Expectations. The distinguishing of hope from expectations
is critical because several consumer behavior phenomena
are predicated on the concept of expectation (e.g.,
expectancy value as in subjective expected utility and multiattribute
attitude models, expectancy disconfirmation in the
satisfaction literature). First, hope is an emotion, whereas
expectations are beliefs. Second, hope reflects situations
described as goal congruent, whereas expectations and perceived
probabilities encompass situations that are goal congruent,
goal incongruent, or goal irrelevant. Third, feelings
of hope are based on appraisals of possibility, not of probability.
A person can experience hope even when the probability
of an outcome is low. For example, many examples
from medicine indicate that consumers experience hope
about overcoming disease even in the face of overwhelming
odds (Lazarus 1999) and that people given the exact same
probabilities of survival vary greatly in the degree of hope
that they feel. The difference is that some people interpret
even extremely low probability estimates of survival as evidence
of the possibility of recovery (Taylor and Brown
1988; Taylor et al. 2000).