The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. It was named by U.S. psychologist Ellen Langer and is thought to influence gambling behavior and belief in the paranormal. [1] Along with illusory superiority and optimism bias, the illusion of control is one of the positive illusions.
The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, for example, when someone feels a sense of control over outcomes that they demonstrably do not influence. [2]
The illusion might arise because a person lacks direct introspective insight into whether they are in control of events. This has been called the introspection illusion. Instead, they may judge their degree of control by a process which is often unreliable. As a result, they see themselves as responsible for events to which there is little or no causal link. For example, in one study, college students were in a virtual reality setting to treat a fear of heights using an elevator. Those who were told that they had control, yet had none, felt as though they had as much control as those who actually did have control over the elevator. Those who were led to believe they did not have control said they felt as though they had little control. [3]
Psychological theorists have consistently emphasized the importance of perceptions of control over life events. One of the earliest instances was when Alfred Adler argued that people strive for proficiency in their lives. Heider later proposed that humans have a strong motive to control their environment and Wyatt Mann hypothesized a basic competence motive that people satisfy by exerting control. Wiener, an attribution theorist, modified his original theory of achievement motivation to include a controllability dimension. Kelley then argued that people's failure to detect noncontingencies may result in their attributing uncontrollable outcomes to personal causes. Nearer to the present, Taylor and Brown [4] argued that positive illusions, including the illusion of control, foster mental health. [5]
The effect was named by U.S. psychologist Ellen Langer and has been replicated in many different contexts. [6]
The illusion is more common in familiar situations, and in situations where the person knows the desired outcome. [7] Feedback that emphasizes success rather than failure can increase the effect, while feedback that emphasizes failure can decrease or reverse the effect. [8] The illusion is weaker for depressed individuals and is stronger when individuals have an emotional need to control the outcome. [7] The illusion is strengthened by stressful and competitive situations, including financial trading. [9] Although people are likely to overestimate their control when the situations are heavily chance-determined, they also tend to underestimate their control when they actually have it, which runs contrary to some theories of the illusion and its adaptiveness. [10] People also showed a higher illusion of control when they were allowed to become familiar with a task through practice trials, make their choice before the event happens like with throwing dice, and when they can make their choice rather than have it made for them with the same odds. People are more likely to show control when they have more answers right at the beginning than at the end, even when the people had the same number of correct answers. [5]
Being in a position of power enhances the illusion of control, which may lead to overreach in risk taking. [11] [12]
At times, people attempt to gain control by transferring responsibility to more capable or “luckier” others to act for them. By forfeiting direct control, it is perceived to be a valid way of maximizing outcomes. This illusion of control by proxy is a significant theoretical extension of the traditional illusion of control model. People will of course give up control if another person is thought to have more knowledge or skill in areas such as medicine where actual skill and knowledge are involved. In cases like these it is entirely rational to give up responsibility to people such as doctors. However, when it comes to events of pure chance, allowing another to make decisions (or gamble) on one's behalf, because they are seen as luckier is not rational and would go against people's well-documented desire for control in uncontrollable situations. However, it does seem plausible since people generally believe that they can possess luck and employ it to advantage in games of chance, and it is not a far leap that others may also be seen as lucky and able to control uncontrollable events. [13] In a study conducted in Singapore, the perception of control, luck, and skill when gambling led to an increase in gambling behavior. [13]
In one instance, a lottery pool at a company decides who picks the numbers and buys the tickets based on the wins and losses of each member. The member with the best record becomes the representative until they accumulate a certain number of losses and then a new representative is picked based on wins and losses. Even though no member is truly better than the other and it is all by chance, they still would rather have someone with seemingly more luck to have control over them. [14]
In another real-world example, in the 2002 Olympics men's and women's hockey finals, Team Canada beat Team USA. Prior to the match, a Canadian coin was secretly placed under the ice before the game, an action which the players and officials believed would bring them luck. The members of Team Canada were the only people who knew the coin had been placed there. The coin was later put in the Hockey Hall of Fame where there was an opening so people could touch it. People believed they could transfer luck from the coin to themselves by touching it, and thereby change their own luck.. [15]
