ABSTRACT
It is a truism in the history of science that the last thing to be studied is that which is closest to the scientist. If the stars were the first object of study, perhaps it was inevitable that research on the experience of thought and emotion would be long delayed. Even contemporary psychologists generally avoid dealing with consciousness—especially feelings and other experiential aspects of consciousness. We are better prepared to study the content of thought than the experience of thinking, preferring to relegate observations about experience itself to phenomenologists, poets, and drug addicts. Even investigators concerned with the role of emotion in social cognition have avoided focusing on experience, despite the fact that one of the most distinctive aspects of emotions is that they are felt. If there is a necessary ingredient in emotion, it is surely experience. One can have an emotion without doing anything or saying anything, but not without feeling anything. It is odd, therefore, that current accounts of emotion and social cognition have left out the experiential aspect altogether. But, while psychologists avoid focusing on conscious experience, the same may not be true of our subjects. Recent research suggests that affective and cognitive feelings are central to a surprising variety of judgments and decisions. Rather than being idle by-products of information processing, affective and cognitive feelings I argue are gainfully employed in the construction of everyday social judgments.
