Expectancies Flashcards
Definition of expectancies and types
Definition Expectations =
- Convictions that are future-directed and focused on the (non)incidence of a specific event or experience, based on past experiences
- Optimize the likelihood to: obtain desired outcomes and avoid aversive ones
Types of expectations
- Response expectations (e.g., fear, pain, blushing)
- Consequential (outcome) expectations (e.g., harm, rejection, inner events)
- Self-efficacy expectations (e.g., inability to cope with fear response)
- Cue expectations (e.g., probability of encountering cue)
Examples of expectancies
Anxiety Disorder:
“If I hold this presentation, I will blush.”, “Something terrible will happen to me on the subway.” “If I speak too much, people will reject me.” “If I go to the doctor, he will tell me it is terminal and I will die.” “the next palpitation will be fatal.” “If I would be contacted by the phobic stimulus, I would experience uncontrollable anxiety responses/will go mad.” “If I make a mistake, others will think I am a loser.”
PTSD: “If I go to a particular place, I will blackout.” “If I relieve this intrusion, I might not be able to deal with it.” “I will never be able to be a human being again.” “people with the same features as the perpetrator are just as dangerous.” “I will always be contaminated.”
Depression: “I will never be happy again.” “Nothing will help (helplessness/hopeless).” “I am not lovable.” “Others will not be interested in spending time with me.” “I have no future (perspective).” “I cant cope with future stressors.”
Complex Grief: “If I start crying, I will be unable to stop.” “I will lose control if I think back of the death of my partner.” “If I would resume participating in everyday activities, I will lose access to important memories about my loving partner.”
Development of expectancy biases and robustness explanations
Cue ambiguousness/interpretative bias
- Cue: with predictive value, cues are ambiguous! -> room for interpretation
- Interpretation is affected by motivational state
Interpretative bias
- Perception: no passive bottom-up processes, instead: active top-down, constructive, inferential processes
- Motivational set
Study 1: ambiguous cues: hungry children see more food
Study 2: homophones (dye/die): depressed people heard more negative words
Study 3: lexical decision task = ambiguous primes (homographs) -> preference threat meaning in line with current concerns
Study 4: Reaction time, CONCLUSION: anxious group is faster with negative probes -> in line with concerns -> threat
Development of expectancy biases and robustness explanations
Avoidance
- “If i avoid, then there must be in danger” behavior as information
- The use of safety behavior keeps people from disconfirming the threat
- Study: cooking wound (information about safety and SB)
CONCLUSION: People with OCD -> when objective safety (no threat info), but SB -> use of SB, fear
Development of expectancy biases and robustness explanations
Anticipatory responses and Emotional reasoning (Heuristic)
“If I feel anxious, there must be danger” reasoning in anxiety disorders
Idea: fear -> danger, in anxiety disorders: false alarms (fear without danger)
- > Not recognized as false
- > Conclusion is drawn that it is dangerous
Study:
4 scenarios (panic, social, spider, other), measured: objective threat and fear responses
- CONCLUSION: people with anxiety disorder -> had elevated levels of anxiety response, which was not specific to concern, people with an anxiety disorder/at risk for an anxiety disorder tend to use their emotion as information -> dysfunctional information
- Clinical implications: teach people not to rely on emotions, but on actual facts
- Study: Reducing emotional reasoning -> possible
Development of expectancy biases and robustness explanations
Outcome experience and Executive Monitoring
Executive Monitoring: Covariation bias (CB)
- Perception of covariation: a priori expectancy x current information
- Strong a priori expectancies (could overrule current information)
- > great influence on perception of covariation
- Study: Acquired illusory correlation
CONCLUSION: peoples’ prediction that stimuli will be followed by shock -> help people prepare for aversive outcome -> less emotional response
-> expectations regulate emotional regulation- omission respone: wrong expectation of shock -> surprise
=> expectations not easily changed, influence aversice expected outcomes
- omission respone: wrong expectation of shock -> surprise
- Type of cue-outcome overassociations disorder dependent Dog phobia: harm (bite) Social phobia: rejetion Eating disorder: body-rejection Depression: cue-(no)control
- Study:
Covariation Detection in treated and untreated spider phobics
CONCLUSION: spider phobics overestimated contingency between spider and shock, CB reduced following treatment, residual CB predicted return of fear
Development of expectancy biases and robustness explanations
Post-event processing
- Study: spider phobics: expect dreatful uncontrollable outcome, heightened emotional response
- Anticipated controllability of the outcome is a strong moderator of the effect
Outcome = controllable, less emotional response
Outcome = uncontrollable, heightended emotional response
=> expereince is difference, adds to expectancy of terrible outcome - Post event processing can add to the robustness of the expactancy
General difficulty to correct prior beliefs
Belief bias
4 outcomes, 2 variables: believability and validity of outcome
- When its in line with prior beliefs -> quick when valid
- What I believe is true: prove believable conclusions as valid, and disprove unbelievable conclusions as invalid
- People look for disconfirmation it it is against prior beliefs -> biased to confirm our prior beliefs
- Study: Belief confirmation bias in social anxiety -> adds to Dysfunction
CONCLUSION: strong inclination to discard relevant information, difficulty to correct their
a priori belief
Persistent dysfunctional generalized expectations core feature of mental disorders
- Expectancy violation
- Counterforce processes that prevent correction (to promote functional accomodation)
- Study: learning of a devils advocate mindset -> very quick to learn any changing contingencies
Impact expectation on outcome experiences
Study:
Hidden or open morphine infusion
CONCLUSION: start of morphine treatment -> faster decrease in pain intensity in open group = expectancy effect, stop of norphone treatment -> faster increase of open group = negative expectancy effect?
=> perceptual system is highly influenced by expectations
Expectancy-effects in randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
- Not only if experimental group responds well to treatment = treatment works
- People with positive expectancies -> treatment will work better
- Pharmacological treatment: people assume no effects when they receive a placebo
- Study: active (pepper nosespray) placebo, inactive (no physical effects) placebo -> pain threshold increased in active placebo group, and lowered in inactive placebo group
=> effect might be because of the nocebo group
=> expectancies influence RCTs majorly
Interventions to help reduce impact of expectancy bias(es)
Interpretation bias modification
- 8 sessions of training, task: read social scenarios, solve word fragment, people that learned to interpret ambiguous situations as positive -> sensitivity to distressed reduced, positive interpretation bias
- Effective for GAD, Social Anxiety Disoder, Depression
