From what I know, intuition is affect-based. But how do they differ?
4 Answers
Affect is a fundamental feature of consciousness and is a mental representation of input from the body to the brain. Affect corresponds to feelings of (un)pleasantness and activation (arousal).
Emotions are conceptualizations (interpretations) of your affect in a given context. You might feel pleasant and highly aroused (an affective feeling) on a roller coaster, and your conceptualization of that affect in that context would be "excitement" (an emotional feeling). In this sense, emotions are what we would traditionally consider to be "cognitive."
Under this scheme, intuition doesn't really have a direct, formal relationship to affect or emotion, although intuitions are often affective (well, pretty much everything is affective). But see here for a more informed discussion of the literature.
Intuition
is
the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired (Miriam Webster Dictionary; Oxford English Dictionary)
Affect
is
the experience of feeling or emotion. (Hogg, et al. 2010)
Emotion
is
any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity and a high degree of pleasure or displeasure (Cabanac, 2002; Schacter, 2011). Scientific discourse has drifted to other meanings and there is no consensus on a definition.
An emotion can be an affect as a result of intuition
References
Cabanac, M. (2002). What is emotion? In: Behavioural Processes 60(2): 69-83
DOI: 10.1016/S0376-6357(02)00078-5 PMID: 12426062
Free PDF Available from ResearchGate
Hogg, M.A., Abrams, D., & Martin, G.N. (2010). Social cognition and attitudes. In: Martin, G.N., Carlson, N.R., Buskist, W., (Ed.), Psychology (pp 646-677). Harlow:Pearson Education Limited.
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D.T., Wegner, D.M. (2011). Psychology Second Edition. New York, NY:Worth Publishers. p. 310. ISBN 978-1-4292-3719-2.
Intuition is unrelated to the other two, because it is an aspect of cognition. Meanwhile affect is "the experience... of emotion", meaning that these terms are more or less synonymous.
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1$\begingroup$ "Intuition is unrelated to the other two" - What about the issues of emotion caused by the outcomes of intuition? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 26, 2017 at 19:35
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$\begingroup$ By "unrelated" I mean that there is a clear conceptual distinction between affect and cognition. Of course cognition (including intuition) can impact affect, and also vice versa. $\endgroup$– Brian ZCommented Apr 26, 2017 at 20:03
Intuition: my environment is totally uncorrelated with anything I am aware of but it still leads me to believe something is about to happen.
Emotion: a state of mind evoked by physical sensations, particular memories, and expectations of the future.
Affect: the outward manifestation of my emotions which may or may not be deliberate.
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1$\begingroup$ Welcome - can you add sources to your definitions? $\endgroup$– AliceD ♦Commented Mar 5, 2021 at 12:26
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$\begingroup$ Yeah, sources would help, I don't think these definitions are correct. -1 $\endgroup$– Arnon Weinberg ♦Commented Mar 7, 2021 at 17:17