Imagine you are a judge presiding over a prisoner’s parole case. You are listening to the inmate’s story, hearing about his behavior in prison, and you have a bad feeling. If you agree to parole, he could hurt someone else. Your hunch is that you should keep him locked up. So you deny parole. Your bad feeling, which is unpleasant affect, seems like evidence that your judgment was correct. But could your affect have misled you? This exact situation was the subject of a 2011 study of judges. Scientists in Israel found that judges were significantly more likely to deny parole to a prisoner if the
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