Place

surprise

Not who you're looking for? Others named surprise: human settlement in Butler County, Nebraska, United States o · ship ordered in April 1777 · American privateer schooner · 2022 single by Chlöe

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Overview

Surprise is a brief mental and physiological state, a startle response experienced by animals and humans as the result of an unexpected event. Surprise can have any valence; that is, it can be neutral/moderate, pleasant, unpleasant, positive, or negative. Surprise can occur in varying levels of intensity ranging from very-surprised, which may induce the fight-or-flight response, or little-surprise that elicits a less intense response to the stimuli. Construct Surprise is intimately connected to the idea of acting in accordance with a set of rules. When the rules of reality generating events of daily life separate from the rule-of-thumb expectations, surprise is the outcome. Surprise represents the difference between expectations and reality, the gap between our assumptions and expectations about worldly events and the way that those events actually turn out. This gap can be deemed an important foundation on which new findings are based since surprises can make people aware of their own ignorance. The acknowledgement of ignorance, in turn, can mean a window to new knowledge. Surprise can also occur due to a violation of expectancies. In the specific case of interpersonal communication, the Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) says that three factors influence a person's expectations: interactant variables, environmental variables, and variables related to the nature of the interaction or environmental variables.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.”
— Leo Buscaglia, in interview with Veronica M. Hay, in A Magazine of People and Possibilities (1998)
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”
— Rachel Carson, "Help Your Child to Wonder", Woman's Home Companion (July 1956), p. 46.
“Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Crack-Up (1936), Notebook E (1945), as edited by Edmund Wilson
“Wonder is from surprise; and surprise ceases upon experience.”
— Robert South, "The Duties of the Episcopal Function", in Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (Philadelphia: Sorin & Ball, 1844), Vol. 1, p. 75.
“When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is prior to reason.”
— Richard Weaver, in Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 19.
“Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, notes from 1930, in Culture and Value (1984), translated by Peter Winch, p. 5.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

On IJR

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Not who you're looking for? Others named surprise: human settlement in Butler County, Nebraska, United States o · ship ordered in April 1777 · American privateer schooner · 2022 single by Chlöe

Overview

Surprise is a brief mental and physiological state, a startle response experienced by animals and humans as the result of an unexpected event. Surprise can have any valence; that is, it can be neutral/moderate, pleasant, unpleasant, positive, or negative. Surprise can occur in varying levels of intensity ranging from very-surprised, which may induce the fight-or-flight response, or little-surprise that elicits a less intense response to the stimuli. Construct Surprise is intimately connected to the idea of acting in accordance with a set of rules. When the rules of reality generating events of daily life separate from the rule-of-thumb expectations, surprise is the outcome. Surprise represents the difference between expectations and reality, the gap between our assumptions and expectations about worldly events and the way that those events actually turn out. This gap can be deemed an important foundation on which new findings are based since surprises can make people aware of their own ignorance. The acknowledgement of ignorance, in turn, can mean a window to new knowledge. Surprise can also occur due to a violation of expectancies. In the specific case of interpersonal communication, the Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT) says that three factors influence a person's expectations: interactant variables, environmental variables, and variables related to the nature of the interaction or environmental variables.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.”
— Leo Buscaglia, in interview with Veronica M. Hay, in A Magazine of People and Possibilities (1998)
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”
— Rachel Carson, "Help Your Child to Wonder", Woman's Home Companion (July 1956), p. 46.
“Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Crack-Up (1936), Notebook E (1945), as edited by Edmund Wilson
“Wonder is from surprise; and surprise ceases upon experience.”
— Robert South, "The Duties of the Episcopal Function", in Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (Philadelphia: Sorin & Ball, 1844), Vol. 1, p. 75.
“When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is prior to reason.”
— Richard Weaver, in Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 19.
“Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, notes from 1930, in Culture and Value (1984), translated by Peter Winch, p. 5.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.