The illusion of control is demonstrated by three converging lines of evidence: 1) laboratory experiments, 2) observed behavior in familiar games of chance such as lotteries, and 3) self-reports of real-world behavior. [16]
One kind of laboratory demonstration involves two lights marked "Score" and "No Score". Subjects have to try to control which one lights up. In one version of this experiment, subjects could press either of two buttons. [17] Another version had one button, which subjects decided on each trial to press or not. [18] Subjects had a variable degree of control over the lights, or none at all, depending on how the buttons were connected. The experimenters made clear that there might be no relation between the subjects' actions and the lights. [18] Subjects estimated how much control they had over the lights. These estimates bore no relation to how much control they actually had, but was related to how often the "Score" light lit up. Even when their choices made no difference at all, subjects confidently reported exerting some control over the lights. [18]
Ellen Langer's research demonstrated that people were more likely to behave as if they could exercise control in a chance situation where "skill cues" were present. [19] [20] By skill cues, Langer meant properties of the situation more normally associated with the exercise of skill, in particular the exercise of choice, competition, familiarity with the stimulus and involvement in decisions. One simple form of this effect is found in casinos: when rolling dice in a craps game people tend to throw harder when they need high numbers and softer for low numbers. [6] [21]
In another experiment, subjects had to predict the outcome of thirty coin tosses. The feedback was rigged so that each subject was right exactly half the time, but the groups differed in where their "hits" occurred. Some were told that their early guesses were accurate. Others were told that their successes were distributed evenly through the thirty trials. Afterwards, they were surveyed about their performance. Subjects with early "hits" overestimated their total successes and had higher expectations of how they would perform on future guessing games. [6] [20] This result resembles the irrational primacy effect in which people give greater weight to information that occurs earlier in a series. [6] Forty percent of the subjects believed their performance on this chance task would improve with practice, and twenty-five percent said that distraction would impair their performance. [6] [20]
Another of Langer's experiments replicated by other researchers involves a lottery. Subjects are either given tickets at random or allowed to choose their own. They can then trade their tickets for others with a higher chance of paying out. Subjects who had chosen their own ticket were more reluctant to part with it. Tickets bearing familiar symbols were less likely to be exchanged than others with unfamiliar symbols. Although these lotteries were random, subjects behaved as though their choice of ticket affected the outcome. [19] [22] Participants who chose their own numbers were less likely to trade their ticket even for one in a game with better odds. [5]
Yet another way to investigate perceptions of control is to ask people about hypothetical situations, for example their likelihood of being involved in a motor vehicle accident. On average, drivers regard accidents as much less likely in "high-control" situations, such as when they are driving, than in "low-control" situations, such as when they are in the passenger seat. They also rate a high-control accident, such as driving into the car in front, as much less likely than a low-control accident such as being hit from behind by another driver. [16] [23] [24]
Ellen Langer, who first demonstrated the illusion of control, explained her findings in terms of a confusion between skill and chance situations. She proposed that people base their judgments of control on "skill cues". These are features of a situation that are usually associated with games of skill, such as competitiveness, familiarity and individual choice. When more of these skill cues are present, the illusion is stronger. [8] [9] [25]
In 1998, Suzanne Thompson and colleagues argued that Langer's explanation was inadequate to explain all the variations in the effect. As an alternative, they proposed that judgments about control are based on a procedure that they called the "control heuristic". [8] [26] This theory proposes that judgments of control depend on two conditions; an intention to create the outcome, and a relationship between the action and outcome. In games of chance, these two conditions frequently go together. As well as an intention to win, there is an action, such as throwing a die or pulling a lever on a slot machine, which is immediately followed by an outcome. Even though the outcome is selected randomly, the control heuristic would result in the player feeling a degree of control over the outcome. [25]
Self-regulation theory offers another explanation. To the extent that people are driven by internal goals concerned with the exercise of control over their environment, they will seek to reassert control in conditions of chaos, uncertainty or stress. One way of coping with a lack of real control is to falsely attribute oneself control of the situation. [9]
The core self-evaluations (CSE) trait is a stable personality trait composed of locus of control, neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. [27] While those with high core self-evaluations are likely to believe that they control their own environment (i.e., internal locus of control), [28] very high levels of CSE may lead to the illusion of control.
