
are
deeply concerned with
affect
and
with
hot
cognitions.
The
extensive work
on
atti-
tudes, research
on
cognitive dissonance
and
cog-
3
Contemporary cognitive psychology simply ignores
af-
fect.
The
words
affect,
attitude,
emotion,
feeling,
and
sentiment
do not
appear
in the
indexes
of any of the
major works
on
cognition (Anderson, 1976; Anderson
&
Bower, 1973; Bobrow
&
Collins,
1975;
Crowder,
1976;
Kintsch,
1974;
Lachman,
Lachman,
&
Butterfield,
1979;
Norman
&
Rumelhart,
1975;
Schank
&
Abelson, 1977;
Tulving
&
Donaldson,
1972).
Nor do
these concepts
appear
in
Neisser's
(1967) original work
that
gave
rise
to
the
cognitive revolution
in
experimental
psychology.
And
in
the six
volumes
and the
2,133 pages
of the
Handbook
of
Learning
and
Cognitive
Processes (Estes,
1975-1978),
there
is
only
one
entry
for
affect
and
only
one for
attitude.
It is
worth noting that both
of
these entries
are in
Volume
3
in a
contribution written
by a
social psychologist.
In
the
last
three
volumes—those
principally
devoted
to
cog-
nition—there
are no
references
to
affect
whatsoever.
The
notable exceptions
are
Handler's
(1975)
work
on
thought
and
emotion, Neisser's 1976
essay,
and
Miller
and
Johnson-Laird's (1976)
recent
volume
on
language
and
perception
from
which
the
following revealing quotation
is
taken:
The
information-processing system
that
emerges
from
these remarks
is
fearfully
cognitive
and
dispassionate.
It can
collect information, remember
it,
and
work
toward objectives,
but it
would have
no
emotional
re-
action
to
what
is
collected,
remembered,
or
achieved.
Since
in
this respect
it is a
poor model
of a
person,
we
should
add at
least
one
more predicate
to
this
list
of
those
that
take
"person"
as
their
first
argument.
We
will
use
Feel (person,
x)
to
indicate
that
people have
feelings
as
well
as
perceptions, memories,
and
intentions.
It
might
be
possible
to
subsume Feel under Perceive
on
the
grounds that
our
feelings
are a
special
class
of
per-
ception
of
inner states.
Or we
might discuss feelings
under
Remember,
the
recognition
that
some
word
or
object
is
familiar,
is
after
all,
a
matter
of
feeling
a
certain
way
about
it. Or,
since
we
have already
jecog-
nized
that there
is a
strong
affective
component
to our
intentions,
we
might
link Feel
to
Intend.
...
All
these
1S2 •
FEBRUARY
1980
•
AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST
PHYSICAL
ENCODING
HIGHER
ORDER
ENCODING
COGNITIVE
REPRESENTATIONS
OF
STIMULUS
INFORMATION
AFFECTIVE
REACTION
I
1
p+(JUDGMENTJ
Figure
1.
Typical
information-processing model
of
affect.
nitive
balance,
the
Schachter
and
Singer
(1962)
studies
on
emotion,
and
Heider's
(1958)
attempts
to
describe
the
cognitive representation
of
affect
that characterizes interpersonal relationships
are
all
clear manifestations
of
this
concern.
4
There
are
practically
no
social phenomena
that
do not
implicate
affect
in
some
important
way.
Affect
dominates
social
interaction,
and it is the
major
currency
in
which
social
intercourse
is
transacted.
The
vast majority
of our
daily conversations entail
the
exchange
of
information about
our
opinions,
preferences,
and
evaluations.
And
affect
in
these
conversations
is
transmitted
not
only
by the
verbal
channel
but by
nonverbal cues
as
well-—cues
that
may,
in
fact,
carry
the
principal components
of
considerations
testify
to the
systematic
importance
of
this psychological predicate.
Nevertheless,
we
will
have
little
to
say
about Feel
in the
following
pages,
(pp.
111-112)
Thus,
Miller
and
Johnson-Laird explicitly
acknowledge
the
significance
of
feelings
as
part
of
experience,
yet
they
decide
to
devote
minimal
attention
to
them.
Their
de-
cision
is
noteworthy
in the
light
of
their belief that "Feel
is an
indispensable
predicate
for any
complete
psychology
and
that
it
probably
lies much closer than
Perceive,
Re-
member,
and
Intend
to the
basic sources
of
energy
that
keep
the
whole
system
running"
(p.
112).
Beyond these volumes there
are
some isolated theoreti-
cal
attempts
directed toward
the
understanding
of the
role
of
motivational
and
emotional
factors
in
perception
and
cognition
(Broadbent,
1977;
Erdelyt,
1974;
Posner
&
Snyder,
197Sa).
