The impact of affective disappointment and cognitive disconfirmation on subsequent thoughts about the personal meaning of the incongruous experience

Interruption theories that attempt to explain the continuity of experience over time have given considerable attention to behavioral incongruences (i.e., discrepancies between the cognitive expectation about the outcome of an event and the event itself) and have largely ignored affective incongruences (i.e., discrepancies between anticipated and actual affects about an event). This study sought to examine (a) if affective incongruities, in part, predict subsequent thought; (b) if the novelty-reduction cognitions that follow incongruous experiences include thoughts which reflect efforts to understand the personal meaning in the experience (a process not previously examined); and (c) if individual differences magnify the level of affect analysis activity, thoughts directed at understanding the personal meaning in the experience, after an incongruous experience. To this end, college students' affective and cognitive expectations and actual experiences about an exam were studied in naturalistic contexts. Fifty-nine college students in Study 1 and 99 in Study 2 completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires on four separate days during a 6-week period. Cognitive disconfirmations were defined as discrepancies between students' expected and actual grades and affective incongruities were defined as discrepancies between students' anticipated and actual feelings about their exam. The impact of these incongruities on subsequent thought about the experience were examined. Students who experienced both affective and cognitive incongruities engaged in greater amounts of affect analysis about their exam experience in the week that followed the onset of their incongruities than the remaining students, F(1,95) = 4.58, p {dollar}<{dollar}.05. Also as expected, students' personality characteristics (social self-restraint, psychological mindedness, and trait affect analysis) magnified their level of affect analysis activity only after experiencing one or both types of incongruence. The results support the hypotheses stated above and show that the simultaneous experience of both types of incongruence predicts subsequent thought about the personal meaning of the experience. The extent to which affect analysis may be an adaptive process is considered and avenues for future research are discussed.