Why expectations do or do not change after expectation violation: A comparison of seven models

Individuals are often confronted with events that violate their expectations, but disconfirming evidence does not always lead to expectation change. We review seven theoretical models on how individuals cope with disconfirming expectations: associative learning theories, the ViolEx Model, the model of coping with expectation disconfirmation (Roese & Sherman, 2007), the Meaning Maintenance Model, the Predictive Processing Framework, Expectancy Violations Theory, and the Expectation-Disconfirmation Model of consumer satisfaction. We focus on the proposed processes that relate to persistence or change of expectations. We discuss similarities and differences between the models. Three core coping processes are identified across most of these models – minimization of the importance of expectation-disconfirming evidence, search for/production of future expectation-confirming evidence, and expectation change. Suggestions for refinements and extensions of the models as well as for future empirical work on model testing are drawn.     

‘Grandpa,Do You Like Roller Coasters?’: Identifying Age‐Appropriate Personality Indicators

Personality development research heavily relies on the comparison of scale means across age. This approach implicitly assumes that the scales are strictly measurement invariant across age. We questioned this assumption by examining whether appropriate personality indicators change over the lifespan. Moreover, we identified which types of items (e.g. dispositions, behaviours, and interests) are particularly prone to age effects. We reanalyzed the German Revised NEO Personality Inventory normative sample (N = 11,724) and applied a genetic algorithm to select short scales that yield acceptable model fit and reliability across locally weighted samples ranging from 16 to 66 years of age. We then examined how the item selection changes across age points and item types. Emotion‐type items seemed to be interchangeable and generally applicable to people of all ages. Specific interests, attitudes, and social effect items—most prevalent within the domains of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness—seemed to be more prone to measurement variations over age. A large proportion of items were systematically discarded by the item‐selection procedure, indicating that, independent of age, many items are problematic measures of the underlying traits. The implications for personality assessment and personality development research are discussed. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Individual differences in the tendency to see the expected

Prior knowledge has been shown to facilitate the incorporation of visual stimuli into awareness. We adopted an individual differences approach to explore whether a tendency to ‘see the expected’ is general or method-specific. We administered a binocular rivalry task and manipulated selective attention, as well as induced expectations via predictive context, self-generated imagery, expectancy cues, and perceptual priming. Most prior manipulations led to a facilitated awareness of the biased percept in binocular rivalry, whereas strong signal primes led to a suppressed awareness, i.e., adaptation. Correlations and factor analysis revealed that the facilitatory effect of priors on visual awareness is closely related to attentional control. We also investigated whether expectation-based biases predict perceptual abilities. Adaptation to strong primes predicted improved naturalistic change detection and the facilitatory effect of weak primes predicted the experience of perceptual anomalies. Taken together, our results indicate that the facilitatory effect of priors may be underpinned by an attentional mechanism but the tendency to ‘see the expected’ is method-specific.