Expectation-related concepts

by connecting expectancy and event), and revising (in contrast to bridging involves changes at a foundational level) (Roese & Sherman, 2007). Which consequence results depends on “the magnitude of the discrepancy between expectancy and outcome and the degree of complexity or sophistication of the underlying schemata basis of the expectancy” (Roese & Sherman, 2007, p.103). Small discrepancies will more likely be ignored, moderate ones will lead to slow and steady expectancy revision, and large discrepancies lead to separate subcategories. Especially if similar deviations are encountered repeatedly, at some point these form a new structure. When a new structure is used repeatedly, the links to the episodes it is based on become harder to find (Schank, 1999).

Whatever change is made to memory structures, only the explanation of an expectation failure protects us from encountering the same failure again (Schank, 1999). Explanations are the essence of real thinking. However, people are usually content with script-based explanations if these are available (for more information about scripts see Section 2.2.5.3).

While discrepancies may lead to changes in memory structure, perceivers may also confirm their inaccurate expectancies. According to Neuberg (1996), perceivers may confirm their inaccurate expectancies in two primary ways: by creating self-fulfilling prophecies (target behavior becomes consistent with the expectancies) and by exhibiting a cognitive bias (target behavior is inappropriately viewed as being expectancy-consistent). Thus, the perceivers impose their definition of the situation on the target, or even affect their behavior, because they want to confirm their own expectations.

Olson, Roese, and Zanna (1996) have also investigated affective and physiological consequences of expectancies (for example, placebo effect) and expectation disconfirmation.

Affect usually is negative when expectancies are disconfirmed, an exception being positive disconfirmations like a surprise party. In general, an expected negative outcome is dissatisfying, an unexpected negative outcome even more so. The other way around a positive outcome is even more satisfying when being unexpected.

To conclude, the goal of HRI should be that the robot does not disconfirm the users’

expectations, especially not in ways leading to negative outcomes. Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve this goal. Therefore, it is important to take into account the consequences of disconfirmation which depend on the characteristics of the human and the robot, the relationship between the interactants, and the context. One part of the model presented below is to determine how the users make sense of the disconfirmation of their expectations by the robot and what are the results of the sense-making process. Knowledge about this will help to design the robot in a way to better contribute to the correct explanation of why the disconfirmation occurred or to avoid the disconfirmation in the first place.

2.2.5.1 Beliefs

LePan (1989) has distinguished expectations from other future-oriented feelings such as believing:

“A belief, to begin with, may fly in the face of all logic, of all rational analysis of the probability or improbability of a given occurrence taking place.

Expectation, on the other hand, is firmly grounded in a rational assessment of probabilities: our reason may be, and often is faulty, but it is nevertheless reason rather than faith on which expectations are grounded.” (LePan, 1989, p.73)

Accordingly, the terms expectation and belief are distinguished by their certainty and by the fact that expectation in contrast to belief is based on reasoning. However, Roese and Sherman (2007) in their definition of expectancies state: “Expectancies are beliefs about a future state of affairs”. So seemingly both positions disagree. Olsen, Roese, and Zanna (1996) clarify the discrepancy as follows:

“All beliefs imply expectancies; that is, it is possible to derive expectancies from any belief” (p.212)

According to this opinion, beliefs are the basis for expectancies. Olson, Roese, and Zanna (1996) give one example to demonstrate this relationship – a belief would be that fire is hot; the expectancy which can be derived from the belief is that people burn themselves if they hold their hand in a flame. According to the authors, not all beliefs are expectancies, but expectancies are a type of belief about the future. The type of interest for the expectancy concept is implications of beliefs that are not yet verified.

2.2.5.2 Schemas

Schemas are often mentioned in connection to expectancies. Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2003) define schemas as:

“mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world around themes or subjects and that influence the information people notice, think about, and remember” (p.59).

This definition shows that expectancies and schemas are similar in that both influence information processing and memory, a view that has also been supported by Hirt (1999). Sears, Peplau, Freedman, and Taylor (1988) describe the content of schemas:

“a schema is an organized, structured set of cognitions about some concept or stimulus which includes knowledge about the concept or stimulus, some

relations among the various cognitions about it, and some specific examples.”

(p.101)

According to the definition, schemas include knowledge, relations, and examples of a certain concept. The accessibility of schemas increases if they are primed. Priming is “the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait, or concept” (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003, p.64). This is also true for expectations.

Some authors have explicitly described the relation between schemas and expectations. As Sears and colleagues (1988) write, schemas contain expectations for what should happen.

Olson, Roese, and Zanna (1996) describe the relationship between schemas and expectancies as follows:

“Schemas are mental structures that include beliefs and information about a concept or class of objects […]. One of the primary functions of schemas is to allow the generation of expectancies in situations where full information is not available.” (p.212)

From this point of view, like beliefs, schemas are a source of expectancies, but not expectancies themselves. Hirt (1999) supports this argument by stating that people’s expectations are based on their schemas. Feather (1982b) has differentiated schemas and expectations by the degree of specificity. According to the author, expectations are much more specific than schemas, because they relate to particular situations and responses. Therefore, they are more closely related to scripts than to schemas,

“because the specific content of both expectations and scripts is a fundamental aspect of their definition and both concepts are concerned with the structure of events within defined situations and the implications of particular actions within those situations.” (Feather, 1982b, p.407)

2.2.5.3 Scripts, scenes, and scriptlets

While Feather (1982b) admits that the content of both scripts and expectations is similar, he also argues that scripts are more extensive concepts that include whole sequences of events whereas expectations can be based on single events. A set of specific expectations might result in a script.

