Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and today we are
Speaker 3: back to continue our series on the psychology concept known
Speaker 3: as the illusion of control. This is a cognitive illusion
Speaker 3: or a common error in thinking and judgment, in which
Speaker 3: we overestimate the amount of control we have over outcomes
Speaker 3: in the world, even outcomes that are in no way
Speaker 3: determined by our actions. So if you haven't heard part one,
Speaker 3: you should probably go back and listen to that first.
Speaker 3: But for a brief recap. We talked about some examples
Speaker 3: last time of the illusion of control. One would be
Speaker 3: the belief that you can control your chances of winning
Speaker 3: at a slot machine based on who presses the the
Speaker 3: button and how when actually you know it's a purely
Speaker 3: random process. There's no like. You know, you can't be
Speaker 3: like better at working a slot machine. But other examples
Speaker 3: would include like the belief that you can improve your
Speaker 3: chances of hitting a desired number on a dice throw
Speaker 3: by concentrating before the throw.
Speaker 2: I do this, yeah, yeah, and yeah, I was going
Speaker 2: to save this for a listener mail, but I go
Speaker 2: ahead and mention it. Now heard from a listener on
Speaker 2: Discord who pointed out this is I believe it's pass cish.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, use your name,
Speaker 2: but anyway, may point it out that in Dungeons and
Speaker 2: Dragons there's an additional element here that we didn't touch on,
Speaker 2: and that's the drama of rolling your dice, of rolling
Speaker 2: that D twenty, doing that saving throw. You may put
Speaker 2: some concentration into it, not because not as much because
Speaker 2: you're hoping to influence the roll, but because this matters,
Speaker 2: This is an important role. Perhaps the life or death
Speaker 2: of your character may hinge on the outcome. You can
Speaker 2: play it up a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a socially performative drum roll.
Speaker 2: But I think undeniably there's off also that sense of like,
Speaker 2: all right, NAT twenty, let's do it.
Speaker 3: I can do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Other examples would be like the belief that you can
Speaker 3: influence the outcome of a sporting event hundreds of miles
Speaker 3: away by wearing a lucky charm. We talked about the
Speaker 3: childhood belief that you can control gameplay on a video
Speaker 3: game with like a controller, that's not plugged in, or
Speaker 3: by moving the joystick on a on an arcade cabinet,
Speaker 3: you haven't put any quarters in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we also ended up talking about an influential
Speaker 3: early paper on the illusion of control from nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five called the Illusion of Control in the Journal of
Speaker 3: Personality and Social Psychology by the American psychologist Ellen J. Langer.
Speaker 3: And for a quick summary of this paper, it used
Speaker 3: experiments involving games of chance with superficial elements inserted from
Speaker 3: games of skill to see if people would behave consistent
Speaker 3: with a belief that they had impossible levels of control
Speaker 3: over chance outcomes. And this study found that yes, in
Speaker 3: its experiments, people did behave in a way that was
Speaker 3: consistent with overestimating their level of control over chance determined outcomes. However,
Speaker 3: the thing about this paper was the experiments did use
Speaker 3: indirect methods of studying the phenomenon, so these results came
Speaker 3: with some limitations that I'll describe in just a minute.
Speaker 3: I wanted to learn some more about the history of
Speaker 3: how the illusion of control has been studied, because there
Speaker 3: have been tons of papers on this, tons of experiments,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to kind of general overview, so I
Speaker 3: turned to a very helpful book chapter by a psychologist
Speaker 3: named Suzanne C. Thompson. The chapter is called Illusions of
Speaker 3: Control and it appears in a book called Cognitive Illusions
Speaker 3: edited by Rudiger F. Pohl published by Psychology Press twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: though the version I read seems to have been an
Speaker 3: updated edition because it included references to more recent studies,
Speaker 3: such as one paper from twenty twenty one. So in
Speaker 3: this overview, Thompson uses a broader definition of the illusion
Speaker 3: of control than Langer did. Langer's definition was specifically about
Speaker 3: seeking desired outcomes in chance determined events. Thompson says, instead, quote,
Speaker 3: illusions of control occur when individuals overestimate their personal influence
Speaker 3: influence over an outcome. So that's a more general way
Speaker 3: of stating it. You know, maybe your influence could be
Speaker 3: good or bad. It could be in getting something you
Speaker 3: want or in something you don't want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this broader definition could apply to like various
Speaker 2: games that have some sort of random element that you
Speaker 2: truly can't control. For you may be really great at
Speaker 2: the game, but you have this added level of illusion
Speaker 2: of control that thinks that you can you can definitely
Speaker 2: navigate any random occurrence. And I guess you could also
Speaker 2: apply it even to interperson relationships, you know, thinking that
Speaker 2: you have more control over other people in your circle
Speaker 2: than you do.
