Consumer judgments and decisions can be made either in a more cognitive, reason-based manner (by assessing, weighing, and combining attribute information into an overall evaluative judgment) or in a more affective, feeling-based manner (by inspecting one's momentary feelings toward the options). An emerging body of evidence suggests that the two modes of judgment and decision may tap into two separate systems: a reason-based, analytical system and a feeling-based affective system. I propose that the affective system is more likely to be engaged in decisions that are anchored in the present than in decisions that are anchored either in the distant future or in the distant past. Consistent with this proposition, results from nine experiments show that both integral affect and incidental affect carry more weight in decisions about the immediate future or the recent past than in decisions about a more distant future or distant past. In addition, the scope-insensitivity bias associated with affective valuation holds only when people are thinking about the present but not when they are thinking about the future or about the past and when affective information is available in the decision context.