Four experiments investigated the effects of stimuli discrepant with schemata of varying strength on three surprise components: The interruption of ongoing activities (indexed by response time increase), the focusing of attention on the schema-discrepant stimulus (indexed by memory performance), and the feeling of surprise (indexed by self-reports). Response times were consistently found to increase with schema strength. This effect was attributed to the increasing difficulty of schema revision. In contrast, memory for the schemadiscrepant stimulus was not affected by schema strength, supporting the hypothesis that schema-discrepant stimuli are stored in memory with a distinct tag. Finally, self-reports of surprise intensity varied with schema strength only if they were made immediately after the surprising event without any intervening questions, suggesting that self-reports of surprise are highly susceptible to memory distortions. Surprise and Schema Strength 3The purpose of the experiments described in this article is to contribute to the empirical investigation of the emotion of surprise. More precisely, the aim of the present study was to examine the effects of the strength of the cognitive structure or schema from which the surprise-eliciting event deviates, on three components of the surprise syndrome, namely the subjective feeling of surprise, the interruption of ongoing activities and the focusing of attention on the surprise-eliciting event.Previous research on surprise has been primarily focused on empirical demonstrations of the surprise reaction in response to schema-discrepant events and paid little attention to the characteristics of surprise-eliciting conditions and their effects on the different components of surprise addressed in the present study (e.g., Charlesworth, 1964;Desai, 1939;Meyer Niepel, Rudolph, & Schützwohl, 1991;Niepel, Rudolph, Schützwohl, & Meyer, 1994). For example, Meyer et al. (1991) showed that a schema-discrepant event indeed causes the surprise reaction typically consisting of the subjective feeling of surprise (as indexed by verbal reports), the interruption of ongoing activities (as indexed by action delay), and the focusing of attention on the surprise-eliciting event (as indexed by memory for this event). However, no efforts were made to systematically examine the potential effects of antecedent conditions on these surprise components.The present experiments are directed at this research lacuna. They focus on the effects of one specific antecedent condition, namely the strength of the schema from which the surprise-eliciting event deviates, on the intensity of the subjective feeling of surprise, the duration of the interruption of ongoing activities, and the focusing of attention on the surprise-eliciting event. The following questions were addressed: Does (a) the reported intensity of the feeling of surprise, (b) the duration of action delay, and (c) memory performance for the surprise-eliciting event increase with increases in schema strength? Surprise and Sc...

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Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema-discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema-discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition-change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema-discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self-report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise.

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