Expectation violations, expectation change, and expectation persistence: The scientific landscape as revealed by bibliometric network analyses

Expectation violations occur when there is a discrepancy between expected and perceived events or experiences. However, expectations often persist despite disconfirming evidence. Therefore, research on expectation violations, expectation change, and expectation persistence has been conducted in several fields of psychology with wide-ranging theoretical assumptions and empirical considerations. In the present review, we analyzed how these research fields relate to each other via bibliometric network analyses. For this purpose, we conducted a systematic literature search to identify scientific publications on expectation violations, expectation change, and expectation persistence. The literature corpus was then quantitatively analyzed using similarity measures that allow a data-driven classification of publications into groups, revealing their conceptual, theoretical, and empirical commonalities. Our results indicate that many influential publications have focused on finding reactivity measures (e.g., brain activation) to the discrepancy experienced between expectations and outcomes. Furthermore, these measures have been used to assess when and to which degree learning and behavioral adaptation (i.e., expectation change) takes place. We discuss the potential application of these measures for understanding expectation violations in more complex settings (e.g., social interaction) as well as phenomena such as expectation persistence. The goal of this review was to foster interdisciplinarity in psychology, enabling scientists and practitioners to identify new topics, promising empirical approaches and previously neglected variables.

Existence and consequences of dormant features: Evidence from L2 acquisition of Chinese object ellipsis

The current study investigates second language acquisition of Chinese object ellipsis to probe the development of features transferred from learners’ native language without robust confirming or disconfirming evidence in the second language (L2) input. It is argued that Chinese allows object ellipsis licensed by a verb with a [VCase] feature but not by a verb with a [Vnon-Case] feature. In contrast, Korean allows object ellipsis to be licensed by both types of verbs, whilst English prohibits both. An acceptability judgement task was conducted among first language (L1) English and L1 Korean L2 Chinese learners from elementary to advanced levels, with the results showing that the [Vnon-Case] feature was assembled in the Chinese grammars of English and Korean elementary L2 learners; however, it gradually lost its vigour and licensing power for object ellipsis in intermediate L2 grammars and was successfully removed from licensing object ellipsis in advanced L2 grammars. These findings support predictions by Yuan regarding a feature’s dormant status and modify Yuan’s predictions regarding a dormant feature’s consequences.

Prophetic Populism and the Violent Rejection of Joe Biden’s Election: Mapping the Theology of the Capitol Insurrection

For President Donald Trump’s most committed Christian devotees—those with ears to hear—his rise to power was prophesied, and the 2016 victory was miraculous. Prophets again foretold re-election in 2020. These charismatic Trump supporters tended to come from outside the main denominations, and when the electoral college swung towards Joe Biden, the results were not accepted. In rejecting the election, they became fellow travellers with more overtly militant and conspiratorial groups—sometimes sharing a stage with them. This article describes the discourse of prophetic populism from 2011 to 2021—focusing in particular on the three months from the 2020 election to the storming of Capitol Hill to the inauguration of Joe Biden. Although Trump repeatedly says, ‘Promises Made, Promises Kept’, these prophetic promises did not materialise—leading some to try to force God’s hand. This article explores the reaction to three consecutive disappointments that took their toll on prophetic populism: the declaration of Joe Biden as president-elect in November 2020, the certification of his victory in early January 2021 and the inauguration later that month. It demonstrates the power of a relatively new force in conservative politics, the flexibility of beliefs in divine involvement and the resilience of these beliefs in light of weighty disconfirming evidence.

Studying and Challenging Racism in Higher Education: Naming Bad Faith to Understand the “Logic” of Racism

In this conceptual essay, the author argues that bad faith is a valuable concept in understanding and challenging racism in higher education. The philosopher Lewis Gordon argues that racism is a manifestation of bad faith. For the actor who sees Black people as less than human, for example, no evidence will allow the actor to see otherwise. Bad faith is the disavowal of any disconfirming evidence which allows actors to maintain their worldviews. The author draws from high profile examples of racism in higher education as conceptual cases to make his argument. Specifically, the author demonstrates how attacks upon Critical Race Theory in education, the currency of critiques of microaggressions research, and the perennial difficulty to name racist violence on campus as hate crimes operate upon a logic of racism through bad faith.