Speaker 3: Right, because this idea would also apply to things where
Speaker 3: you do have some control, but you're imagining you have
Speaker 3: more control than you actually do. And Thompson says that
Speaker 3: since the origins of this research in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: there have been basically three different ways of experimentally demonstrating
Speaker 3: that people experience illusory control. There's like three branches of
Speaker 3: experiments on this tree. So approach number one that she
Speaker 3: outlines is the main example here is the original research
Speaker 3: by Ellen Langer, which we already described in the last episode.
Speaker 3: This general strategy involves gauging people's guesses about their likelihood
Speaker 3: of success in chance games that have superficial elements of
Speaker 3: skill games introduced. So to emphasize again, this approach does
Speaker 3: not actually directly measure people's perceptions of control. Instead, these
Speaker 3: experiments would kind of infer it from their behavior in
Speaker 3: a game. So you see that people bet more money,
Speaker 3: that suggests they think they have more control over the outcome.
Speaker 3: But it's possible there's another factor operating there, so there's
Speaker 3: less certainty that you're testing for the variable you're actually
Speaker 3: looking for. And Thompson explains some other ways of doing
Speaker 3: these kind of tests apart from like Langer's original experimental design.
Speaker 3: One thing she talks about is a type of study
Speaker 3: that you could call like observer participant discrepancies. So an
Speaker 3: example of this would be you get a test group,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a classroom of students or whatever, and
Speaker 3: you split them up into pairs, and you give each
Speaker 3: pair of subjects a random number generating apparatus, maybe a
Speaker 3: die that's a simple one. So in each pair, there's
Speaker 3: one person who gets to roll the die, and the
Speaker 3: other person records all the numbers that they roll, and
Speaker 3: participants do this like twenty times, and then across the
Speaker 3: whole test group, whichever pair in the group has the
Speaker 3: highest total sum of roles wins a cash prize, and
Speaker 3: both subjects in each pair guess their likelihood of winning
Speaker 3: before the game. Thompson says that if you try to
Speaker 3: replicate this sort of experiment with students, you will usually
Speaker 3: find that subjects, on average rate their chance of winning
Speaker 3: a little bit higher if they're the one rolling the
Speaker 3: die than if they're the one recording the roles. Again,
Speaker 3: that should not make a difference. So even though we
Speaker 3: both rationally know that the outcome is random, it just
Speaker 3: feels a little luckier if I'm the one doing it. However,
Speaker 3: and I thought this was interesting. Thompson says that some
Speaker 3: research has found that this effect can be reduced or
Speaker 3: even neutralized completely by the context of the game, for example,
Speaker 3: if it takes place in a classroom that has previously
Speaker 3: discs us the correct way to estimate probability on games
Speaker 3: like this. And that was interesting to me because it
Speaker 3: made me think about how people overcome cognitive biases and
Speaker 3: cognitive illusions. You know, sometimes the unfortunate fact is that
Speaker 3: simply being aware of a cognitive illusion, like knowing that
Speaker 3: sometimes our brains have a certain kind of bias, is
Speaker 3: not sufficient to keep us from falling for that bias.
Speaker 3: So you can, like know about the tricks your brain plays,
Speaker 3: and you can fall for them anyway. It happens to
Speaker 3: all of us, but in every case.
