Time estimation and expectancies

The purpose of this research was to examine the influence of different types of expectancies on time estimation behavior. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to expect that a given number of trials would occur in a music perception task. In Experiment 2, expectancies concerning the duration of a given waiting period were varied. Results of both experiments indicated that the confirmation/violation of expectancies exerted a significant im acton4urationjudgments. When subjects received more/fewer trials than expected or waited for a duration-that-waslonger/shorter than expected, the total duration of these time spans was over- and underestimated, respectively. Conversely, time estimates were relatively accurate whensubjects' expectancies were confirmed. The results of Experiment 1 further revealedthat reaction time responses within-the-music perception task were also systematically influenced by the expected amount of activity. Results are discussed in terms of a framework that emphasizes the role of anticipatory attending on time estimation behavior.     

Attitudinal and consequential expectancies in behavioral decision making

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the degree to which persons distinguish between what are termed attitudinal and distant consequence expectancies, the conditions under which consequential expectancies predict behavior, and the effects of conflicting attitudinal and consequential expectancies. Attitudinal expectancies are beliefs about the immediate hedonic outcomes of behaving; consequential expectancies are beliefs about distant, nonsocially mediated behavioral outcomes. A simulation experiment was conducted in which, in a 3×3 design, subjects either were or were not given attitudinal and consequential information about hypothetical behaviors that either favored or did not favor performing the behaviors. A second experiment extended the first by using a real rather than a hypothetical decision dilemma and by manipulating attitudinal (and social support) versus consequential expectancies in a 2×3 design. The results of the two studies were nearly identical in supporting the attitude-distant consequence distinction and in demonstrating that consequential considerations are an important antecedent of behavioral decisions. The implications of these findings and of the expectancy theory/decision-making approach to the development of a broad theory of action are discussed.     

Disruptive effects of disconfirmed expectancies about crowding.

The experiment utilized a 2 (high vs. low room density) X 2 (forewarning of a crowded room vs. no forewarning) X 2 (simple vs. complex task) design to examine the effects of anticipation of crowding on task performance. More tasks were attempted and efficiency was higher when expectancies about the crowd were confirmed. Subjects not told to anticipate a crowd who actually worked under high density and subjects warned about a crowd that did not materialize performed most poorly. These differences were largest for the complex task. Baum and Greenberg's results were replicated with the performance data. Perceptions of the experimental room also differed as a function of anticipation, but failure to obtain a Crowding X Anticipation interaction did not support their hypothesis that anticipating a crowd induces identical perceptions to those obtained under actual crowding. The results are discussed in terms of disconfirmed expectancies being disruptive of performance, particularly complex task performance.     

How affective states, task difficulty, and self-concepts influence the formation and consequences of performance expectancies

Positive versus negative affective states are associated with the use of broad versus specific knowledge structures. We predicted that specific self-concepts and task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only for individuals in a negative mood; for individuals in a positive mood, only the general self-concept, but not task difficulty, would affect performance expectancies. In an experiment, we manipulated task difficulty and mood, and we assessed self-concepts, performance expectancies, and task performance. The expected interactions for the formation of performance expectancies (mood × general self-concept, mood × specific self-concept, mood × difficulty) were found. Concerning the consequences of performance expectancies, we predicted that expectancies would affect actual performance only if the task was difficult and if task difficulty was taken into account when the expectancy is generated. This hypothesis was supported: The relationship between performance expectancies and actual performance was significant only for difficult tasks and given negative mood.     

Trait expectancies and stereotype expectancies have the same effect on person memory

Two studies examined whether trait expectancies and stereotype expectancies similarly affected memory for expectancy-relevant behaviors. The results of both studies showed that, when activated in identical ways, trait expectancies and stereotype expectancies had similar effects on recall. Better recall was obtained for expectancy-incongruent items when expectancies were activated in relatively overt ways, while better recall for expectancy-congruent items was obtained when expectancies were activated in less overt ways. Additional analyses examining the order of events that emerged in the recall protocols provided little evidence that participants attempted to reconcile the items, as would be predicted by some earlier models of person memory (e.g., Srull, 1981). The implications of these findings for how social expectancies guide social information processing are discussed.     

