Expectation:
- a strong belief that something will happen or be the case.
- “reality had not lived up to expectations”
Expectancy:
- the state of thinking or hoping that something, especially something good, will happen.
- “they waited with an air of expectancy“
Did you know there was a difference between them? I didn’t until last week! All I was aware of was to drop your expectations of people, things, life in general. “Don’t expect anything except animal behavior” is one of my favorites (thanks bro); so for this part of my [more] conscious journey I intended to live with limited hopes..
But, it turns out I was wrong! Having an expectancy for something we’d prefer to happen to happen, rather than an expectation for the mathematical formula we’ve calculated for life and how it should pan out seems to be it! One can have the hopeful feeling that anything can and may happen in your favor..
Have you ever heard of the Expectancy theory?
According to Wikipedia** it “..proposes that an individual will decide to behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be. In essence, the motivation of the behavior selection is determined by the desirability of the outcome..
..Expectancy theory is about the mental processes regarding choice, or choosing. It explains the processes that an individual undergoes to make choices..”
* As stated by the current Google definition for expectancy and expectation
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectancy_theory