Speaker 2: And this obviously applies to many other aspects of the
Speaker 2: human psyche as well. I mean awareness, self awareness is
Speaker 2: often the first step, but that doesn't mean you've completely
Speaker 2: defeated the illusion or illusion that you are having to
Speaker 2: deal with exactly.
Speaker 3: This is true for everybody, but in other cases, and
Speaker 3: it varies from case to case. So in some cases,
Speaker 3: research has shown that we can be successfully inoculated mentally
Speaker 3: from certain irrational tendencies by being made aware of them,
Speaker 3: and this seems to be one of those cases. You
Speaker 3: can sometimes neutralize illusions of control just by like having
Speaker 3: a context in which people have already been reminded about
Speaker 3: how probabilities work. And I think that's interesting because you
Speaker 3: might naturally assume that the variable in resistance to cognitive
Speaker 3: illusions like the illusion of control is the person you know,
Speaker 3: like permanent features of a person's personality, and you might
Speaker 3: be inclined to think like, well, a more rational person
Speaker 3: is better able to overcome their biases and think clearly.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if that's always the case. I
Speaker 3: wonder if it's really more about setting and context. Maybe
Speaker 3: setting and context are equally, if not more, powerful predictors
Speaker 3: of how well people overcome cognitive illusions. In other words,
Speaker 3: does like currently being in the setting of a statistics
Speaker 3: class inoculate you against the illusion of control better than
Speaker 3: being a person who is generally aware of cognitive illusions.
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer for sure there, but it
Speaker 3: seems worth considering rather than just defaulting to the explanation
Speaker 3: of permanent internal personality based differences. But anyway, so to
Speaker 3: move on, That was approach number one. Experimental approach number
Speaker 3: two is different. In this type of experiment, you give
Speaker 3: subjects a laboratory task where researchers can program exactly how
Speaker 3: much control the subject actually has, and in many of
Speaker 3: these experiments the subject has zero control. Sometimes they have
Speaker 3: more control, and then you ask the subject how much
Speaker 3: control they think they had. So an experiment typical of
Speaker 3: this type is one that was done by Alloy and
Speaker 3: Abrahamson in nineteen seventy nine, in which subjects would be
Speaker 3: given a button to press and they're told to see
Speaker 3: if they can use that button to control whether or
Speaker 3: not a light comes on, and then they're asked to
Speaker 3: judge at the end what amount of control they think
Speaker 3: the button had over the light. In reality, the light
Speaker 3: had no relationship to whether the button was pressed or not.
Speaker 3: It was simply programmed to come on at some fixed
Speaker 3: percentage of the trials with each subject, and unsurprisingly even
Speaker 3: though it had nothing to do with whether the button
Speaker 3: was pushed or not, or when subjects broadly thought they
Speaker 3: had some amount of control, and experiments when the light
Speaker 3: came on more frequently but again unconnected to the button,
Speaker 3: caused people to believe that they had more control over
Speaker 3: the light. So, at least in some cases, it seems
Speaker 3: like success at getting a desired outcome makes people more
Speaker 3: likely to believe they have control over that outcome, whether
Speaker 3: or not they do. And while at the risk of
Speaker 3: over extrapolating from a very contained laboratory outcome, this does
Speaker 3: sort of suggest to me connections to behaviors in the world,
Speaker 3: Like you know, when somebody has very good fortune at
Speaker 3: a particular juncture, they're like, yep, that was all me. Later,
Speaker 3: Thompson describes another version of this kind of test. This
Speaker 3: one is called the computer screen on set task. And
Speaker 3: so in this test, like you sit in front of
Speaker 3: a computer and you're looking at a screen, and the
Speaker 3: screen will sequentially produce a series of forty images, and
Speaker 3: all of these images are either a green X or
Speaker 3: a red O. And with each new screen, you can
Speaker 3: choose to press a button or not press a button,
Speaker 3: and your goal is to make the green X appear
Speaker 3: as many times as possible, so people will be trying
Speaker 3: to figure out if there's some pattern like pressing the
Speaker 3: button or not, you know, pressing it or not in
Speaker 3: what sequence, etc. That'll make the greenexes appear. Actually, once again,
Speaker 3: the button has no relation whatsoever to whether the symbols
Speaker 3: here on the screen. The button doesn't do anything, and
Speaker 3: you can vary what percentage of each symbol the subjects get.
Speaker 3: At the end of the test, you have them rate
Speaker 3: on a scale of zero to one hundred how much
Speaker 3: control they think they had over what appeared on the screen.
Speaker 3: People who got the green ex seventy five percent of
Speaker 3: their random screens believed that they had a lot of
Speaker 3: control over the display.
Speaker 2: This is also interesting to think of in terms of
Speaker 2: the example we discussed in the last episode about as
Speaker 2: a child thinking you had control over a video game. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe this doesn't play out. I'd be interesting to hear
Speaker 2: from folks much younger than me. But looking back on
Speaker 2: the video games that I was doing this on, like
Speaker 2: these were the old school arcade games where it was
Speaker 2: maybe a little more directly comparable to just pressing a
Speaker 2: button and seeing a random o or an ax on
Speaker 2: the screen, like there was a lot more room to
Speaker 2: ask the question, Am I controlling it? I have fifty
Speaker 2: percent chance I am.
Speaker 3: In a way, I'm almost nostalgic for that mindset, Like
Speaker 3: there's something kind of beautiful about the ambiguity of wondering
Speaker 3: if you're controlling what's happening on the screen. I feel
Speaker 3: like maybe I'm wrong about this. I feel like I
Speaker 3: wouldn't fall for that now, but I kind of wish
Speaker 3: I could, because it suggests a more I don't know,
Speaker 3: just kind of like totally radically opened state of mind
Speaker 3: in which anything is possible, a more magical way of
Speaker 3: relating to the world.
Speaker 2: It's a cheaper way to go about going to the arcade,
Speaker 2: you know. I wonder what they would think if if
Speaker 2: there was an adult who regularly came into the arcade
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh man, he never spends anything. He
Speaker 2: just stands at the machines and pretends to play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just toggling the joystick at the demo.
Speaker 2: It's great, I gotta sell this guy's nacho do something Okay?
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's approach number two. These very tightly controlled laboratory experiments.
Speaker 3: Approach number three is different. Once again, you get people
Speaker 3: to report their judgments of control in real life scenarios.
Speaker 3: An example here is a study by McKenna in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three. Not that McKenna different.
Speaker 2: McCay, I think this is Frank P. McKenna.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Ask participants to rate the likelihood that, compared to
Speaker 3: other drivers, they would experience an auto collision, and they
Speaker 3: were asked to judge this when imagining themselves as the
Speaker 3: driver versus imagining themselves as the passenger. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most
Speaker 3: people thought that accidents would be relatively less likely if
Speaker 3: they were the driver.
Speaker 2: This absolutely matches up with my experience. You know, even
Speaker 2: when I'm in the car with a driver that I
Speaker 2: definitely trust and even know that they are a better
Speaker 2: driver than me, you know, maybe they have more experience
Speaker 2: or they've undergone training, they're still like that gut feeling
Speaker 2: of like I am not actually in control. I can't
Speaker 2: hit the brake when I see the brake lights ahead
Speaker 2: getting closer, and therefore I feel like a little more
Speaker 2: anxious about the whole scenario oftentimes, like realizing that this
Speaker 2: is irrational, but feeling it Nonetheless.
Speaker 3: I totally relate to that. I feel that too the
Speaker 3: same thing. It's not like I actually think this other
Speaker 3: person is a more dangerous driver than me. I just
Speaker 3: it's just hard to get over that feeling. In a
Speaker 3: second study, in this McKenna paper, participants were asked about
Speaker 3: specific types of collisions, those that would seem to involve
Speaker 3: either more or less driver control. So they were talking
Speaker 3: about like rear ending someone versus being rear ended versus
Speaker 3: having a tire blowout, And the idea was rear ending
Speaker 3: someone is generally thought to be largely subject to driver control.
