An investigation into expectations

Marc Webb’s 500 days of summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel was incredibly popular when it was released in 2009. One of the most memorable scenes from the film happens at the end when protagonist Tom goes to a party at his ex’s apartment with hopes that his expectations will finally align with his reality.

Audiences watched with intrigue and later on horror as the two scenes on the screen that represent what Tom thinks is going to happen and what actually does diverge further and further away from each other. As the two scenes unfold themselves to the thunderous tone of a Regina Spektor Song, it becomes increasingly obvious that Tom can imagine and expect this alternate reality with as much clarity as he wants to, but will still be forced to live in the real one where he doesn’t have the charm, doesn’t have the job, and doesn’t have the girl at the of the day.

This scene garnered acclaim from audiences and critics alike because it portrayed a universal experience on screen in a smart and innovative way. The phenomenon of building up one’s expectations sky high in their mind only for it to be demolished by the bulldozer of reality later on. This is an incredibly common thing to go through---and understandably so. We as humans, whether we align ourselves with the title of being an optimist or not, believe that things are going to be alright and might even be the best that they can be to varying extents despite whatever challenges may stand in the way. 

One’s imagination is more powerful and resilient than most give it credit for. And while it can help a person create brilliant works of art and worlds for fictional stories, it can also hinder their ability to navigate through the real world without constantly falling into pits of bitterness and disappointment. Because as F.Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his timeless novel The Great Gatsby “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."

No child is born one minute and sitting in their nursery thinking about their bright future complete with a partner that they adore, a job that they love, and one of those tiny white dogs that always seem to have dirt around their eyes the next. No, John Gamble, president of the Tenacity Consulting firm, believes that people’s expectations sprout from two things: the messaging that they receive along with their own personal experiences and the experiences of others.

During this day and age we are all consuming massive amounts of media through film and television, but they still mostly all delve into the same plots. The guy gets the girl, the best friends show up for each other, and the high schoolers endure dramatic but ultimately enlightening journeys with their closest friends set to soundtracks that are simultaneously commercial and delightfully indie. These tropes make sense. The entertainment industry is at the end of the day a business, and will value increased profit margins over creativity and sensationalism over accuracy because that is what sells. 

Disney’s High School Musical probably would not have made what CNN Money estimates to be the 491 million dollars that it did if its tagline had been “We’re all in this together until we graduate and go down different paths and lead lives that will become so full with other people, places and things that we won’t remember each other's names in 15 years!!” because it is not NEARLY as catchy, and also because it is not as comforting to its target audience despite being more accurate.

Senior Research Scientist from the University of Pennsylvania Amy Bleakley found that “In the absence of life experience people tend to lean on Tv shows and movies to base their expectations off of, which can have adverse effects in the future” Programs marketed towards young adults consistently take the easy way out when it comes to their plot points because shiny storytelling sells, but in turn they end up misleading the very demographic that they are trying to dazzle.

Our expectations aren’t solely founded upon what we see on our screens, they also rely on the stories that we hear from other people and experiences in our own lives. We tend to lean on other people’s retelling of situations that they've been in to gauge how our own might be for us. However this habit can be harmful because people are naturally prone to dressing up the truth depending on whoever they’re talking to. A Stanford study conducted by Elizabeth Marsh found that “when relating an anecdote to friends, people often focus on entertaining their audience rather than on accuracy...they may make the story more interesting by omitting certain details and exaggerating and embellishing others.”

 But we can’t just be skeptical about other people’s memories, we also have to turn a side eye at our own. The Decision Lab defines Rosy Retrospection as the psychological phenomenon that refers to the tendency that people have to remember the positive aspects of an experience with such clarity that they alter the composition of the memory as a whole. Wearing rose colored glasses has been evolutionarily beneficial to humans for centuries because the distortion of difficult memories allows people to carry on with their lives without the weight of past traumas holding them back, but that same distortion also cancels out any opportunity for a person to look back on that given situation and use it as an accurate reference to build their expectations for another experience off of.

 Take this personal example: during my freshman homecoming I spilled sauce on my dress, somehow managed to lose my coat, and got my foot stomped on and bloodied by somebody’s heels on the dance floor to the tune of Usher’s YEAH. But I only have pictures of my friends and me grinning from ear-to-ear and videos of us dancing to ABBA. In 20 years that’s probably all that I’m going to remember, and if a person were to ask me ‘what was homecoming like for you’ that’s probably all that I’d reference.

There is no harm in choosing to focus on the positive aspects of any given situation---it’s actually an incredibly psychologically sound thing to do, however it does make it so a lot of people’s memories are no longer objective. If an expectation's source material, whether it's the newest A24 candy-colored coming of age movie or your older cousin’s retelling of how bomb her 21st birthday was, is inaccurate, then the expectation inherently is as well.

The harm in all of this is when one takes these expectations, compares them to reality, and notices the difference between them they’re met with disappointment. Picture this: a family is dead set on getting ready for a vacation in Paris. They buy berets, carefully watch Ratatouille, and endure MONTHS of harassment from the Duo Lingo Bird in an attempt to learn a little bit of french. You know, the whole 9 yards. However when they arrive in the city of lights they end up being shocked at the fact that it doesn’t match up to the bright image that they’ve conjured up in their heads. So shocked that they become plagued with hallucinations, dizziness, and sweating.

I know that this scenario sounds a bit far fetched but it actually happens to be a very real health issue that is aptly titled: The Paris Syndrome. TPS is explained by Chelsea Fagan from the Atlantic as a “collection of physical and psychological symptoms experienced by first-time visitors realizing that Paris isn't, in fact, what they thought it would be” These symptomes aren’t solely connected to unfulfilled travel dreams, they also coincide with countless other situations when a person’s imagined reality doesn’t match up with their real one because as Dr Ronesh Sinha’s study established “when a person’s expectations aren’t met, their dopamine levels come crashing down”. By setting and clinging to intense expectations we hinder our ability to take our lives in stride without constantly being hung up on the way things would be, should be, or could be if our circumstances were different.

While establishing expectations can serve as a useful tactic for preparing for future endeavors,one must learn how to acknowledge when our imagination begins to take the wheel in order to truly reap the benefits from setting them.One way of establishing a better awareness of delusions of grandeur is to practice a simple form of mindfulness - pausing to acknowledge when our imaginative side begins to shadow over our sense of logic and reality.As Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert explained: “Our prefrontal cortices can alter our perception and lure us into overestimating our abilities, our ideas and skills and when our reality doesn't match our estimation our moods can sour.''

 In order to keep our spirits high and our heads screwed on straight we must temper our tendency to compare the way that our expectations led us to believe that things would be and the way they are. This is no easy feat: It’s much simpler to snuggle into the security of our preconceptions than to challenge them with logic. But if we focus on practicing the later we’ll become more comfortable and content with our realities as time goes by.