Confirmation of interpersonal expectations is inherently challenging. 

Niv Reggev, Anoushka Chowdhary, Jason P Mitchell, Confirmation of Interpersonal Expectations is Intrinsically Rewarding, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2021;, nsab081, https: //doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab081

Commentary

People want to communicate well with others and spend a great deal of effort in this endeavor.

Longitudinal research has demonstrated that perceivers use stereotypes and sources of prior knowledge to predict the responses of individuals in their environment in order to simplify the complex task of interpersonal communication.

The results show that top-down expectations are consistent and may shape the subjective value of targets that violate the expectations.

In two neuroimaging experiments (n = 58), these results showed increased activation in brain regions associated with reward processing, including the nucleus accumbens, when perceivers were shown information that was consistent with social expectations. In addition, two additional behavioral experiments (n = 704) also showed that perceivers encountered goals consistent with their expectations and were willing to give up money to avoid goals that violated their expectations.

These results indicate that perceivers value confirming social expectations, like food and monetary rewards.