More than gut feelings? – A functional perspective on epistemic feelings in intuitive decision-making processes

Abstract

Intuitive decision-making relies on feelings, particularly in contexts characterised by uncertainty, complexity, or incomplete information. In such contexts, decisions made in the absence of deliberative reasoning are often described as being guided by gut feelings. While gut feelings refer to a broad range of affective experiences in decision-making, they can be further specified to include epistemic feelings. These are affective experiences related to the quality, accuracy, or reliability of one's own cognitive processes and play a central role in validating decisions and evaluating outcomes. This paper proposes a formal framework and categorizes epistemic feelings according to their functional roles and temporal positions within decision-making processes. It introduces a systematic distinction between prospect-based epistemic feelings, which arise during the selection of alternatives, and confirmatory epistemic feelings, which occur in response to decision outcomes. The proposed taxonomy offers a conceptual foundation for the operationalization and empirical investigation of these two classes of epistemic feelings, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the interplay between knowing and feeling in intuitive decision-making.

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