JQP posits that motivated reasoning and the ensuing rationalization of beliefs, attitudes, and intentions is built into our basic neurocognitive architecture, propelled by the seven principles described in Chapter 2 that drive the sampling, comprehension, interpretation, and evaluation of information in ways that systematically bias thinking and behavior. Our model brings affect center stage in proposing that all thinking, reasoning, and decision making is affectively charged, and our research program tested for the direct, spontaneous effects of prior attitude and unnoticed affective cues on the appraisal of sociopolitical objects and on subsequent reasoning and behavior.

The central tenet of JQP is that affect enters into the decision stream spontaneously at every stage of the process. Cognition is hot; across numerous experiments we found that social and political concepts evoke an instantaneous experience of positive and/or negative affect. At the moment an object is registered, an evaluative tally is automatically called up, triggering a series of largely unconscious, sometimes somatically embodied processes that drive the perception and evaluation of events in defense of one's prior attitudes. This uncontrolled affective reaction directly signals the desirability of one object or choice over another and thereupon systematically guides the encoding, search, retrieval, interpretation, and evaluation of information in ways that promote affectively congruent rationalization effects. Because people are perceptually aware of their feelings moments before they are cognizant of an object's meanings, the activated attitude proves to be a powerful determinant of what citizens think and say when they talk to themselves or others, answer a pollster's questions, or act in accord with their intentions.