It feels fluent, but not right: The interactive effect of expected and experienced processing fluency on evaluative judgment

In this research, we examined the malleability of processing fluency from the angle of people's a priori expectation of how fluently stimuli will be processed. Results from three studies suggest that the value of the fluency experience is contingent on how easy or difficult people expect the incoming information would be processed. Specifically, participants had higher evaluations of the target when their experienced processing fluency conformed (vs. did not conform) to their expected processing fluency. We also found that the interactive effect between expected fluency and experienced fluency was mediated by a sense of assurance when people's subjective fluency experience conformed to their expectations. Moreover, we showed that a positive effect of processing fluency occurred when people are under cognitive load (affective route); and interpreting the fluency experience in terms of one's expected fluency occurs when people had enough cognitive capacity (interpretive route).