Affect control theory shows how cultural meanings for identities and behaviors are used to form impressions of events and guide social action. The theory’s impression formation equations are the engine of its predictions about events and the deflection they generate (i.e., how much they violate, versus conform to, cultural prescriptions). In this research, I examine the relationship between affective (deflection) and cognitive responses to events, with a focus on judgments of event likelihood. I present a series of analyses that show that event likelihood judgments are impacted by events’ perceived normativity, commonality in social life, and our personal experience with events like them and by the appearance likelihood of the actors, combinations of actors, and behaviors they involve and that likelihood ratings and deflection most often diverge for institutionally vague events. I additionally show that deflection computed using Heise’s 2014 impression-change equations strongly predicts event likelihood.

情感控制理论表明，身份和行为的文化含义如何用于形成事件印象并指导社会行为。该理论的印象形成方程式是其对事件及其产生的偏差（即，它们违反文化规范的程度与遵循文化规定的程度）进行预测的引擎。在这项研究中，我研究了对事件的情感（偏向）与认知反应之间的关系，重点是对事件可能性的判断。我进行了一系列分析，这些结果表明，事件可能性判断受以下因素影响：事件的感知规范性，社交生活中的共同性以及我们对类似事件的个人经历以及参与者的出现可能性，参与者的组合，以及它们所涉及的行为，并且可能性等级和偏差最常在机构模糊的事件中发生分歧。我还表明，使用海斯（Heise）的2014年印象变化方程式计算的挠度可以强烈预测事件的可能性。