Category
Emotion & Affective Science
20 free guides in this category.
11 guides
Affect & Decision‑Making
Affective Forecasting
The process of predicting how you will feel in the future, and the common biases that cause us to get it wrong.
Read guideEmotion Regulation Strategies
Learn the process of influencing your emotions to improve your well-being and make more deliberate decisions.
Read guideHot-Cold Empathy Gap
We struggle to predict how we'll behave in an emotional or physiological 'hot' state when we're currently in a calm 'cold' state, and vice versa.
Read guideIntegral vs. Incidental Affect
Learn the difference between feelings caused by a decision (integral) and unrelated background moods (incidental) that influence it.
Read guideMisattribution of Arousal
When we mistake the true source of our physical or emotional arousal, leading to surprising misinterpretations of our feelings.
Read guideMood & Decision-Making Style
Your current mood acts as a lens that shapes how you process information and make choices—often without you realizing it.
Read guidemood-congruence
Your current mood selectively filters what you remember, notice, and interpret—creating a self-reinforcing cycle where emotions shape thoughts and thoughts reinforce emotions.
Read guideSomatic Marker Hypothesis
A theory proposing that emotional bodily signals guide decision-making, often unconsciously, helping us navigate complex choices quickly.
Read guideSpecific Emotions & Risk Perception
How distinct feelings like anger, fear, and happiness systematically change your judgment of risks in predictable but counterintuitive ways.
Read guideAffect Heuristic
A mental shortcut where emotions guide judgments and decisions, leading us to perceive liked things as low-risk and high-benefit, and disliked things as high-risk and low-benefit.
Read guideThe HALT Method
A simple acronym (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) to check your physical and emotional state before making important decisions.
Read guide9 guides
Affect Misattribution & Incidental Affect
Affect-as-Information Hypothesis
Our feelings often act as a source of information, guiding our judgments and decisions as if they were objective data.
Read guideCognitive Load Misattribution
When your brain is overloaded, you're more likely to misidentify the source of your feelings and emotions.
Read guideMood and Cognitive Style
Your current mood shapes whether you think quickly and intuitively or slowly and analytically about decisions.
Read guideReduce Incidental Affect Bias
Learn practical techniques to stop unrelated moods, like bad weather or a recent argument, from coloring your important decisions.
Read guideWeather and Well-Being
Explore the surprising research on how incidental factors like sunshine and rain can temporarily influence your judgments about overall life satisfaction.
Read guideIncidental Affect and Spending
How unrelated emotions from one situation can unconsciously influence how much you're willing to spend in another.
Read guideMisattribution of Arousal
The tendency to mislabel physiological arousal from one source (like fear) as being caused by another (like attraction).
Read guideAffect Misattribution Mechanism
A cognitive process where we mistakenly attribute feelings from one source to an unrelated target, shaping judgments without our awareness.
Read guideIncidental Affect
The influence of your current, unrelated feelings—like a bad mood from traffic—on a new judgment or decision you have to make.
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