expectations

Without expectation, perception is much slower. The influence of expectation on perception is an advantage for us humans because expectation speeds up the process of perception and allows us to more quickly approach pleasure or avoid pain. Expectation steers perception unless the stimulus is substantially unlike the expectation.

Different expectations and prior knowledge can lead to very different perceptions of the exact same thing.

Working for Anheuser-Busch, we traveled around the country talking to beer drinkers. They would often tell us that drinking a large quantity of certain brands of beer would give them headaches, but drinking a large quantity of other brands of beer would not. We noticed the brands of beer that were reported to give people headaches in one market were not the same as the brands reported to give people headaches in another market. The pattern became clear. The unpopularity of a brand in a market seemed to cause the headaches, rather than its chemical content. If Busch, for example, was unpopular in a market, beer drinkers described Busch as a brand that, in quantity consumption, caused headaches. On the other hand, if Busch was popular in that market, beer drinkers described Busch as a brand that did not cause headaches.

A beer drinker expects headaches from drinking a large quantity of an unpopular brand of beer and he gets them. A beer drinker does not expect headaches from drinking a large quantity of a popular brand of beer, and he experiences and remembers less discomfort from that consumption.

We can enhance our children’s pleasure in eating a vegetable dish by enhancing their expectation. We, of course, shouldn’t over-promise. But we can lead them to expect something of the pleasure we get by eating that dish. We can change their experience by changing their expectation.

Slight differences in liking tend to become magnified. We seek out, notice, and pay attention to information that supports our current perspective. We pay little attention to evidence that contradicts our current perspective. This well-known bias is usually referred to as selective exposure. When information gets through our selective screen, we don’t treat it objectively. We interpret the information in a way that supports what we already believe. This is usually referred to as selective perception. People with different perspectives on the way things work can interpret the same data in two radically different ways. Almost any event in political news will be interpreted by liberals as supporting a liberal worldview and by conservatives as supporting a conservative worldview. Together, selective exposure and selective perception make up “confirmation bias.”13 We all exhibit confirmation bias, lay people and scientists alike.

Our affection persists and grows due to confirmation bias. Our affection for an action, however minor, sets our expectation. Our expectation heavily influences our experience of that action.

If we can improve, even slightly, the affection we feel for an action, we can improve our expectation, and improve the experience of the action.

And if we can improve, even slightly, the affection we feel for an action, that affection becomes self-supporting through confirmation bias. People will seek out, notice, and pay attention to information that reinforces that affection. Other information is likely to be ignored.

How, then, do we increase affection? How do we make people a little fonder of the action we suggest?

Increasing affection is not as difficult as it may seem. Mere exposure can do it.

A long list of experiments demonstrates that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases our affection and preference for it.14 The studies have shown that this happens with nonsense phrases, human faces, Chinese ideographs, and other visual stimuli. And it’s not just visual stimuli. Repeated exposure reliably increases affection for sounds, tastes, abstract ideas, and social stimuli. The mere exposure effect even works in nonhuman species.

We don’t need to pay attention. The stimulus needs no reinforcement. The exposure can be so subtle that we don’t even realize that it occurred. Exposure to a stimulus, even without attention and reinforcement, increases our affection and preference for it.

When we can make the desired action come more easily to mind, we actually improve the experience by enhancing the expectation. When we go beyond availability and associate the desired action with attributes, feelings, or images that are rewarding to the target, we enhance the expectation and improve the experience even more.

Perception is an unconscious process carried out by the lizard inside, our automatic mental system. Expectation guides perception.

Don’t wait. People’s expectations will alter their experience. It is possible, but difficult, to change people’s memory of an experience. It’s easier to change up-front expectations and those, in turn, change the experience itself.

Before people do what you would like them to do, focus them on the positive qualities of the experience.

Parents’ anticipation of and reaction to different foods change their children’s experience and set their children’s preferences. If you like the smell and taste of asparagus, let your children see your anticipation and reaction, and you improve the chances they will come to like asparagus.

You can make your partner’s first experience with your extended family at Thanksgiving more pleasant by making him or her sensitive in advance to the amusing quirks and interesting aspects of the characters. If your partner senses dread on your part, he or she is in for a long evening.

When you set expectations, don’t stop with the sensory. Go beyond senses to feelings. How will it feel to get good grades? How will it feel to order a Budweiser? How will it feel to not eat that piece of cake? Feelings are completely subjective, heavily dependent on expectation, and highly motivating.

Setting expectation has a long-term impact. It is persuasion with legs. Because expectation changes experience, your target may not only take your recommended option now, but is likely to choose it again and again.