People feel first and use reason only to justify formed opinions.

Evidence

We like to think of ourselves as logical beings, convinced of our abilities to perceive the world factually correct and to draw the right conclusions from it. Yet even our perception is highly subjective and prone to error, our thought processes are largely determined by factors that have nothing to do with logic, and our values and emotions play a much more significant role than we realize. In short, we feel first and think second. We often use our intellect afterwards to justify our previously formed opinion. Emotions determine our actions much more strongly than information. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Jonathan Haidt’s moral intuitionism (the rider/elephant metaphor) and Hume on reason as slave to the passions.
• DEEPTHINKING: Tightly packs the central thesis of the chapter — the primacy of affect over logic — into a memorable formulation worth returning to.