Numerous studies have documented that expectancy-violating (EV) behavior (i.e., behavior that violates existing person impressions) elicits more effortful cognitive processing compared to expectancy-consistent (EC) behavior. In addition, behavior valence also strongly affects its processing and modulates the effect of incongruency on impression formation, though this last finding is inconsistent with some extant models of expectancy processes. Moreover, whereas studies in these domains generally have focused on processing operations that take place later in the processing sequence, implications for earlier operations that influence rapid engagement of attention to EV information are to be explored. The current research investigated whether the valence of EV information affects very rapid attentional processes thought to tag goal-relevant information for more elaborative processing at later stages. We predicted that if an initial impression of a target implies a negative trait, then the perceiver should be less motivated to monitor that target’s subsequent EV (i.e., positive) actions because the initial impression will be held with relative certainty. In contrast, when an initial impression is positive (and, thus, held with less certainty), the perceiver should be motivated to attend to the target’s subsequent actions. If the target subsequently behaves negatively, that new information should be particularly salient (and goal relevant) to the perceiver and capture more attention. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as participants read depictions of behavior that either were consistent with or violated established impressions about fictitious characters. Consistent with predictions, a very early attention-related ERP component, the frontal P2, differentiated negative from positive EV behavior but was unaffected by the valence of EC behavior. This effect occurred much earlier in processing than has been demonstrated in prior reports of EV effects on neural response, suggesting that impression-formation goals tune attention to information that might signal the need to modify existing impressions.

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