The Causes and Consequences of Drifting Expectations
研究发现学生在等待考试成绩时，预期会悲观漂移以缓冲失望，但这种策略虽暂时缓解负面情绪，却损害了基于预测误差的学习能力，反而延续了不确定性。
Awaiting news of uncertain outcomes is distressing because the news might be disappointing. To prevent such disappointments, people often “brace for the worst,” pessimistically lowering expectations before news arrives to decrease the possibility of surprising disappointment (a negative prediction error, or PE). Computational decision-making research commonly assumes that expectations do not drift within trials, yet it is unclear whether expectations pessimistically drift in real-world, high-stakes settings, what factors influence expectation drift, and whether it effectively buffers emotional responses to goal-relevant outcomes. Moreover, individuals learn from PEs to accurately anticipate future outcomes, but it is unknown whether expectation drift also impedes PE-based learning. In a sample of students awaiting exam grades ( N = 625), we found that expectations often drift and tend to drift pessimistically. We demonstrate that bracing is preferentially modulated by uncertainty; it transiently buffers the initial emotional impact of negative PEs but impairs PE-based learning, counterintuitively sustaining uncertainty into the future.