Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences.
Abstract
ABSTRACT: Affect is considered by most contempo-rary theories to be postcognitive, that is, to occur only after considerable cognitive operations have been ac-complished. Yet a number of experimental results on preferences, attitudes, impression formation, and de-_ cision making, as well as some clinical phenomena, suggest that affective judgments may be fairly inde-pendent of, and precede in time, the sorts of percep-tual and cognitive operations commonly assumed to be the basis of these affective judgments. Affective re-actions to stimuli are often the very first reactions of the organism, and for lower organisms they are the dominant reactions. Affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding, are made with greater confidence than cognitive judg-
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Affective reactions are generated quickly and automatically and guide how people attend to, encode, and interpret various events.
“Affective reactions are generated quickly and automatically (Bargh et al., 1992; Zajonc, 1980), and guide how people attend to, encode, and interpret various events (Baumeister & Newman, 1994).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Zajonc, 1980
Affective impressions are generated quickly and automatically and play a central role in human judgment.
“Affective impressions are generated quickly and automatically (Bargh et al., 1992; Zajonc, 1980) and play a central role in human judgment (Lerner et al., 2015; Loewenstein et al., 2001; Slovic et al., 2007).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Zajonc, 1980
Basic affective reactions can be triggered unconsciously by subliminal stimuli in ordinary humans, and can remain unreportable as feelings even when they change behavior and subsequent judgments.
“There is also evidence that basic affective reactions can be triggered unconsciously by subliminal stimuli in ordinary humans, and can remain unreportable as feelings even when they go on to change a person’s behavior and subsequent judgments (Zajonc, 1980; Fischman and Foltin, 1992; Berridge and Winkielman, 2003; Winkielman and Berridge, 2004; Winkielman et al., 2005).”
From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Zajonc, 1980
Subliminal expressions do induce a valenced affective reaction in human viewers: positive to smiling faces and negative to angry faces.
“But subliminal expressions do induce a valenced affective reaction in human viewers: positive to smiling faces and negative to angry faces (Zajonc, 1980).”
From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Zajonc, 1980
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 146 · Cited by 8,094
- Authors
- Zajonc, R. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zajonc, R. B.
- Venue
- American Psychologist
- Published
- 1980-02
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 151-175
- ISSN
- 0003-066X (ISSN-L)
- 1935-990X
- OpenAlex
- W2042276900
- Cited by
- 8,094
- References
- 146
- Citations by year
- 2026: 161 · 2025: 142 · 2024: 174 · 2023: 181 · 2022: 207 · 2021: 271 · 2020: 248 · 2019: 265 · 2018: 288 · 2017: 227 · 2016: 269 · 2015: 303 · 2014: 319 · 2013: 297 · 2012: 331
- FWCI
- 49.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Psychologist (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Cognitive Science and Education Research
- Keywords
- affect, affective judgment, preferences, attitudes, impression formation, decision-making, affective reactions, cognitive processes
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
