Excessive advance praise turns into disappointment and hostility when people finally experience the thing praised.
TV Tropes names the reaction of audiences who arrive at a heavily praised work expecting a masterpiece and find merely a good one. Consumer research had described the mechanism earlier: in Oliver's expectation-disconfirmation model of 1980, satisfaction depends on the gap between expectation and experience rather than on experience alone.
In practice
- A product launched after a year of publicity is reviewed worse than a quieter rival of the same quality.
- A friend told that a restaurant is the best in the city leaves disappointed by a very good dinner.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is expectation-disconfirmation: the same experience satisfies less when expectations are higher. Another is contrarian signalling, since disliking what everyone praises marks the critic as discerning.
- In its favour
- Supported by consumer research on expectations and satisfaction, and consistent with the law of contrast.
- Against it
- High expectations can also raise satisfaction through assimilation, in which people rate what they expected to like more highly, and studies find both effects depending on the size of the gap.
- Standing
- Compare the hype cycle and the law of contrast.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind