Abstract
We tested whether surprise elicits similar physiological changes as those associated with orienting and freezing after threat, as surprise also involves a state of interruption and attention for effective action. Moreover, because surprise is primarily driven by the unexpectedness of an event, initial physiological responses were predicted to be similar for positive, neutral, and negative surprises. Results of repetition-change studies (4 + 1 in Supplemental Materials) showed that surprise lowers heart rate (Experiments 1-4) and increases blood pressure (Experiment 4). No effects on body movement (Experiment 2) or finger temperature (Experiment 4) were found. When unexpected stimuli were presented more often (making them less surprising) heart rate returned to baseline, while blood pressure remained high (Experiment 4). These effects were not influenced by stimulus valence. However, second-to-second analyses within the first (surprising) block showed a tendency for a stronger increase in systolic blood pressure after negative vs. positive surprise.
Highlights
People constantly make predictions about the world around them, to be able to respond efficiently and effectively to relevant stimuli in their environment (Clark, 2016; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2015)
Two coders rated whether answers referred to surprise, unexpectedness, or inter ruption or whether they referred to anything else
The current study showed no effect of surprise on temperature, which may be partially due to suboptimal measurement
Summary
People constantly make predictions about the world around them, to be able to respond efficiently and effectively to relevant stimuli in their environment (Clark, 2016; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2015). Surprise is the initial interrupted state after an unexpected event and only after people have made sense of the unexpected, other affective states may follow depending on the valence of the event. This means that it takes some time to experience, for example, joy after a positive surprise or sadness after a negative surprise (Noordewier et al, 2016). Following literature on orienting and freezing, we tested whether surprise results in a reduction of heart rate and movement This would fit with the characterization of surprise as interruption for attention and effective action. We differentiated between positive and negative surprises, to test to what extent the physiology of surprise is influenced by the valence of the stimulus
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