ABSTRACT
A nyone who has ever made an important life decision-about a partner, house, career, investment, and so forth-knows that intuition plays an important role therein. Even though people may be aware of the fact that they should make important decisions in a rational, consequential manner, and even if they try hard to do so, the reality is that when making these choices and decisions, people are often overwhelmed by preferences toward some of the options that they cannot easily verbalize. For example, when buying a house, the rst impression of the house seems to be crucial. These rst intuitive impressions are often based on people’s initial emotional response, which does not require extensive cognitive deliberation. If it doesn’t feel right, the chances are slim that a person acts on it. When the click is there, however, that person is easily prepared to overspend on it. This chapter reviews some of the emotional processes that play a role during decision processes and delineates how emotions may operate in an intuitive manner. For more general reviews of the role of affect and emotion in decision making, we refer the reader to Finucane, Peters, and Slovic (2003); Isen (2000); Ketelaar (2004, 2006); Loewenstein and Lerner (2003); and Pieters and Van Raaij (1988).
