The Influence Of Negative Expectation On Individual's Emotion And Cognition

An expectation is an " anticipation of future consequences based on prior experience, current circumstances, or other sources of information" The expectation of and preparation for upcoming events are important cognitive functions. During expectation, behavioral strategies are developed, and decisions for certain actions are made in order to survive in a changing and potentially threatening environment.Considerable behavioral studies showed the influence of expectation on emotion, but the results which based on the self-report seem to be subjective. Although ERP and FMRI researches always concerned about the expectation itself, those studies scarcely focused on the effect the expectation do to the emotional feelings. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the influence of expectation on the individuals' emotion and cognition by using the ERP technology. This study included two experiments:in experiment one, we manipulated the cue and target stimulus in order to set three different expectation conditions:low expectation (neutral picture was informed ahead of the target, but moderately fearful picture was presented actually), proper expectation (moderately fearful picture was informed ahead of the target, and moderately fearful picture was presented actually) and high expectation (extremely fearful picture was informed ahead of the target, but moderately fearful picture was presented actually), according to which we can examine how could the emotion experience be affected by the expectation. In experiment two, subjects were required to complete a cognitive task between the cue and target, so that we could investigate the effect of expectation category on cognition.Experiment one showed that:during the expectation stage, all three conditions elicited a significant SPN component, SPN amplitude was more negative in the high expectation and proper expectation than in the low expectation. However, there was no significant difference between high expectation and proper expectation. During the perceptual stage,400-600ms after the target stimuli occurred, LPC was largest under the high expectation, then the proper expectation, at last the low expectation. The LPC during 600-800ms showed a similar effect as the expectation stage, LPC amplitude was larger in the high expectation and proper expectation than in the low expectation, however, there was no significant difference between high expectation and proper expectation. Consequently, highly expectation of negative stimuli has no good for individual's emotion experience.Experiment two showed that:There was no significant difference in accuracy between expectation and un-expectation, but the reaction time in un-expectation was longer than in the expectation condition. The main effect of expectation category was significant, the reaction time in highly negative expectation and moderately negative expectation was shorter than that in the neutral condition, and there was no difference between highly negative expectation and moderately negative expectation. It indicates that negative expectation can improve people's cognitive activities in some degree.We can conclude from those two studies that the negative expectation doesn't do good to person's emotion experience, but it plays an important role in improving people's cognitive processing.