Speaker 3: Of course, we know that there are factors that other
Speaker 3: factors that can intervene, breaks, could fail whatever, whereas getting
Speaker 3: rear ended seems to be out of the driver's hands,
Speaker 3: and people were highly likely to say that they were
Speaker 3: less likely to have the type of collision in which
Speaker 3: the driver was in control has high control, So I
Speaker 3: am much less likely than other people to rear end someone.
Speaker 3: Whether it's me or someone else, makes less difference in
Speaker 3: getting rear ended.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Thus, people show illusory control over avoiding an accident by
Speaker 3: assuming that they will be able to exert control that
Speaker 3: others cannot.
Speaker 2: And I guess this is what's in play when you
Speaker 2: see drivers so many drivers just riding bumpers through terrifyingly
Speaker 2: fast traffic all the time, like they just maybe they
Speaker 2: have just heightened control over things. But I would tend
Speaker 2: to doubt it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be dangerous if someone else did it.
Speaker 3: But I can handle it.
Speaker 2: I alone can weave in and out of traffic and
Speaker 2: make it to my destination two minutes ahead of schedule.
Speaker 3: So this type of experiment is taken to show that
Speaker 3: people have an illusion of control when they consider themselves
Speaker 3: relative to other people. A driver has some degree of
Speaker 3: control over whether they end up in a collision on average,
Speaker 3: people think that they are better able to avoid that
Speaker 3: outcome than other people are. And so looking back over
Speaker 3: these three methodologies, Thompson says, you know each of them
Speaker 3: have strengths and weaknesses. So approach number one kind of
Speaker 3: the Langer approach. The pros are that it uses realistic
Speaker 3: situations that people engage in every day, like lottery drawings
Speaker 3: and games and stuff. And also it has the pro
Speaker 3: that the indirect measure can help detect an illusory belief
Speaker 3: in control that does in reality guide behavior, but which
Speaker 3: people might resist admitting if they were asked directly, And
Speaker 3: that does seem big to me. It helps avoid like
Speaker 3: people tailoring their answers to avoid embarrassment. Cons on the
Speaker 3: other hand, are it's indirect, so it doesn't test whether
Speaker 3: control is really the deciding factor. You kind of have
Speaker 3: to infer that and wonder if other factors could be
Speaker 3: contributing as well. Approach number two the laboratory experiments like
Speaker 3: Alloy and Abramson with like you know, the light coming on,
Speaker 3: or the greenexes and red o's on the computer screen.
Speaker 3: The pros of that are that the dependent variable is
Speaker 3: definitely judgment of control, like it's a very tightly controlled experiment.
Speaker 3: Cons would be that these tasks do not have what
Speaker 3: psychologists call external validity, so they're like weird tasks with
Speaker 3: no close analogy in our day to day lives, so
Speaker 3: they might not be telling us how people would actually
Speaker 3: behave in reality. They might just be like producing a
Speaker 3: weird kind of behavior that's specific to the lab task.
Speaker 3: Approach number three the self reporting of control judgments about
Speaker 3: everyday activities like driving Ala McKenna. Pros are this does
Speaker 3: have external validity. Cons are it relies on reflective self reporting,
Speaker 3: which can be subject to all kinds of biases. You
Speaker 3: know when you're trying to when you ask people to
Speaker 3: self report on their own judgments about their lives. However,
Speaker 3: Thompson says that a strength of illusion of control research
Speaker 3: is that even though these methodologies all have their strengths
Speaker 3: and weaknesses, they mostly point to a similar conclusion, which
Speaker 3: is the fact that on average, people believe we have
Speaker 3: more control over outcomes than we actually do. And there
Speaker 3: do seem to be some doubts about in exactly what
Speaker 3: scenarios this applies and what causes it, but the core
Speaker 3: finding seems fairly robust, though I'm going to talk about
Speaker 3: one paper later in this episode that has some theoretical
Speaker 3: criticisms of how this research and how these experimental findings
Speaker 3: are framed. So it seems there probably is an illusion
Speaker 3: of control, especially for outcomes that we have very little
Speaker 3: control over. But it would be very surprising if people
Speaker 3: showed an illusory belief in control over all variables in
Speaker 3: all situations equally. So there has to be some more
Speaker 3: granular research on like when illusions of control happen, Like
Speaker 3: what are the kinds of things is that we think
Speaker 3: we have more control of than others, more illusory control
Speaker 3: over than others, and what kind of situations or states
Speaker 3: can we be in that heighten this illusion? And to
Speaker 3: continue with Thompson's overview, Thompson highlights seven variables that have
Speaker 3: been studied and found to affect the illusion of control.
