ABSTRACT
Although affect has long played a key role in many behavioral theories, it has rarely been recognized as an important component of human judgment and decision-making. Perhaps befitting its rationalistic origins, the main focus of descriptive decision research has been cognitive, rather than affective. When principles of utility maximization appeared to be descriptively inadequate, Simon (1956) oriented the field toward problem-solving and information-processing models based upon bounded rationality and concepts such as satisficing (as opposed to maximizing). The work of Tversky and Kahneman (1974) demonstrated how boundedly rational individuals employed heuristics such as availability, representativeness and anchoring and adjustment to make judgments, and how they used simplified strategies such as ‘elimination by aspects’ to make choices (Tversky, 1972). Other investigators elaborated the cognitive strategies underlying judgment and choice through models of constructed preferences (Slovic, 1995; Payne, Bettman & Johnson, 1992), dominance structuring (Montgomery, 1983) and comparative advantages (Shafir, Osherson & Smith, 1989). In 1993, the entire volume of the journal Cognition was dedicated to the topic of reason-based choice, in which it was argued that ‘Decisions ... are often reached by focusing on reasons that justify the selection of one option over another’ (Shafir, Simonson & Tversky, 1993, p34). Similarly, a recent state-of-the-art review was entitled ‘Decision Making from a Cognitive Perspective’ (Busemeyer, Hastie & Medin, 1995). In keeping with its title, it contained almost no references to the influence of affect on decisions.
