Effects of Task Performance Expectancy Violations on Processing Fluency and Speaker Evaluations

Abstract

We examined how task performance expectancy violations influence speaker evaluations. Americans listened to a Japanese-accented speaker reading a story; completed a memory test on the story's content; indicated their expected performance on the test; and then received positive, negative, or no performance feedback. Positive feedback positively violated listeners’ performance expectancies and elicited higher fluency, a more positive affective reaction, and more positive speaker evaluations, compared to no feedback. Fluency and affect mediated the effect of positive feedback on speaker evaluations.