affect heuristic

 The affect heuristic is a reliance on feelings in decision-making.

An example of the affect heuristic is a group's support for hiring a leader based on a variety of good feelings or a "gut reaction" rather than a systematic analysis of factors predictive or successful leadership.

A summary of the affect heuristic can be found in the work of Paul Slovic and his colleagues (2002).

Reference

Slovic, P., Finucane, M., Peters, E., & MacGregor, D. G. (2002). The affect heuristic. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 397–420). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.025