ABSTRACT
The recent interest in intuitive processes (e.g., Glöckner & Witteman, chapter 1, this volume; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) sparks the question of how to best measure the intrinsic properties of intuition. While intuition encompasses cognitive processes (e.g., pattern recognition and memory processes), it is also widely accepted that affective reactions are a part of and contribute to intuitive processes (Böhm & Brun, 2008; Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2002). Several influential dual processing theories suggest that affect is a critical component of intuitive processes (Epstein, 1994; Kahneman, 2003; Reyna, 2004), and researchers who identify intuition as a “gut feeling” emphasize this link to affect in their conceptualization of automatic intuitive processes (de Vries, Holland, & Witteman, 2008). Price and Norman (2008) view intuition as a conscious feeling that informs decision making without conscious access to the causes of the feeling. To equate intuitive with affective processing, however, might be premature. Camerer, Loewenstein, and Prelec (2005) point out that a more useful framework recognizes that processing type (i.e., controlled vs. automatic) and processing content (cognitive vs. affective) are separate – although often overlapping – constructs. The relationship between intuition and affective experiences is undoubtedly strong yet rather complex.