4
While such studies
as
those
of
Byrne
(1961),
Berscheid
and
Walster (1978),
or
Rubin (1973), which deal
with
interpersonal
attraction,
also
have
a
concern
with-affect,
they
do not
contain specific analyses
of how
affect
is
represented
as
part
of
experience.
And in
studies
that
compare
the
effects
of
conditions
that
differ
on the
affec-
tive dimension (such
as
self-
vs.
nonself-relevance,
ego-
involvement),
it is
generally
not the
affective
quality
per
se in
these conditions that
is
examined
as the
major source
of
variation.
-
information
about
affect.
It is
much less impor-
tant
for us to
know whether someone
has
just said
"You
are a
friend"
or
"You
are a fiend"
than
to
know
whether
it was
spoken
in
contempt
or
with
affection.
Argyle
and his
colleagues (Argyle,
Sal-
ter, Nicholson, Williams,
&
Burgess, 1970) found
that
22
times
more variance
is
accounted
for by
the
tone
of
one's voice than
by the
content
of
the
utterance when people
are
asked
to
interpret
utterances.
In
fact, even when
the
content
of
recorded
utterances
is
nearly completely obliter-
ated
by
means
of
electronic masking,
filtering, or
random
splicing
of the
tape,
subjects still
can
encode
the
emotions expressed
in
these utterances
quite
reliably
(Dawes
&
Kramer,
1966;
Scherer,
Koivumaki,
&
Rosenthal,
1972).
And we
have
no
difficulty
in
identifying emotions expressed
by
members
of
unknown cultures speaking unknown
languages.
In a
recent
volume
on
person per-
ception,
Schneider,
Hastorf,
and
Ellsworth (1979)
noted
that "inferences based
on
nonverbal cues
are
primarily
inferences
about relationships
and
feelings,
and
thus
are
among
the
most important
inferences
we
make"
(p.
142).
One
cannot
be
introduced
to a
person without experiencing
some
immediate
feeling
of
attraction
or
repulsion
and
without
gauging such
feelings
on the
part
of the
other.
We
evaluate each other
constantly,
we
evaluate
each
others'
behavior,
and we
evaluate
the
motives
and the
consequences
of
their
behavior.
And
you
have already made
up
your mind about
this
paper!
Nor is the
presence
of
affect
confined
to
social
perception.
There
are
probably very
few
percep-
tions
and
cognitions
in
everyday
life
that
do not
have
a
significant
affective
component,
that
aren't
hot,
or in the
very least tepid,
And
perhaps
all
AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST
•
FEBRUARY
1980
•
153
perceptions contain some
affect.
We do not
just
see
"a
house":
we see "a
handsome
house,"
"an
ugly house,"
or "a
pretentious
house."
We do
not
just read
an
article
on
attitude
change,
on
cognitive
dissonance,
or on
herbicides.
We
read
an
"exciting" article
on
attitude
change,
an
"impor-
tant"
article
on
cognitive dissonance,
or a
"trivial"
article
on
herbicides.
And the
same goes
for a
sunset,
a
lightning
flash, a flower, a
dimple,
a
hangnail,
a
cockroach,
the
taste
of
quinine, Sau-
mur,
the
color
of
earth
in
Umbria,
the
sound
of
traffic
on
42nd
Street,
and
equally
for the
sound
of
a
1000-Hz
tone
and the
sight
of the
letter
Q.
5
Feeling
and
Thinking
According
to the
prevalent models
for
affect
(e.g.,
Figure
1),
preferences
are
formed
and
expressed
only
after
and
only
as a
result
of
considerable
prior
cognitive activity.
How
fully
and
completely
must objects
be
cognized before they
can be
evalu-
ated?
I
argue, along with Wundt
and
Cummings,
that
to
arouse
affect,
objects need
to be
cognized
very
little—in
fact, minimally.
In
order
to
consider
this
possibility more spe-
cifically
it is
important
to
distinguish between
thoughts
and
feelings.
At the
genotypic level,
this
distinction
is not an
easy
one to
make,
for it
hovers
dangerously near
the
mind-body
duality.
Some
conceptual elements
of
this distinction, how-
ever,
may be
identified
for
purposes
of
clarity.
While
feelings
and
thoughts both involve energy
and
information,
the first
class
of
experiences
is
heavier
on
energy, whereas
the
second
is
heavier
on
information (e.g.,
Inhelder
&
Piaget,
1QS8;
pp.
347-348).
In the
pure case,
the
analysis
of
feelings
attends
primarily
to
energy transforma-
tions,
for
example,
the
transformation
of
chemical
or
physical
energy
at the
sensory
level
into
auto-
nomic
or
motor output.
