ABSTRACT
The effects of judges’ subjective emotional reactions on their inferences have been considered in numerous areas of research and theory, including cognitive inconsistency, interpersonal attraction, communication and persuasion, social comparison, and attribution. A person’s emotional state may be a previously conditioned subjective response to either an external stimulus object or an internal representation of an object recalled from memory. In a study by T. S. Pittman, subjects were asked to prepare and deliver a counterattitudinal speech under conditions in which they either did or did not anticipate receiving electric shocks as part of a second experiment to be conducted. A judge’s estimate of his liking for another person is often assumed to be mediated by, if not based upon, his subjective affective reaction to this person. For example, a judge who is asked how well he likes another individual may base this inference on the feelings he recalls having in the presence of the other.