Schank and Abelson (1975) defined the term script as “a structure that describes an appropriate sequence of events in a particular context” (p.151). A script consists of slots and the content of one slot affects the content of other slots, because all slots are interconnected in causal chains.

Actions that do not match the causal chain are deviations from the script. Deviations can be distractions, i.e., interruptions by another script; obstacles, i.e., a normal action is prevented from occurring; and errors, i.e., the action is completed in an inappropriate manner. Each script includes different actors. Each actor has an own point of view on the script, for example, a

script of an HRI situation of the person interacting with a robot differs from the script of a bystander. This view is supported by Anderson’s (1983) definition:

“[…], we frequently think about our own actual or potential behaviors; that is, we create behavioral scenarios (scripts) in which we are the main character.”

(Anderson, 1983, p.293)

In this definition, Anderson argues that scripts always focus on our own behavior. He furthermore writes that scripts influence expectations and intentions, interpretations of situations and behavior. Thus, similar to schemas, scripts trigger expectations.

Later, Schank (1999) has revised his original notion of scripts which has been cited above (Schank & Abelson, 1975). As he admits, the original approach of him and his colleagues was highly modular, breaking the task of understanding into discrete and serially executed components.

“In those days, scripts were intended to account for our ability to understand more than was being referred to explicitly in a sentence by explaining the organization of implicit knowledge of the world we inhabit. […] In general, we ignored the problems of the development of such structures, the ability of the proposed structures to change themselves, and the problems of retrieval and storage of information posed by those structures. We concentrated instead on issues of processing.” (Schank, 2005, p.6f.)

Thus, in their first definition, scripts were referred to as a data structure that was a useful source of predictions, based on repeated experience. However, this use of the term was not in agreement with their theory. Schank (1999) underlines this with the following example: few people have been in an earthquake; however, everybody has knowledge about such events and understands stories about them. Is this knowledge then represented in scripts? Based on this example, Schank (1999) distinguishes scripts and other high-level knowledge structures with regard to abstraction or generalization. Only more general information can be used in a wider context than the one it was acquired in. In the original notion of the concept, too much information was stored specifically in a script. In contrast, it should be stored generally to allow for generalizations.

Moreover, the original definition viewed scripts as a passive structure that cannot be changed easily. In contrast, in the revised definition Schank stresses that scripts are an active memory structure that changes in response to new input. From this new point of view, no complex structures of complex events do exist in memory, but the scripts and the expectations are distributed in smaller units that have to be reconstructed.

Schank (1999) introduces two terms that are needed to fill out the new definition, i.e., scenes and scriptlets. Scenes are one kind of memory structures that provide a physical setting serving as the basis for reconstruction of an event. The most important scene has to be found for interpretation. A scene is likely to be ordered by using different contexts.

“Scenes […] can point to different scripts that embody specific aspects of those scenes. Scripts can also hold memories that are organized around expectation failures within that script. According to this theoretical view, a script is bounded by the scene that contains it. Thus, scripts do not cross scene boundaries.” (Schank, 1999, p.113);

Scriptlets are copies of a scene with particulars filled in. In case of expectation failure a new scriptlet is copied which includes the necessary changes to the scene. This allows for knowledge transfer across contexts. Scriptlets are acquired in learning by doing. They tend to decay in memory if they are not used. Schank (1999) differentiates three groups of scriptlets: cognitive, physical, and perceptual scriptlets. All scriptlets are static; for example, if a person acted based on a scriptlet only, she would have to order the same thing every time when eating out at a specific restaurant. Thus, some scriptlets should become scenes over time. Only if the scriptlet is transformed into a scene, the person is able to order whatever is on the menu.

2.2.5.4 Attitudes

Another concept related to expectations is attitudes. Attitudes are enduring evaluations of people, objects, or ideas (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003). A main aspect in the traditional view of attitudes is that they are enduring. However, this assumption has been challenged based on the constructivist idea that people construct attitudes from the most accessible and plausible information like their own behavior, moods, and salient beliefs about the attitude object. The construction process is influenced by the social context, meaning that they depend on what information comes to mind, how it is evaluated and used for judgment (Bohner & Wähnke, 2002).

On the other hand, Wilson and Hodges (1992) have found that many attitudes are stable and changes only occur if they are less stable, if people are less involved, or if they have an inconsistent structure. However, all attitudes are influenced by goals, moods, bodily states, standards, and appropriateness (Bohner & Wähnke, 2002). They can have cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally based components (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2003) and they affect thinking on all levels: (a) attention, encoding, exposure; (b) judgment and elaboration;

and (c) memory (Bohner & Wähnke, 2002).

Concerning their operationalisation, attitudes have been calculated as the sum of expectancy x value products (the expectancy of the behavior having certain consequences multiplied with the subjective value of these). Both, expectancy and value are basic variables determining motiv-ation tendencies that build the basis of what we finally do (Heckhausen & Heckhausen, 2006).

However, many more factors influence the interaction. For example, studies have provided a lot of evidence that performance at a task is affected by initial performance (Feather, 1982a). That is why after a failure the expectancy is low and after a success it is high. This is only one factor influencing behavior. There are many more variables, for example, changing expectations during the task performance, individual differences, and characteristics of the task. Therefore, attitudes often do not predict behavior accurately but situational variables have a greater influence than personal variables (Feather, 1982a). That is why for the following analysis a

situation- and expectation based model is developed. However, expectancy-value theories are an important part of motivation research. Examples of expectancy-value models, for example, Atkinson’s Theory of Achievement Motivation, are discussed in Feather (1982b).

To conclude, expectations are generated based on schemas and scripts. While schemas are more general, scripts are as specific as expectations. However, both schemas and scripts of actions are descriptions of components of these actions, whereas expectations are implications and attitudes are evaluations of these descriptions.