In 1988 Taylor and Brown have argued that positive illusions, including the illusion of control, are adaptive as they motivate people to persist at tasks when they might otherwise give up. [4] This position is supported by Albert Bandura's claim in 1989 that "optimistic self-appraisals of capability, that are not unduly disparate from what is possible, can be advantageous, whereas veridical judgements can be self-limiting". [29] His argument is essentially concerned with the adaptive effect of optimistic beliefs about control and performance in circumstances where control is possible, rather than perceived control in circumstances where outcomes do not depend on an individual's behavior.
In 1997 Bandura also suggested that:
"In activities where the margins of error are narrow and missteps can produce costly or injurious consequences, personal well-being is best served by highly accurate efficacy appraisal." [30]
Taylor and Brown argue that positive illusions are adaptive, since there is evidence that they are more common in normally mentally healthy individuals than in depressed individuals. However, in 1998 Pacini, Muir and Epstein showed that this may be because depressed people overcompensate for a tendency toward maladaptive intuitive processing by exercising excessive rational control in trivial situations, and note that the difference with non-depressed people disappears in more consequential circumstances. [31]
There is also empirical evidence that high self-efficacy can be maladaptive in some circumstances. In a scenario-based study, Whyte et al. showed in 1997 that participants in whom they had induced high self-efficacy were significantly more likely to escalate commitment to a failing course of action. [32] In 1998 Knee and Zuckerman challenged the definition of mental health used by Taylor and Brown and argue that lack of illusions is associated with a non-defensive personality oriented towards growth and learning and with low ego involvement in outcomes. [33] They present evidence that self-determined individuals are less prone to these illusions.
In the late 1970s, Abramson and Alloy demonstrated that depressed individuals held a more accurate view than their non-depressed counterparts in a test which measured illusion of control. [34] This finding held true even when the depression was manipulated experimentally. However, when replicating the findings Msetfi et al. (2005, 2007) found that the overestimation of control in nondepressed people only showed up when the interval was long enough, implying that this is because they take more aspects of a situation into account than their depressed counterparts. [35] [36] Also, Dykman et al. (1989) showed that depressed people believe they have no control in situations where they actually do, so their perception is not more accurate overall. [37] Allan et al. (2007) has proposed that the pessimistic bias of depressives resulted in "depressive realism" when asked about estimation of control, because depressed individuals are more likely to say no even if they have control. [38]
A number of studies have found a link between a sense of control and health, especially in older people. [39] This link for older people having improved health because of a sense of control was discussed in a study conducted in a nursing home. As the residents at the nursing home were encouraged to make more choices for themselves, there was more sense of control over their daily lives. This increase in control increased their overall happiness and health compared to those not making as many decisions for themselves. It was even speculated that with results so promising could slow down or reverse cognitive decline that may occur with aging. [40]
Fenton-O'Creevy et al. [9] argue, as do Gollwittzer and Kinney in 1998, [41] that while illusory beliefs about control may promote goal striving, they are not conducive to sound decision-making. Illusions of control may cause insensitivity to feedback, impede learning and predispose toward greater objective risk taking (since subjective risk will be reduced by illusion of control).
Psychologist Daniel Wegner argues that an illusion of control over external events underlies belief in psychokinesis, a supposed paranormal ability to move objects directly using the mind. [42] As evidence, Wegner cites a series of experiments on magical thinking in which subjects were induced to think they had influenced external events. In one experiment, subjects watched a basketball player taking a series of free throws. When they were instructed to visualise him making his shots, they felt that they had contributed to his success. [43]
A study published in 2003 examined traders working in the City of London's investment banks. They each watched a graph being plotted on a computer screen, similar to a real-time graph of a stock price or index. Using three computer keys, they had to raise the value as high as possible. They were warned that the value showed random variations, but that the keys might have some effect. In fact, the fluctuations were not affected by the keys. [9] [24] The traders' ratings of their success measured their susceptibility to the illusion of control. This score was then compared with each trader's performance. Those who were more prone to the illusion scored significantly lower on analysis, risk management and contribution to profits. They also earned significantly less. [9] [24] [44]
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)In social psychology, fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is a cognitive attribution bias where observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.
Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one's ego and to be advantageous for memory consolidation. Research has shown that experiences, ideas, and beliefs are more easily recalled when they match one's own, causing an egocentric outlook. Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly first identified this cognitive bias in their 1979 paper, "Egocentric biases in availability and attribution". Egocentric bias is referred to by most psychologists as a general umbrella term under which other related phenomena fall.
