The Affective Consequences of Expected and Unexpected Outcomes

How do people feel about unexpected positive and negative outcomes? Decision affect theory (DAT) proposes that people feel displeasure when their outcomes fall short of the counterfactual alternative and elated when their outcomes exceed the counterfactual alternative. Because disconfirmed expectati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2002-01, Vol.13 (1), p.85-88
Main Authors: Shepperd, James A., McNulty, James K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect
Awards
College students
Contrafactuals
Decision Making
Decision theory
Disappointment
Emotional expression
Emotions
Expectations
Feelings
Female
Happiness
Humans
Male
Perception
Personality psychology
Psychology
Questionnaires
Random Allocation
Research Reports
Social psychology
Social sciences
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:How do people feel about unexpected positive and negative outcomes? Decision affect theory (DAT) proposes that people feel displeasure when their outcomes fall short of the counterfactual alternative and elated when their outcomes exceed the counterfactual alternative. Because disconfirmed expectations provide a counterfactual alternative, DAT predicts that bad outcomes feel worse when unexpected than when expected, yet good outcomes feel better when unexpected than when expected. Consistency theories propose that people experience displeasure when their expectations are disconfirmed because the disconfirmation suggests an inability to predict. According to consistency theories, both good and bad outcomes feel worse when unexpected than when expected. These two theoretical approaches were tested in three studies. The results consistently support DAT.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1111/1467-9280.00416