In
contrast,
the
analysis
of
thoughts
focuses
principally
on
information
transformations.
In
nearly
all
cases, however,
5
This
conjecture probably does
not
apply
to
incidental
perceptions where
the
attentive processes
are at
minimum,
although
it is not
inconceivable
that
the
traces
of
these
incidental
perceptions
still
might
recruit
affect
upon
re-
trieval
and
thus
become
hot.
In
fact,
Izard
(1979)
as-
sumes that some
emotion
is
always present
in
conscious-
ness. Normally,
it is the
emotion
of
"interest"
that
domi-
nates behavior.
This
emotion,
which directs
and
sustains
attention
and
exploration,
is
absent
only
when
other
emo-
tions
such
as
distress
or
anger
"achieve
consciousness"
(p.
16S).
feeling
is not
free
of
thought,
nor is
thought
free
of
feelings.
Considerable cognitive activity most
often
accompanies
affect,
and
Schachter
and
Singer
(1962)
consider
it a
necessary
factor
of the
emo-
tional
experience. Thoughts enter
feelings
at
vari-
ous
stages
of the
affective
sequence,
and the
con-
verse
is
true
for
cognitions. Feelings
may be
aroused
at any
point
of the
cognitive process:
registration,
encoding,
retrieval,
inference, etc.
But
this converse relation
is not
totally
symmetrical.
I
will
later
argue
for
Wundt's
conjecture
that
affect
is
always present
as a
companion
to
thought,
whereas
the
converse
is not
true
for
cognition.
In
fact,
it is
entirely possible
that
the
very
first
stage
of the
organism's
reaction
to
stimuli
and the
very
first
elements
in
retrieval
are
affective.
It is
further
possible that
we can
like something
or be
afraid
of it
before
we
know
precisely
what
it is
and
perhaps even
without
knowing what
it is.
And
when
we try to
recall, recognize,
or
retrieve
an
episode,
a
person,
a
piece
of
music,
a
story,
a
name,
in
fact,
anything
at
all,
the
affective
quality
of the
original input
is the first
element
to
emerge.
To be
sure,
the
early
affective
reaction
is
gross
and
vague.
Nevertheless,
it is
capable
of
influencing
the
ensuing cognitive process
to a
sig-
nificant
degree.
Needless
to
say, after some cog-
nitive
activity
has
been executed,
there
may be
new
feeling
to the
stimulus.
But the
fact
that
cognitions
can
produce
feelings—as
in
listening
to a
joke,
for
example, where
affect
comes
at the
end
with
a
punch line
or as a
result
of
post-
decision
dissonance—need
not
imply
that
cogni-
tions
are
necessary components
of
affect.
What
I
want
to
argue
is
that
the
form
of
experience that
we
came
to
call
feeling
accompanies
all
cognitions,
that
it
arises early
in the
process
of
registration
and
retrieval,
albeit
weakly
and
vaguely,
and
that
it
derives
from
a
parallel,
separate,
and
partly
in-
dependent
system
in the
organism.
At
the
phenotypic
level,
we can
support
Wundt's
conjecture
by
spelling
out in
somewhat greater
detail some
of the
ways
in
which
affective
judg-
ments
and
reactions,
or hot
cognitions,
differ
from
their
cold cognitive counterparts, keeping
in
mind
that
the first
category
is
represented
by the
proto-
type
"I
like Joe,"
and the
second
by
"Joe
is a
boy."
Affective
reactions
are
primary. Wundt
and
Cummings
are
joined
by
Bartlett
and
Osgood
in
the
view
that
feelings
come
first.
Bartlett (1932)
observes
in his
book
on
remembering,
1S4 •
FEBRUARY
1Q80
•
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Attitude names
a
complex
psychological state
or
process
which
.it
is
very hard
to
describe
in
more elementary
psychological
terms.
It is,
however,
as I
have
often
indicated,
very largely
a
matter
of
feeling,
or
affect.
. . .
[When]
a
subject
is
being
asked
to
remember,
very
often
the
first
thing
that
emerges
is
something
of the
nature
of
attitude.
The
recall
is
then
a
construction,
made
largely
on the
basis
of
this
attitude,
and its
gen-
eral
effect
is
that
of a
justification
of the
attitude,
(pp.
206-207)
In his
analysis
of
environments
as
perceptual
targets, Ittelson (1973) asserts
that
"the
first
level
of
response
to the
environment
is
affective.
The
direct emotional impact
of the
situation,
perhaps
largely
a
global
response
to the
ambiance,
very
generally governs
the
directions taken
by
subse-
quent relations with
the
environment.
It
sets
the
motivational
tone
and
delimits
the
kinds
of
experiences
one
expects
and
seeks"
(p.