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors. When individuals reject the validity of negative feedback, focus on their strengths and achievements but overlook their faults and failures, or take more credit for their group's work than they give to other members, they are protecting their self-esteem from threat and injury. These cognitive and perceptual tendencies perpetuate illusions and error, but they also serve the self's need for esteem. For example, a student who attributes earning a good grade on an exam to their own intelligence and preparation but attributes earning a poor grade to the teacher's poor teaching ability or unfair test questions might be exhibiting a self-serving bias. Studies have shown that similar attributions are made in various situations, such as the workplace, interpersonal relationships, sports, and consumer decisions.
Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. More specifically, it is a tendency to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to them than those of others.
Locus of control is the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces, have control over the outcome of events in their lives. The concept was developed by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, and has since become an aspect of personality psychology. A person's "locus" is conceptualized as internal or external.
Thomas Dashiff Gilovich an American psychologist who is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He has conducted research in social psychology, decision making, behavioral economics, and has written popular books on these subjects. Gilovich has collaborated with Daniel Kahneman, Richard Nisbett, Lee Ross and Amos Tversky. His articles in peer-reviewed journals on subjects such as cognitive biases have been widely cited. In addition, Gilovich has been quoted in the media on subjects ranging from the effect of purchases on happiness to people's most common regrets, to perceptions of people and social groups. Gilovich is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
In the psychology of affective forecasting, the impact bias, a form of which is the durability bias, is the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future emotional states.
Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.
The overconfidence effect is a well-established bias in which a person's subjective confidence in their judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments, especially when confidence is relatively high. Overconfidence is one example of a miscalibration of subjective probabilities. Throughout the research literature, overconfidence has been defined in three distinct ways: (1) overestimation of one's actual performance; (2) overplacement of one's performance relative to others; and (3) overprecision in expressing unwarranted certainty in the accuracy of one's beliefs.
Optimism bias is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism.
Positive illusions are unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards themselves or to people that are close to them. Positive illusions are a form of self-deception or self-enhancement that feel good; maintain self-esteem; or avoid discomfort, at least in the short term. There are three general forms: inflated assessment of one's own abilities, unrealistic optimism about the future, and an illusion of control. The term "positive illusions" originates in a 1988 paper by Taylor and Brown. "Taylor and Brown's (1988) model of mental health maintains that certain positive illusions are highly prevalent in normal thought and predictive of criteria traditionally associated with mental health."
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as it states: "counter to the facts". These thoughts consist of the "What if?" and the "If only..." that occur when thinking of how things could have turned out differently. Counterfactual thoughts include things that – in the present – could not have happened because they are dependent on events that did not occur in the past.
In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities compared to other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.
The spotlight effect is the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are. Being that one is constantly in the center of one's own world, an accurate evaluation of how much one is noticed by others is uncommon. The reason for the spotlight effect is the innate tendency to forget that although one is the center of one's own world, one is not the center of everyone else's. This tendency is especially prominent when one does something atypical.
The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behaviour.
Construal level theory (CLT) is a theory in social psychology that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people's thinking is abstract or concrete. The core idea of CLT is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of. In CLT, psychological distance is defined on several dimensions—temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distance being considered most important, though there is some debate among social psychologists about further dimensions like informational, experiential or affective distance. The theory was developed by the Israeli social psychologists Nira Liberman and the American psychologist Yaacov Trope.
The six-factor model of psychological well-being is a theory developed by Carol Ryff that determines six factors that contribute to an individual's psychological well-being, contentment, and happiness. Psychological well-being consists of self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, a feeling of purpose and meaning in life, and personal growth and development. Psychological well-being is attained by achieving a state of balance affected by both challenging and rewarding life events.
Control deprivation describes the act of not giving an individual their desires, wants and needs in a deliberate way to control that individual. This is often achieved through acts such as lack of affection, acts indifferent and detached, failure to respond, emotionally distant, deliberately with holding sex, shifts blame to the individual and other techniques. Control deprivation can lead to a wide range of effects, such as causing depression, leading people to aggression, increased social class effects and the use of social stereotypes in making judgements on people as well as product acquisition. Lack of control over a situation can significantly affect a person, changing the way a person thinks and acts. This is often exploited by individuals, businesses and in other situations, however individuals are also very capable of finding alternative means to regain the control that was previously lost and regaining personal control.