Suspense in the absence of uncertainty

Anomalous suspense arises when people express uncertainty with respect to outcomes about which they have certain knowledge. In three experiments, we demonstrate that readers can be made uncertain about whether, for example, George Washington was elected first president of the United States, when an obstacle to this well-known outcome is introduced in a short story. Experiment 1 demonstrated impaired verification of such statements when the test came immediately after suspense was created. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated prolonged verification times across a brief delay. Experiment 3 also showed that the effect could be eliminated when suspense was resolved. We argue that these results impose a limit on the types of prior knowledge used in discourse processing.