16).
Pref-
erences influence language comprehension
and
lan-
guage
production
as
well
(Premack,
1976).
Os-
good (1962)
was
impressed with
the
primacy
of
affect
in a
different
way:
First,
I
must confess
that,
when
we
began
this
research
over
ten
years
ago,
I
had the
expectation
that
the
major
factors
of the
semantic space would represent
the
ways
in
which
our
sensory
apparatus
divides
up the
world—
e.g.,
would
parallel Boring's "dimensions
of
consciousness."
...
The
accumulating
data
have
proved
my
expectation
wrong
. . . the
dominant factors
of
evaluation,
potency
and
activity
that keep appearing certainly have
a re-
sponse-like
character,
reflecting
the
ways
we can
react
to
meaningful
events
rather than
.the
ways
we can
receive
them.
But
these
major
factors
also
seem
to
have
an
affective
as
well
as
a
response-like character.
As a
matter
of
fact,
the
similarity
of
our
factors
to
Wundt's
(1896)
tridimen-
sional theory
of.
jeeling—pleasantness-unpleasantness,
strain-relaxation,
and
excitement-quiescence—has
been
pointed
out to
me." (pp.
19-20)
It is
significant
also
that
at
least three social-
psychological conceptions labeled
"cognitive"
con-
sistency theories
focus
not on
consistency
of
con-
tent
but on the
consistency
of
affect
(Abelson
&
Rosenberg, 1958;
Heider,
1958; Osgood
&
Tan-
nenbaum,
1955).
Decisions
are
another
area
where thought
and
affect
stand
in
tension
to
each other.
It is
gen-
erally
believed that
all
decisions
require
some
conscious
or
unconscious processing
of
pros
and
cons. Somehow
we
have come
to
believe,
tauto-
logically,
to be
sure, that
if a
decision
has
been
made,
then
a
cognitive process must have pre-
ceded
it. Yet
there
is no
evidence
that
this
is
indeed
so. In
fact,
for
most
decisions,
it is ex-
tremely
difficult
to
demonstrate
that
there
has
actually been
any
prior cognitive process whatso-
ever.
One
might argue that these
are
cases
in
which
one
alternative
so
overwhelmingly dominates
all
the
others
that only
a
minimum
of
cognitive
participation
is
required
and
that
that
is why the
cognitive
involvement
preceding such decisions
is
so
hard
to
detect.
But
this argument must con-
front
the
observation
that
if
all
decisions involve
the
evaluation
of
alternatives,
then
when choices
appear
quite
lopsided
to the
decision
maker,
it is
even
more important
to
scrutinize
the
alternatives
that appear
inferior,
for it is
entirely possible
that
one
of
them possesses some hidden
but
overriding
virtue.
It is
therefore
not
without merit
to
sup-
pose
that
in
many
decisions
affect
plays
a
more
important role than
we are
willing
to
admit.
We
sometimes delude ourselves that
we
proceed
in a
rational
manner
and
weigh
all the
pros
and
cons
of
the
various alternatives.
But
this
is
probably
seldom
the
actual
case.
Quite often
"I
decided
in
favor
of X" is no
more than
"I
liked
X."
Most
of
the
time,
information
collected about alterna-
tives serves
us
less
for
making
a
decision than
for
justifying
it
afterward.
Dissonance
is
prevalent
just
because complete
and
thorough computation
is
not
performed before
the
decision
(Festinger,
1964).
We buy the
cars
we
"like,"
choose
the
jobs
and
houses
that
we find
"attractive,"
and
then
justify
those choices
by
various reasons that
might appear convincing
to
others
who
never
fail
to
ask us,
"Why
this
car?"
or
"Why this
house?"
We
need
not
convince
ourselves.
8
We
know what
we
like.
In a
study
of
consumer behavior,
Quandt
(1956)
found
that
buyers
often
do not
attend
to
the
features
of the
article that they consider cri-
terial
for
their
decisions
and
often
base
their
choices
on
features
that
they
previously
dismissed
as
irrelevant,
And
Kahneman
and
Tversky
(1979)
have demonstrated that numerous axioms
of de-
cision
theory that give decisions their rational
flavor
are
blatantly
contradicted
by
experimental
results.
»Phoebe
Ellsworth
(Note
1)
illustrates
the
role
of
affect
in her own
recent
decision
experience.
In
trying
to
decide whether
to
accept
a
position
at
another uni-
versity,
she
says,
"I get
half
way
through
my
Irv
Janis
balance
sheet
and
say,
'Oh
hell, it's
not
coming
out
right!
Have
to find a way to get
some
pluses
over
on the
other
side!'
"
AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGIST
•
FEBRUARY
1980
• 155