Predictors of Coping with Health-related Expectation Violations among University Students

Abstract

Objectives: Individuals often experience expectation violations related to the consumption of healthy food and physical activity and they may cope with expectation-disconfirming information by (1) ignoring the discrepancy (immunization), (2) increasing efforts to fulfill them (assimilation), or (3) changing their expectations (accommodation). We investigated whether valence, discrepancy magnitude, and controllability of the expectation disconfirming event predicted coping with expectation violations. Methods: A 2 (valence: positive vs negative) x 2 (discrepancy: larger vs smaller) x 2 (controllability: control vs no control) experimental design was implemented. Overall, we presented 297 university students with vignettes describing expectation violations and present different combinations of predictor levels. Results: Regarding physical activity, participants showed significantly higher accommodation when experiencing a better-than-expected event and showed significantly higher immunization when experiencing a worse-than-expected event. Regarding food consumption and physical activity, individuals experiencing lower discrepancy showed significantly higher immunization; individuals with control over the source of expectation disconfirmation showed significantly higher assimilation; and individuals without control over the source of expectation disconfirmation showed significantly higher accommodation.Conclusions: To promote the maintenance of healthy expectations, despite expectation violations, interventions could foster the perception of control as well as assimilative behavior.

Better than expected? Predictors of coping with expectation violations in the communication about death and dying

“…Hypotheses 3 and 4 were confirmed, since participants experiencing a worse-than-expected event in the context of EOL communication showed more immunization, while participants experiencing a better-than-expected event showed more accommodation. This is in line with previous findings indicating that individuals tend to update their expectations and beliefs more quickly in response to better-than-expected evidence, while they attempt to shield them from worse-than-expected evidence (Kube et al, 2019a;Gesualdo and Pinquart, 2022). The results also strengthen the claim of Expectancy Violations Theory that positive expectation violations, as opposed to negative ones, have a high potential to improve communication outcomes (Burgoon, 2015).…”

“…"). Items were developed based on the definitions of accommodation and immunization in the ViolEx 2.0 model (Panitz et al, 2021) and were formulated in line with other studies capturing these two coping strategies for dealing with expectation violations (Gesualdo and Pinquart, 2022). They were rated on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 0 ("very unlikely") to 5 ("very likely").…”

“…The reduced expectation update in response to worse-than-expected events might be explained by the occurrence of immunization processes (Kube et al, 2019a). Gesualdo and Pinquart (2022) investigated how the valence of an expectation-disconfirming event affects coping with expectation violations in the context of different health behaviors. In line with the findings of Pinquart et al (2021) and Kube et al (2019a), they could show that individuals experiencing a better-than-expected event related to physical activity responded with higher accommodation compared to individuals experiencing a worse-than-expected event.…”

“…Therefore, the aim of the present study was to identify factors predicting the coping with expectation violations in the context of EOL communication in a sample of university students. Following the approach of Gesualdo and Pinquart (2022), short vignettes describing expectation violations were presented to participants. According to Atzmüller and Steiner (2010), vignettes are a promising and effective tool to combine the benefits of traditional surveys (e.g., high external validity) and experimental designs (e.g., high internal validity).…”

Coping with expectation violations in education: the role of optimism bias and need for cognitive closure

“…In our study, we used case vignettes to test scenarios that were as close to academic reality as possible in a standardized, experimental context. This has already been successfully applied in other studies on the manipulation of expectation violations (Gesualdo & Pinquart, 2022;Kube et al, 2022). Nevertheless, we induced hypothetical expectation violations and the results may not be fully transferable to real expectation violations.…”