Pierre Baldi and Laurent Itti, both of the University of California, claim to understand the mechanics of surprise. They have devised a computer model to test their frankly obvious hypothesis that surprise is caused by a disruption of expectation. The model simulates a crowd of 'Visual neurons' watching video clips, some very surprising, others less so. They found that people tend to look at surprising things more than than what they term 'information-rich objects'.

So, something is surprising if it changes our beliefs. The model and its findings may well prove useful to our business. Read more