Affects of the unexpected: when inconsistency feels good (or bad)

Affective responses to disconfirmation of expectancies have paradoxical features: Incongruency is uncomfortable and elicits negative affect, but how do people feel when the incongruent outcome is positive? This article shows that affective responses to disconfirmed expectancies depend on whether people value consistency and thus focus on the expectancy-congruency of the outcome or on its valence. People with high need for structure, a prevention focus, or for whom mortality is salient, assign more value to consistency and are more congruency focused: They feel more positive after congruent outcomes than after incongruent outcomes (independent of valence). People with low need for structure, a promotion focus, or for whom mortality is not salient, value consistency less and are more outcome focused: They feel more positive after positive outcomes than after negative outcomes (independent of congruency). This article furthermore shows how responses to the unexpected unfold and that a congruency focus requires less cognitive resources than an outcome focus.