Affect monitoring and the primacy of feelings in judgment

Multidisciplinary evidence suggests that people often make evaluative judgm ents by monitoring their feelings toward the target. This article examines, in the context of moderately complex and consciously accessible stimuli, t he judgmental properties of consciously monitored feelings. Results from fo ur studies show that, compared to cold, reason-based assessments of the tar get, the conscious monitoring of feelings provides judgmental responses tha t are (a) potentially faster, (b) more stable and consistent across individ uals, and importantly (c) more predictive of the number and valence of peop le's thoughts. These findings help explain why the monitoring of feelings i s an often diagnostic pathway to evaluation in judgment and decision making .