Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Novel Production Protocol for Small-scale Manufacture of Probiotic Fermented Foods
Published on: September 10, 2016
Asymmetry in the disconfirmation of expectations for natural yogurt
H N Schifferstein1, A P Kole, J Mojet
1TNO Nutrition and Food Research Institute, and Department of Marketing and Marketing Research, Wageningen Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
Effects of expectations conveyed by a product description or an empty package on the evaluation of four types of natural yogurt were studied in a laboratory setting. Hedonic and perceptual responses for the correctly or incorrectly identified products generally showed assimilation: they fell between the responses to the unlabelled products and the responses for the expected properties evoked by presenting only product descriptions or empty packages. Hedonic judgments remained close to the expectation when the product performed better than expected, whereas they were relatively close to the evaluation for the unlabelled product when the product performed worse than expected. The asymmetry was largest for the buying intentions of subjects who received product packages. This is in accordance with the theory that positive disconfirmations are regarded as "gains" and negative disconfirmations as "losses". The asymmetry is likely to be more important in actual buying behaviour than in the experimental settings generally studied, as here.
Related Concept Videos
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Confirmation Biases
Cognitive Dissonance
Testing a Claim about Population Proportion
There are two methods of testing a claim about a population proportion: (1) Using the sample proportion from the data where a binomial distribution is approximated to the normal distribution and (2) Using the binomial probabilities calculated from the data.
The first method uses normal distribution as an approximation to the binomial distribution. The requirements are as follows: sample size is large...
Self-Discrepancy and Its Effects
Causes of Similarity-Dissimilarity Effect

