Illusion of Control

By Ion Yarritu, H. Matute, M. Vadillo. Experimental Psychology, 2013

1,250 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The illusion of control consists of overestimating the influence that our behavior exerts over uncontrollable outcomes. Available evidence suggests that an important factor in development of this illusion is the personal involvement of participants who are trying to obtain the outcome. The dominant view assumes that this is due to social motivations and self-esteem protection. We propose that this may be due to a bias in contingency detection which occurs when the probability of the action (i.e., of the potential cause) is high. Indeed, personal involvement might have been often confounded with the probability of acting, as participants who are more involved tend to act more frequently than those for whom the outcome is irrelevant and therefore become mere observers. We tested these two variables separately. In two experiments, the outcome was always uncontrollable and we used a yoked design in which the participants of one condition were actively involved in obtaining it and the participants in the other condition observed the adventitious cause-effect pairs. The results support the latter approach: Those acting more often to obtain the outcome developed stronger illusions, and so did their yoked counterparts.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ad4ba8d92808350fe970b98aba539ef4162f5ec3

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Citations in the corpus

Approach, Ability, Aftermath: A Psychological Process Framework of Unethical Behavior at Work (2015, background): “(Burger & Cooper, 1979; Langer, 1975), and his model insinuates that we are.”
The Effect of Issuer Conservatism on IPO Pricing and Performance (2013, neutral): “Langer (1975) and Malmendier and Tate (2005) suggest that less optimism (or greater caution) is more likely when individuals feel that they have imperfect control over events.”
The evolutionary psychology of leadership (2014, background): “There is a large body of work documenting how decisionmaking biases affect human judgments (e.g., Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Epley & Gilovich, 2006; Langer, 1975; Nickerson, 1998; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Staw, 1976; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; Wason, 1960).”
Vicarious Dishonesty: When Psychological Closeness Creates Distance from One's Moral Compass (2012, result): “As in previous studies employing this measure (e.g., Langer, 1975), this choice measured feelings of control.”
When passion fades: disentangling the temporal dynamics of entrepreneurial passion for founding (2016, background): “While especially strong when positive outcomes are attained, even in the absence of immediately observable results, the mere act of taking action may give individuals an illusion of control (Langer, 1975).”
The Intrinsic Value of Decision Rights (2014, background): “While some scholars define power simply as being “able to make, or able to receive, any change” (Locke 1975[1690], p. 111), others postulate that these choices must affect another party with conflicting interests to constitute power (Dahl 1957, Polsby 1963, Lukes 2005).”
Perceived uncertainty and behavioral logic: Temporality and unanticipated consequences in the new venture creation process (2019, background): “…to engage in behaviors designed to maximize the probability of success: choosing which responses to make, familiarizing themselves with the responses, spending time thinking about tasks in order to develop possible strategies, and striving to increase the chances of success (Langer, 1975, 1982).”
Problematic Use of the Mobile Phone: A Literature Review and a Pathways Model (2012, background): “These distortions include mistaken beliefs about skill involvement in chance situations (the " illusion of control " ) [62], as well as failures to appreciate the statistical independence of turns (the " gambler's fallacy " ) [63].”
The Study of Bias in Entrepreneurship (2017, background): “Illusion of control Overemphasize how much skills, instead of chance, improve performance (Langer, 1975).”
Power, competitiveness, and advice taking: Why the powerful don’t listen (2012, background): “Second, recent research building on the illusion of control (Langer, 1975; Taylor & Brown, 1988; Thompson, Armstrong, & Thomas, 1998) has found that power leads individuals to experience an inflated perception of personal control (Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009).”
Why people keep coming back to Facebook: Explaining and predicting continuance participation from an extended theory of planned behaviour perspective (2013, background): “Given the extant literature on ‘ illusions of control ’ (e.g. [ 46,48]) in general, particularly as applied to Internet use (e.g. [ 53]), it seems unlikely that “ perceived behavioural control ” will re ﬂ ect actual control accurately.”
Perceived Control and Mindfulness: Implications for Clinical Practice. (2016, background): “The multifaceted nature of the construct has produced many nuanced definitions (Burger, 1989; Langer, 1975; Rodin, 1990; Skinner, 1996); moreover, there are similar constructs under the larger umbrella of “control.””
The Origin of Failure: A Multidisciplinary Appraisal of the Hubris Hypothesis and Proposed Research Agenda (2014, background): “This “illusion of control” (Langer, 1975) generates a strong belief in one’s own capacity to predict events, as well as an overstated confidence in one’s own abilities to produce excellent results from uncertain conditions.”