Event Likelihood Judgments Revisited

Affect control theory shows how cultural meanings for identities and behaviors are used to form impressions of events and guide social action. The theory’s impression formation equations are the engine of its predictions about events and the deflection they generate (i.e., how much they violate, versus conform to, cultural prescriptions). In this research, I examine the relationship between affective (deflection) and cognitive responses to events, with a focus on judgments of event likelihood. I present a series of analyses that show that event likelihood judgments are impacted by events’ perceived normativity, commonality in social life, and our personal experience with events like them and by the appearance likelihood of the actors, combinations of actors, and behaviors they involve and that likelihood ratings and deflection most often diverge for institutionally vague events. I additionally show that deflection computed using Heise’s 2014 impression-change equations strongly predicts event likelihood.