Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control

By L. Leotti, Sheena Iyengar, Kevin N. Ochsner. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2010

611 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual’s well being. It has been repeatedly argued that the perception of control is not only desirable, but it is likely a psychological and biological necessity. In this article, we review the literature supporting this claim and present evidence for a biological basis for the need for control and for choice — that is, the means by which we exercise control over the environment. Converging evidence from animal research, clinical studies, and neuroimaging work suggest that the need for control is a biological imperative for survival, and a corticostriatal network is implicated as the neural substrate of this adaptive behavior.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be151bc7f1a65452f6b199ed3eaaabc812268da2

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Citations in the corpus

Social Exclusion and Consumer Switching Behavior: A Control Restoration Mechanism (2017, background): “Given the significant role of social media in maintaining social connections in contemporary society, social media involvement has been used to indicate and evaluate consumers’ social connections (Correa, Hinsley, and de Zuniga 2010; Divol, Edelman, and Sarrazin 2012; Livingstone 2008).”
Consumer desire for control as a barrier to new product adoption (2017, background): “This desire has been identified as a fundamental motivator of people’s decisions and behaviors (Higgins, 2012; Leotti et al., 2010; Miller, 1979).”
Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective (2020, neutral): “As being in control is a basic need and a precondition of psychological welfare (Leotti, Iyengar, and Ochsner 2010), the second consequence of loss of personal control may be moral outrage.”
Public Participation and Institutional Fit: A Social–Psychological Perspective (2013, background): “…for these positive outcomes seems to be that adequate inclusion in human governance—which we are intentionally leaving ambiguous at this point—satisfies people’s fundamental need for self-determination and procedural social justice (Deci and Ryan 1985, 2000, 2002, Greenberg 1990, Tyler 1990, 1998).”