FIGURE 2.

Tension model. The perception of an initiating event associated with conflict, dissonance, instability, or uncertainty triggers future-directed processes of expectation, anticipation, and prediction (depending on previous knowledge, context, and personality factors) generating a space of anticipated outcome events that vary with regard to their affective values/desirability. A divergence between the affective values of anticipated outcomes (i.e., a differing desirability of outcome events) leads to the subjective experience of tension (with positive outcomes being associated with hope and negative outcomes with fear).