Information availability,goodness of outcome,and attributions of causality

H. H. Kelley's (American Psychologist, 1973, 28, 107–128) framework for studying attribution processes is introduced as a means of accounting for characteristic asymmetries in success/failure attributions. It is argued that while success/failure asymmetries should occur in the presence of single-observation information, asymmetries should be eliminated when individuals are allowed to observe the covariation between their own actions and outcomes. Subjects participated in a 15-trial stock market simulation in which type of information (single-observation or covariation) and goodness of outcome (relative success or failure) were manipulated. The obtained results supported the experimental hypotheses. Given single-observation information, subjects were more likely to accept personal responsibility for good than for poor outcomes. However, subjects' attributions were not affected by goodness of outcome when they were provided with covariation information. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the current debate between motivational and information-processing explanations of asymmetries in success/failure attributions.     

Hemisphere-specific resource demands of task expectancies

The hemisphere-specific resource demands of expecting letter- and figure-matching tasks were investigated, using dual-task methodology. Matching task expectancies were induced by blocking trials with respect to stimulus type (letters or geometrical figures). On one third of the trials, the matching stimuli were unexpectedly omitted. The secondary task required a speeded reaction to a laterally presented auditory probe. The side of probe presentation was unpredictable. Probe reaction times were taken as an index of the resource demands imposed by the primary task on the contralateral hemisphere. For both the trials with and without matching stimuli, probe reaction times showed a significant interaction between lateral side of probe presentation and block type (letters or figures). When letters were expected, reaction times were slower in the left-hemisphere probe task. Probe reaction times were equally fast for both sides when figures were expected. Overall, these results indicate that task expectancies primarily demand resources from the hemisphere that is specialized for carrying out the expected task.     

On the construction and maintenance of expectancies

Reaction time techniques were used to examine the role of attention in the construction and maintenance of expectancies. In Experiment I, a primed letter matching task, expectancies were observed through a delay (cost) in responding to misprimed letter arrays. A secondary probe task was interpolated between prime and array letters on some of the trials, with attentional demands inferred from delayed responding to probes. By varying the amount of time between onset of the prime and either a probe or letter array, it was found that there is attentional involvement (as reflected in probe inhibition) prior to the observation of expectancies (as reflected in letter matching cost). It was also found that the interpolation of an attention-demanding probe task did not entirely disrupt primed expectancies. Experiment II found that an expectancy persists even when an interpolated distractor task signals that the expectancy is no longer valid. These expectancies were found to decay as a function of time. The implications of these results for attention allocation and memory activation views of expectancy were discussed.     

The effect of performer gender,performer skill level,and opponent gender on self-confidence in a competitive situation

An equal number of male and female subjects (N=48), ranging in age from 17 to 26, were randomly assigned to compete in three competitive video games against a male or female opponent. All subjects were given bogus feedback that they had lost two out of three video games by a standard margin. Initial performance expectancies, as well as postcompetition expectancies, of all subjects were recorded. Initial performance expectancy scores recorded prior to competition were analyzed in a 2 (subject gender)×2 (opponent gender) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) design with initial skill level on a preliminary game as the covariate. No significant gender differences in initial expectancy scores were found. A 2 (subject gender)×2 (opponent gender) ANCOVA design was utilized to analyze the postcompetition expectancy scores with initial performance expectancy as the covariate. The analysis revealed no significant differences. These findings did not support Corbin's (1981) data suggesting that females express significantly less self-confidence than males for future performance after competing against and losing to a superior opponent on a video task. Initial performance expectancies in the present study were significantly correlated (p.05) to skill level, indicating that performance expectancies may be more related to skill level than to gender. Thus, a realistic perception about one's initial skill level on a particular task may be the most salient determinant of performance expectancies.     