Conspiracy Theories and Evidential Self-Insulation

What are conspiracy theories? And what, if anything, is epistemically wrong with them? This chapter offers an account on which conspiracy theories are a unique way of holding a belief in a conspiracy. Specifically, conspiracy theories are taken to be self-insulating beliefs in conspiracies. On this view, conspiracy theorists have their conspiratorial beliefs in a way that is immune to revision by counter-evidence. It is argued that conspiracy theories are always irrational. Although conspiracy theories involve an expectation to encounter some seemingly disconfirming evidence (allegedly planted by the conspirators), resistance to all counter-evidence cannot be justified on these grounds.

The underlying states of salesperson product buy-in and product strategy buy-in

Purpose The purpose of this study is to collect data that allows researchers to capture both affective and cognitive buy-in influenced by both product and product strategy targets. Design/methodology/approach Analysis of 13 salesperson interviews followed the cluster and axial coding of grounded theory interview protocol. Findings This study finds two types of buy-in that are uniquely contingent on the target, and for which are influenced by both cognitive and affective states of being. Additionally, it finds that either affective or cognitive states of being can both drive and inhibit salesperson buy-in of either target. While the targets of buy-in appear to be mutually exclusive, the cognitive nature of disconfirming evidence appears to directly inhibit both targets of buy-in while also resulting in negative affect. Research limitations/implications Further study that uncovers the causal role of an affective state inhibiting buy-in after the introduction of disconfirming evidence is warranted. Practical implications Managerial training and messaging approaches for achieving the two buy-in targets will likely differ or focus on only one type for efficient training. Originality/value This study is the first to examine the simultaneous effects of the two underlying states of cognition and affect on buy-in development. It is found that the two states can influence each other to stunt buy-in. The present study contributes to sales behavior literature by allowing the possibility of a sequence of states that stunt buy-in, positioning simultaneous examination is vital to the conceptualization of buy-in.

Confidence in Context: Perceived Accuracy of Quantitative Estimates Decreases With Repeated Trials

Across seven studies (combined N = 5,484), we demonstrated that confidence in one’s judgments decreases over a series of quantitative estimates. This finding was robust to various methods of confidence elicitation, the presence of incentives, and different estimation topics (Studies 1, 2, and 4). Our results also stand in contrast to participant expectations (Study 3). The phenomenon does not appear to be driven by fatigue, lack of effort, or various explanations based on incorporating uncertainty from prior judgments into subsequent ones. Our findings suggest that rather than evaluating confidence in isolation, participants evaluate confidence in reference to their stated confidence on earlier judgments. We theorize that confidence in earlier judgments increases in hindsight because of biased forgetting of disconfirming evidence. As a result, confidence in subsequent judgments appears to be comparatively lower (preregistered Studies 5–7). We discuss the implications for confidence research and consumer, organizational, and policy decision-making.

Exploration Decisions Precede and Improve Explicit Uncertainty Judgments in Preschoolers

We investigate the relationship between exploratory learning and confidence scale judgments in understanding and improving children’s early recognition of uncertainty. Four- and five-year-olds were presented with stimuli that varied in their amount of occlusion. We assessed children’s ability to distinguish between these levels of uncertainty using two types of measures. Experiment 1 used a traditional 3-point confidence scale to examine explicit uncertainty judgments. Experiment 2 examined exploration preference as an implicit measure of uncertainty using the same stimuli. We compared children’s performance on these two tasks before and after their experience of disconfirming evidence, to assess the impact of surprising events on the recognition of uncertainty. Results indicate that children intuitively recognize gaps in their knowledge and express this in their exploratory behavior before they are able to spontaneously produce accurate confidence judgments. We also find that this implicit recognition of uncertainty may be leveraged to support and improve explicit judgments, even without extensive training.

Persuasion: The Art of Changing Worldviews

Persuaders often face the task of changing their listeners’ world-view, which may involve conveying evidence that disconfirms that view. It has been shown, however, that people are often reluctant to change their worldviews. These aspects of persuasion cannot be captured in the standard Bayesian framework. The paper identifies the constraints, opportunities, and trade-offs of persuading people to change worldview. It finds necessary and sufficient conditions under which it is optimal for persuaders to do so. It also shows when and how they conceal disconfirming evidence and take advantage of their listener’s existing worldview. (JEL D82, D83, D91)