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    Making sense of surprise : an investigation of the factors influencing surprise judgments

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    Author
    Maguire, Rebecca
    Maguire, Phil
    Keane, Mark T.
    Date
    2011
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10788/153
    Publisher
    American Psychological Association
    Rights holder
    http://esource.dbs.ie/copyright
    Rights
    Items in Esource are protected by copyright. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/copyright holder.
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    Abstract
    Surprise is often defined in terms of disconfirmed expectations, whereby the surprisingness of an event is thought to be dependent on the degree to which it contrasts with a more likely, or expected, outcome. The authors investigated the alternative hypothesis that surprise is more accurately modelled as a manifestation of an ongoing sense-making process. In a series of experiments, participants were given a number of scenarios and rated surprise and probability for various hypothetical outcomes that either confirmed or disconfirmed an expectation. Experiment 1 demonstrated that representational specificity influences the relationship that holds between surprise and probability ratings. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inclusion of an enabling event lowers surprise ratings for disconfirming outcomes. Experiment 3 explored the reason for this effect, revealing that enabling events lower surprise by reducing uncertainty, thus enhancing ease of integration. Experiment 4 evaluated the contrast hypothesis directly, showing that differences in contrast are not correlated with differences in surprise. These results provide converging support for the view that the level of surprise experienced for an event is related to the difficulty of integrating that event with an existing representation. Author keywords: Surprise, expectation, probability, representation, reasoning, likelihood judgements, conjunction fallacy. Author keywords: Surprise, expectation, probability, representation, reasoning, likelihood judgements, conjunction fallacy.
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