Affect Heuristic

The idea that representations of objects and events in people’s minds are tagged to varying degrees with affect (emotion/mood). When people make judgments or decisions, they refer to an “affect pool” containing all positive and negative tags consciously or unconsciously associated with these representations. In short, affective tags to objective and events serve as cues/short-cuts for important judgments.

Reference:

Slovic, P., Finucane, M. L., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2007). The affect heuristic. European Journal of Operational Research, 177(3), 1333-1352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2005.04.006