What is affect as information?

Affect as information is a concept in personal epistemology: Your emotional state when you perceive something becomes part of what you perceive.

Example: You read a quarterly business review on a Monday morning after a weekend argument with your partner. The numbers are ambiguous — revenue is flat, but pipeline is growing. You perceive the review as discouraging, note three risks, and draft a concerned memo to your team. Two days later, after the argument resolves, you reread the same document. Now you perceive it as cautiously optimistic, note three opportunities, and archive the memo unsent. The data did not change. Your emotional context at the time of reading became fused with the content — not as a filter applied after perception, but as part of the perception itself. The Monday version and the Wednesday version are, from your brain's perspective, two different documents.

This concept is part of Phase 9 (Context Sensitivity) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for context sensitivity.