Labor market experiences and expectancies

Comparisons are made of the labor market experiences of a national sample of employed Black and White men and women. While women had invested in their human capital nearly as often as men, they less often had tried job training or job changes, and more often had acquired additional schooling, to improve their market positions. Compared to White men, both groups of women also expressed lower work-related expectancies. Part of the White male expectancy edge can be attributed to differences in past investment strategies. Black and white women who had tried to make work changes did not differ from White men in present expectancies. While the causal relationship between experiences and expectancies needs further examination, especially in longitudinal studies, these results suggest that adult socialization in the labor market, while generally neglected, is a potentially important area of research on women's employment.     

The impact of socially projected group composition on behavior in a commons dilemma: A self-attention perspective

Socially projected group compositions, based on subjects’ expectancies about the behavior of others and the number of subjects taking part on the resource use task, were indexed using Mullen’s Additive Other-Total Ratio (Mullen, 1987) and used to predict harvesting behavior in a commons dilemma. One-hundred forty-three males took part in a resource use task in groups ranging in size from two to six members. Just prior to harvesting trials, subjects indicated the number of those taking part that they expected to overharvest and to underharvest, and indicated to which of these groups they had assigned themselves. Results indicated that harvesting behavior varied as a function of the number of others expected to behave differently from self, and conformed to patterns predicted by Self-Attention Theory. With increases in the number of others expected to underharvest, indexing an increase in self-attention, subjects who indicated they would overharvest become more conservative in resource use. However, subjects who indicated they would underharvest did not significantly decrease harvest size with increases in the number of others expected to overharvest. These subjects were already harvesting at an optimal or sub-optimal rate, and therefore had no need to reduce the size of their harvests to match their behavior to standards stressing conservatism in resource use.     

Dissociating restart cost and mixing cost in task switching

Three experiments investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying the restart cost and mixing cost in task switching. To this aim, the predictability of task order was varied (unpredictable in Experiment 1 and predictable in Experiments 2 and 3) across experiments, which employed a multiple-trial paradigm. Verbal cues for color and shape matching tasks were presented before a run of four trials. Focusing on task-repetition runs only, we measured restart cost as the difference in performance between trials 1 and 2 and mixing cost as the difference in performance on the non-cued trials under mixed-tasks conditions (Experiments 1 and 2) and single-task conditions (Experiment 3). The restart cost was observed under mixed-tasks conditions with both unpredictable and predictable task orders but not under the single-task condition. In contrast, the mixing cost was observed under the mixed-tasks condition with unpredictable task order only (Experiment 1). This finding implies that the optimal task execution on repetition trials depends on how predictable the identity of the approaching task is. Therefore, we suggest that mixing cost arises from limited preparation on repetition trials when task order is unpredictable, while restart cost arises from processes involved in cue-based task activation that is needed to resolve task interference. Together, these data suggest that restart cost and mixing cost are based on dissociable mechanisms.

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Task switching based on externally presented versus internally generated information

A number of observations from the task switching literature suggest that task preparation based on internally generated knowledge is less efficient than task preparation based on externally presented information. In the present study, we investigated task switching based on internally generated versus externally presented information and additionally varied the reliability of foreknowledge. Source and reliability of foreknowledge were varied between groups of participants. With reliable foreknowledge, the relevant task always conformed to foreknowledge, even when the features of the imperative stimulus called for an alternative task. With unreliable foreknowledge, the relevant task was determined by the imperative stimulus and foreknowledge was sometimes misleading. Apart from measuring switch costs, we examined the effectiveness of establishing a task set by measuring interference exerted by conflicting stimuli (conditions with reliable foreknowledge) or misled expectancies (conditions with unreliable foreknowledge). In terms of switch costs, we observed a slight superiority of externally presented over internally generated information when foreknowledge was reliable, but this relationship strongly reversed with unreliable foreknowledge. This conclusion was corroborated by observations regarding the effectiveness of task-set establishment in terms of proneness to interference.

