Predictors of Coping With Expectation Violation: An Integrative Review

Abstract

The present review investigates factors that predict three processes that lead to persistence versus change of expectations after confrontation with expectation violations, based on the violated expectation (ViolEx) model and related models. We address four groups of predictors: (a) characteristics of the expectation, (b) characteristics of the expectation-violating event(s), (c) broader situational characteristics, and (d) personality characteristics. The bulk of studies conducted in this area looked at expectation change in the direction of the experienced violation (accommodation) as their central dependent variable. The strongest empirical support was found for accommodation being less likely and minimizing of the potential impact of the discrepant information (immunization) being more likely to occur (a) after the reality turns out to be worse rather than better than expected, (b) if disconfirming events are more ambiguous, and (c) if depressed rather than healthy people are confronted with better-than-expected events. Given the high heterogeneity between studies on assessed predictors, we recommend a more comprehensive and unifying approach that tests the relative impact and the interplay of the whole range of predictors across paradigms.