Is there any joy in being right about bad outcomes? Surprising answer revealed in new study

A recent study published in Emotion challenges the idea that people may find some satisfaction in having their pessimistic expectations confirmed, even if the outcome is negative. Contrary to the notion of “doomsayer’s delight,” the results indicate that people do not experience positive emotions from being right about bad things.

The concept of “doomsayer’s delight” stems from the idea that people might take some emotional comfort or validation when their gloomy predictions come true, even if the outcome is negative. This notion suggests that the emotional satisfaction of being right might, in some cases, outweigh the negative impact of the outcome itself. For example, a person who constantly predicts disaster might feel a sense of superiority or validation when their warnings are confirmed, even if they are now facing an unpleasant situation.

The idea behind the research is grounded in a theoretical framework known as Predictive Processing, which proposes that the brain constantly tries to forecast future events based on past experiences. According to this framework, when the brain’s predictions are confirmed, it may trigger a reward response, even in situations where the prediction involves negative outcomes. The researchers sought to test this idea by examining how people react emotionally to expected versus unexpected negative and positive events.

“I became interested in this topic for several reasons. First, this study was part of a larger research project aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of emotional experiences,” said study author Inon Raz, a postdoctoral researcher in Michael Gilead’s lab at Tel Aviv University.

“We sought to explore the underlying mechanisms that shape emotional responses, a crucial component in a broader investigation that includes brain functional imaging studies and longitudinal analyses of emotional shifts over time. By integrating insights from neuroscience, psychology, and life event analysis, we aimed to form a more comprehensive view of the processes that govern emotional reactions.”

“Additionally, the study holds theoretical significance in relation to emerging cognitive frameworks like Predictive Processing theories,” Raz explained. “These theories suggest that at the core of human cognition is the fundamental drive to predict future outcomes in our environment. This concept offers a fresh perspective on cognitive processes, yet it is challenging to operationalize in a straightforward experimental setting.”

“Our attraction to this theoretical approach led us to design a study that, in essence, plays with the idea of whether emotional experiences might reflect the predictions these frameworks propose. In doing so, we aimed to uncover whether emotions align with the brain’s drive for cognitive consistency or whether pragmatic concerns override this need in emotionally charged moments.”

The researchers conducted two experiments using a total of 500 participants. The experiments were set up to assess how people react emotionally when their expectations—whether optimistic or pessimistic—are either confirmed or contradicted by reality.

In both experiments, participants were shown a series of images with either positive or negative emotional content. Before each image appeared, participants were given symbols that suggested whether the upcoming image would be positive or negative. The symbols were accurate in 77% of the cases, meaning the participants’ expectations were confirmed in the majority of trials. However, in 23% of the trials, the symbols were misleading, creating a scenario in which participants’ expectations were violated.

For example, participants might be led to expect a positive image, only to be shown a negative one, or vice versa. This setup allowed the researchers to compare how participants felt when their expectations were confirmed versus when they were surprised.

To measure participants’ emotional reactions, the researchers used a technique known as the affect misattribution procedure. After each image, participants were shown a neutral Chinese character for a very short time and were asked to rate how pleasant or unpleasant they found the character.

The idea behind this method is that people’s feelings about the preceding image would unconsciously influence their judgment of the neutral character. By analyzing these ratings, the researchers could infer participants’ emotional states without directly asking them how they felt, which helped to capture their immediate, gut-level reactions to the images.

When participants’ pessimistic expectations were confirmed—that is, when they anticipated something negative and then experienced a negative outcome—they reported feeling significantly worse than when they were surprised by an unexpected negative outcome. This result suggests that people do not experience any emotional benefit from having their negative predictions validated, even though their expectations were technically correct.

In fact, the emotional toll of having negative expectations confirmed appeared to be greater than the discomfort caused by being unexpectedly confronted with something negative.

“What was somewhat surprising—and certainly counterintuitive—was the complete absence of any indication that a negative stimulus, when aligned with expectations, would be experienced as somewhat positive or at least less negative,” Raz told PsyPost. “While this isn’t a shock, it does challenge the intuitive notion that predicting a negative outcome might soften its emotional impact, which was an idea rooted in classical consistency theories.”

On the other hand, the results showed that people felt better when their optimistic expectations were confirmed—that is, when they anticipated a positive outcome and received it—compared to when they were surprised by a negative outcome. The confirmation of positive expectations led to more pleasant feelings than the violation of positive expectations. This reinforces the idea that people generally experience better emotions when things go as they hope, and the emotional boost from confirming positive beliefs is stronger than any relief from confirming negative ones.

“Unlike many other research efforts, the significance of our findings lies less in their direct relevance to the average person and more in their theoretical implications,” Raz said. “The reopening of consistency theories, which suggest that people strive for alignment between their predictions and reality, is indeed new. However, we are not the first to reexamine these ideas—Kruglanski and his colleagues (2018) were a key inspiration for our work, as they reconsidered cognitive consistency in social psychology.”

“In our study, we take this a step further by examining whether, and in which situations, we can observe expressions that may relate to the basic need to predict reality—a central theme in Predictive Processing theories—within the human emotional experience. While our research does not claim definitive answers, it challenges existing thought and opens new questions about how these cognitive processes might influence emotional responses.”

The researchers also examined how individual characteristics, such as a need for certainty or higher levels of anxiety, might influence emotional responses to expectation confirmation. However, they found no evidence that these traits made any difference in how participants felt when their predictions were confirmed or violated. This suggests that the emotional impact of having negative expectations validated is a general phenomenon, not significantly influenced by individual differences in personality or psychological traits.

“We were surprised by the lack of individual differences in Need For Closure‏ and other relevant psychological dimensions in how people evaluated prior information or responded to the confirmation of expectations in our paradigm, which suggests that these processes may be more universal than we initially thought,” Raz said.

One limitation is that the researchers focused on very short time frames to capture participants’ raw emotional responses, but it is possible that over longer periods, people might reflect on their predictions differently. “Our study primarily focused on initial, momentary emotional reactions and did not fully explore the role of arousal or long-term emotional processes,” Raz noted. “Additionally, our findings rely on a single experimental paradigm, which may limit the generalizability of the results. Future studies using multiple paradigms and examining both emotional and semantic dimensions would provide a more comprehensive understanding.”

The study raises interesting questions about how emotional experiences are shaped by both expectations and outcomes. The researchers suggest that future studies should explore the balance between people’s desire for cognitive consistency—wanting their predictions to be correct—and their desire for positive outcomes.

“Our long-term goal is to create experimental conditions in the laboratory that allow us to disentangle the influence of knowledge from pragmatic concerns,” Raz told PsyPost. “We aim to develop a stable framework that can manipulate the relative importance of knowledge in specific situations, particularly in relation to rewards. While there are already paradigms demonstrating similar dynamics, these have not yet been fully explored in human studies, and this line of research will require extensive work across many experiments.”

The study, “Is It Better to Be Happy or Right? Examining the Relative Role of the Pragmatic and Epistemic Imperatives in Momentary Affective Evaluations,” was authored by Inon Raz, Niv Reggev, and Michael Gilead.