I think some of these experiment results are better explained by a bunch of different quirks in human thinking, not Only the affect heuristic. Maybe I'm overconfident in my knowledge here, but still I'm going to go through them in order:
The thing about the clock is obviously the affect heuristic at work and there doesn't seem to be much more to it. The disease example I take issue with however. It seems to me that it's rather about framing than about the affect heuristic. Though peoples emotions about a deadly disease is at play too, the crucial difference...
I fear that the most common context in which people learn about cognitive biases is also the most detrimental. That is, they're arguing about something on the internet and someone, within the discussion, links them an article or tries to lecture them about how they really need to learn more about cognitive biases/heuristics/logical fallacies etc.. What I believe commonly happens then is that people realise that these things can be weapons; tools to get the satisfaction of "winning". I really wish everyone would just learn this in some neutral con... (read more)