This is not what I expected: The impact of prior expectations on children’s and adults’ preferences and emotions.

Abstract

We examined the influence of prior expectations on 4-to 10-year-olds' and adults' preferences and emotions following an undesirable outcome (N = 205; 49% female, 51% male; 6% Asian, 1% Black, 13% Hispanic/Latino [non-White], 57% White, 18% multiracial, and 5% another race/ethnicity; 75% with a college-educated parent). Participants attempted to win a chance game with multiple prizes; the worst prize being a pencil. The game was rigged so that half of the participants lost, and the other half won. Regardless of the game outcome, everyone received a pencil. For winning participants (high-expectation condition), the pencil was worse than the prize they expected; whereas for losing participants (low-expectation condition), the pencil was better than the "nothing" they expected. Participants rated how much they liked and felt about the pencil preoutcome, postoutcome, when imagining having held an alternative prior expectation, and after learning that everyone received a pencil. Results showed that 6-to 10-year-olds and adults with low (vs. high) expectations liked the pencil more, with emotion ratings trending in the same direction. Prior expectations did not influence younger children's affective experiences. More participants with low (vs. high) expectations also expressed a positive outlook about the pencil, which increased with age and correlated with higher postoutcome emotions. More adults than children explained emotions as caused by thoughts, and only adults consistently reasoned that their preferences and emotions would have differed had they held alternative prior expectations. Once knowing that everyone received a pencil, 6-to 10-year-olds and adults liked the pencil more and felt better.

This too shall pass, but when? Children's and adults' beliefs about the time duration of emotions, desires, and preferences

“…That is, shame and pride may be shorter lived in children than adults, potentially due to children's less mature concepts of their personal identity (Harter & Leahy, 2001) and lower self-awareness (Lyons & Zelazo, 2011). Future work examining relations between children's and adults' reported emotion experiences (Thorton & Tamir, 2017;Verduyn, 2021) and their beliefs about emotion duration will help clarify these developmental findings (see similar arguments in Lara et al, 2019Lara et al, , 2021.…”

“…Several aspects of mental state reasoning that show protracted development require awareness of mental states over time. For example, children's appreciation that prior expectations shape future emotions is not fully formed by 8 to 10 years (Lara et al., 2019, 2021). Although 8‐ to 10‐year‐olds recognize that a person's life history can influence how they think, feel, and make decisions at a later time point, this awareness is more robust in adults (Lagattuta & Kramer, 2021a; Lagattuta & Sayfan, 2013).…”