The Role of Affect in Decision Making

Abstract Until recently, emotions attracted little attention from decision researchers. Decision making was viewed as a cognitive process—a matter of estimating which of various alternative actions would yield the most positive consequences. Decision makers were assumed to evaluate the potential consequences of their decisions dispassionately and to choose actions that maximized the “utility” of those consequences. Once chosen, it was assumed that the utility-maximizing course of action would be implemented automatically. The critiques of traditional decision theory that emerged in the late 1960s under the heading of “behavioral decision theory” largely adhered to this cognitive perspective. The main thrust of…