Affective expectations and information gain: Evidence for assimilation andcontrast effects in affective experience

According to the Affective Expectation Model (Wilson, Lisle, Kraft, & Wetze l, 1989), affect is formed with reference to a prior expectation. The model predicts that people's affective reactions to a stimulus are generally ass imilated to a prior expectation, except in cases when a discrepancy between the affective expectation and the actual stimulus information exists and i s noticed. In such cases, affective reactions are expected to be contrasted away from affective expectations. In the present study, both the assimilat ion and contrast predictions were tested using the unitization paradigm (Ne wtson, 1973). We predicted that observers who unitized a not-so-funny film clip at a gross level (thereby extracting a relatively small amount of stim ulus information) would assimilate their affective reactions to a prior pos itive expectation, whereas those who unitized the film clip at a fine level (thereby extracting a relatively large amount of stimulus information) wou ld contrast their affective reactions with the positive expectation. The re sults supported these predictions, thereby providing the first evidence tha t affective expectations can produce both assimilation and contrast effects in affective experience, (C) 1999 Academic Press.