The paper is organized in two parts. The first part, which includes sections 1]4,
introduces the concepts of attitude and affective valuation and explores some
contrasts between attitudes and economic preferences, with examples from studies
of contingent valuation and of punitive damages. Sections 5 and 6 apply a
psychophysical analysis of dollar responses to explain both the unpredictability of
jury awards and some important results of CV research. Section 7 discusses
implications and Section 8 concludes.
This article covers much ground and asserts many claims with relatively little
documentation. To facilitate a separate assessment of the claims and of their
associated evidence, we present our argument in the form of a series of propositions,
with brief discussion of each proposition in turn.