Surprise

About: Surprise is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4371 publications have been published within this topic receiving 99386 citations.

Surprise despite warning: Why sudden attacks succeed

Abstract: Most major wars since 1939 have begun with surprise attacks. Hindsight reveals that the element of surprise in most of these attacks was unwarranted; substantial evidence of an impending strike was available to the victims before the fact. The high incidence of surprise is itself surprising. The voluminous literature on strategic surprise, however, suffers from three fixations. One is a focus on the problem of warning, and how to improve intelligence collection, rather than on the more difficult problem of how to improve political response to ample warning indicators. Another is a common view of surprise as an absolute or dichotomous problem rather than as a matter of degree. Third is the prevalent derivation of theories from single cases rather than from comparative studies. This article puts these fixations in perspective.1

Delight and the grateful customer: beyond joy and surprise

Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this paper is to combine the evolving fields of customer delight and positive psychology to investigate a broader conceptualization of customer delight. Furthermore, to investigate antecedent variables that impact this broader conceptualization. Design/methodology/approach This research employed structural equation modeling in a hedonic context. Findings Key findings indicate that aside from joy and surprise, gratitude also has a positive impact on customer delight. Furthermore, psychological sense of brand community (PSBC) and transcendent customer experiences (TCE) were shown to positively impact the proximal antecedents of customer delight. Research limitations/implications Extending the domain of customer delight beyond joy and surprise contributes to the theoretical discussion on what customer delight represents to the service firm. Further, this research identifies new theoretical relationships between PSBC/TCE and customer delight. Practical implications By offering the broader conceptualization of customer delight, this research contributes to the discussion of whether delight is possible or even profitable. Namely, by moving past joy/surprise, this research suggests that managing gratitude can be a strategic lever that the modern service firm can utilize. Originality/value This is the first research to evaluate gratitude as an antecedent to customer delight. Further, by combining positive psychology and delight research this research identifies new predictors of positive customer experiences.

Confusion of fear and surprise: a test of the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis with eye movement monitoring

Abstract: Of the basic emotional facial expressions, fear is typically less accurately recognised as a result of being confused with surprise. According to the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis, the difficulty in recognising fear could be attributed to the similar visual configuration with surprise. In effect, they share more muscle movements than they possess distinctive ones. The main goal of the current study was to test the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis in the recognition of fear and surprise using eye movement recording and by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions. Results revealed that when the brow lowerer is the only distinctive feature between expressions, accuracy is lower, participants spend more time looking at stimuli and they make more comparisons between expressions than when stimuli include the lip stretcher. These results not only support the perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis but extend its definition by suggesting that it is not solely the number of distinctive features that is important but also their qualitative value.

Is anyone there? Drawings as a tool to detect deceit in occupation interviews

Abstract: In the present experiment 17 truth tellers and 16 liars were asked to verbally describe and sketch their workplace. We measured (i) the amount of detail included in the verbal description/sketch; (ii) the plausibility of the verbal description/sketch; (iii) the number of people verbally described/sketched; and (iv) the level of detail in which these people were verbally described/sketched. Differences between truth tellers and liars emerged on all four variables in the drawings whereas only one difference (the number of people described) emerged in the verbal accounts. Two possible explanations for the efficiency of drawings as a veracity assessment tool in this experiment are discussed. First, the request to sketch came as a surprise to participants and, second, sketching creates a unique problem for liars: more so than a verbal request, the request to sketch forces an interviewee to convey spatial information.