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When unexpected behavior is attributed to the environment

Two experiments were conducted to investigate a modification of the Jones and Davis (1965) analysis of attribution. Subjects were confronted with a situation in which there were two possible causes for an event, and differential information about these causes was provided such that subjects were much more informed about the nature of one potential cause than the other. This information also imparted to the subjects a definite expectancy about the forthcoming event. When the event disconfirmed subjects' expectancies, responsibility was attributed to the cause about which least was known. This result was found in both experiments. In addition, Experiment II offered some suggestive evidence that a disconfirmed expectancy will lead the person to direct his attention toward potential causes about which he is uninformed.     

Face-induced expectancies influence neural mechanisms of performance monitoring

In many daily situations, the consequences of our actions are predicted by cues that are often social in nature. For instance, seeing the face of an evaluator (e.g., a supervisor at work) may activate certain evaluative expectancies, depending on the history of prior encounters with that particular person. We investigated how such face-induced expectancies influence neurocognitive functions of performance monitoring. We recorded an electroencephalogram while participants completed a time-estimation task, during which they received performance feedback from a strict and a lenient evaluator. During each trial, participants first saw the evaluator’s face before performing the task and, finally, receiving feedback. Therefore, faces could be used as predictive cues for the upcoming evaluation. We analyzed electrocortical signatures of performance monitoring at the stages of cue processing, task performance, and feedback reception. Our results indicate that, at the cue stage, seeing the strict evaluator’s face results in an anticipatory preparation of fronto-medial monitoring mechanisms, as reflected by a sustained negative-going amplitude shift (i.e., the contingent negative variation). At the performance stage, face-induced expectancies of a strict evaluation rule led to increases of early performance monitoring signals (i.e., frontal-midline theta power). At the final stage of feedback reception, violations of outcome expectancies differentially affected the feedback-related negativity and frontal-midline theta power, pointing to a functional dissociation between these signatures. Altogether, our results indicate that evaluative expectancies induced by face-cues lead to adjustments of internal performance monitoring mechanisms at various stages of task processing.     

Flow,performance and moderators of challenge-skill balance

The concept of flow is briefly reviewed and several theoretical and methodological problems related to flow research are discussed. In three studies, we attempted to avoid these problems by measuring the experience of flow in its components, rather than operationally defining flow in terms of challenge and skill. With this measure, we tested the assumption that experience of flow substantially depends on the balance of challenge and skill. This assumption could only be partially supported, and, as expected, this relationship was moderated by the (perceived) importance of the activity and by the achievement motive. Furthermore, flow predicted performance in two of the three studies.

How task experience influences students' performance expectancies: the role of certainty

The importance of performance expectancies for predicting behavior has long been highlighted in research on expectancy-value models. These models do not take into account that expectancies may vary in terms of their certainty. The study tested the following predictions: task experience leads to a higher certainty of expectancies; certainty and mean expectancies are empirically distinguishable; and expectancies held with high certainty are more accurate for predicting performance. 273 Grade 8 students reported their performance expectancy and the certainty of expectation with regard to a mathematics examination immediately before and after the examination. Actual grades on the examination were also assessed. The results supported the predictions: there was an increase in certainty between the two times of measurement; expectancies and certainty were unrelated at both times of measurement; and for students initially reporting higher certainty, the accuracy of the performance expectancy (i.e., the relation between expectancy and performance) was higher than for students reporting lower certainty. Given lower certainty, the accuracy increased after the students had experience with the examination. The data indicate that it may be useful to include certainty as an additional variable in expectancy-value models.     

Smokers' expectancies for smoking versus nicotine

This study compared smokers' expectancies for the full act of smoking with those for nicotine per se by means of a word association task. Smokers (N = 201) were randomized to receive instructions to complete either "Smoking makes one ____." or "Nicotine makes one ____." with as many words as possible within 30 s. Results indicated that smokers held similar expectancies for smoking and nicotine; however, negative consequences (e.g., health risks) were more associated with smoking than with nicotine, and addiction expectancies were more associated with nicotine than with smoking. These findings suggest that smokers have a more realistic conceptualization of nicotine's role in smoking than had been indicated from earlier surveys. These findings have important implications for both nicotine-based and behavioral interventions, as well as for experimental designs that rely upon the perceived manipulation of nicotine content.