Anticipations and its effects

Every one of us have expectations out of anything we see. Wait, why would we even start to expect from something or someone?

You can find in-numerous contexts of anticipations. Let’s say you are new to a place, and looking for someone to have a little chitchat. When you have found this guy, and after a pleasant first chat with him, you tend to find this guy very humble/humor/generous whatever. If you were rational enough; you will not conclude him to be as you think, and you will continue your next times conversation casually. What will your new chitchat friend be like? Is he also rational as you are? Can you ever move-up this conversation to become friend to this new guy in the new place? If your new friend is not rational enough, he will have few set of expectations from you. His anticipations will alter his views about the subsequent events. He might always want you to talk to him in the very same way as was in the beginning. He might have assumed few set of things about your character, and when your behavior is not meeting his expectations there will be a crack in the newly built friendship.

The above example is about bad effect of the anticipation. This kind of bad effects can mostly be found in employer and employees in organizations and also in every day events. From an employer there will be certain expectations from an employee, if that is not met employer will be disappointed. From an employee there will be certain expectations from his employer about remuneration re-evaluation for giving high productivity to the company, if that is not met employee will be disappointed.

Now, why would you start to expect something from someone? It can be as told in the first example; were in you deduce out of a particular event about a person. (I am not saying, deducing about a person’s character/behavior is wrong. You should take enough time to arrive to that state. ) Second is, something might have influenced you about a person. Did you know? If you were told that a person whom you have never met to be evil, even if you saw him smiling you will conclude him to be giving a cunning smile to you.

Dan Ariely explains his experiment on “Effect of Expectations” in his book “Predictably irrational”. He experimented his MIT students; where they were let to taste two different beers, and take a pint of one of the brews. Brew A was Budwiser and brew B was Budwiser, plus 2 drops of balsamic vinegar per ounce. If students were not told about the two brews, they chose Brew B. if told about it, they chose brew A. That is if they were told about the tastes upfront, they will end up agreeing with you -- because of their expectations.

In a way with all the above mentioned, I feel anticipations are not good for healthy social life. Yes, you might counter argue saying Anticipations are something like hopes and hopes are sign of trust you have on someone. When do you start to trust someone? There can be two possible reasons for you to trust someone; one, you might know this fellow for a long time. Second, you are left with no choice. But, except these two cases, it is good not to expect from someone or something. It will make you biased or put you in depression when things don’t work out the way you expected.