ABSTRACT
Only a few years ago I published a rather speculative paper entitled “Feeling and thinking” (Zajonc, 1980). The title also included the provocative postcolon suffix “Preferences need no inferences,” deliberately suggesting an occasional independence of emotion from cognition. In this paper, I tried to make an appeal for a more concentrated study of affective phenomena which have been ignored for decades, and at the same time to ease the heavy reliance on cognitive functions for the explanation of affect. The argument began with the general hypothesis that affect and cognition are separate and partially independent systems and that although they ordinarily function conjointly, affect could be generated without a prior cognitive process. It could, therefore, at times precede cognition in a behavioral chain. I based this proposition on a number of diverse findings and phenomena, none of which alone could clinch the argument, but all of them taken together pointed to a clear possibility of an affective independence and primacy, first advanced by Wundt (1907) and later reiterated by others (e.g., Izard, in press). Lazarus (1982) takes a very strong issue with all of this, and almost categorically rejects the likelihood of the independence of affect of cognition, let alone the possibility of an affective primacy. In this paper, I review Lazarus’ position and contrast it with mine.
