This book deals largely with the ways in which people's feelings influence their thoughts, memories, judgments, and actions. In the next two chapters, though, we will be concerned with the nature and origin of feelings: generally speaking, how feelings are experienced and what aspects of the situation give rise to these experiences.

As I indicated in the Introduction, when I use the term feeling in this book I'm not necessarily thinking of emotion as the latter concept is usually understood. Although there are exceptions, most psychologists basically conceive of an emotion as a complex sequence of responses to a personally relevant stimulus. These reactions occur throughout the brain and body and include cognitive evaluations, bodily and neural changes, motor impulses, and emotion-related thoughts, as well as a particular feeling. Moreover, psychologists usually regard emotions as being focused on a certain object or issue. In this sense, we're happy about something or afraid of something or envious of someone. In this book, however, the word feeling is synonymous with affect and refers only to conscious experience rather than to the full constellation of emotional reactions. Furthermore, a feeling may or may not have to do with a particular object or issue or happening. People might have good feelings as the result of a specific event: perhaps because their team won a game or because they did well on an assigned task. But affect can also be produced by vague, barely noticed, or even subliminal occurrences, such as a warm, sunny day or a familiar, pleasant melody.