Speaker 3: This list does not mean that these are the only
Speaker 3: factors influencing it. It's just that these have been studied
Speaker 3: well enough to discuss in this book chapter. So the
Speaker 3: first one is skill related factors. Now, this was a
Speaker 3: major part of the original nineteen seventy five paper by Langer.
Speaker 3: A lot of studies have found that if a situation
Speaker 3: has features we associate with dependence on skill, we're more
Speaker 3: likely to experience an illusion of control. And examples of
Speaker 3: these features could include quote, familiarity, making choices, active engagement
Speaker 3: with the material, competition, and four knowledge. Talked about several
Speaker 3: of these in the previous episode. For example, familiarity you
Speaker 3: know you might be more inclined to think you have
Speaker 3: control over the outcome of a chance game if you
Speaker 3: are familiar with the game, or if there are elements
Speaker 3: of the game that are familiar to you. And this
Speaker 3: is generally true of skill based games, but wouldn't affect
Speaker 3: chance based games. One of these variables, though, actually there
Speaker 3: was a twenty twenty one paper that casts some doubt
Speaker 3: over whether it affects illusions of control, and that variable
Speaker 3: is choice. So the original idea is that if you
Speaker 3: have a choice to make, that gives you illusions of control.
Speaker 3: An example would be a lottery type game. So imagine
Speaker 3: a game where you buy a lottery ticket. The ticket
Speaker 3: has a random series of numbers on it, and you
Speaker 3: win a prize if the winning number matches your ticket.
Speaker 3: Now consider the same game, except you get to pick
Speaker 3: your ticket numbers. Maybe you can use your lucky number,
Speaker 3: which of course is the ISBN for the novelization of
Speaker 3: Halloween three Season of the World, which by Jack Martin.
Speaker 2: To your number, that's the one you play.
Speaker 3: It's got to be what could be a luckier number?
Speaker 3: Happy Happy Halloween. Now, of course, in a fair lottery like,
Speaker 3: whatever the number is, it makes no difference whatsoever to
Speaker 3: your chance of winning. Winning numbers are selected randomly. No
Speaker 3: number has a higher chance of victory than any other.
Speaker 3: And yet the fact that you get to choose your
Speaker 3: number might make it seem like there's some element of
Speaker 3: skill involved in this game, and thus increases your illution
Speaker 3: of control. Langer did find this kind of result in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy five paper. However, Thompson mentions that this
Speaker 3: particular metric of choice specifically has been contradicted by recent research,
Speaker 3: a paper by Klousowski at all in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: which found that choice did not reliably cause an illusion
Speaker 3: of control.
Speaker 2: Okay, Like the scenario I'm instantly thinking of would be
Speaker 2: the classic magician game of Like, Okay, draw a card
Speaker 2: from this deck, and now I'm going to guess it,
Speaker 2: assuming in this case that you were the magician, but
Speaker 2: you have actually absolutely no magic up your sleeve, no trick.
Speaker 2: You're just going completely off of chance. You know you
Speaker 2: have a certain percentage chance of guessing it right because
Speaker 2: there are only so many cards in that deck. Versus, Okay,
Speaker 2: you draw a card at random from this deck. I'll
Speaker 2: draw a card at random from this deck. Do you
Speaker 2: think we're going to have the same card like by
Speaker 2: being able to pick a card by saying I believe
Speaker 2: you have the Ace of Spades in your hand when
Speaker 2: it's just completely random, would you feel confident in making
Speaker 2: that choice now? I feel like you would be more
Speaker 2: confident in making that choice if the other person picked
Speaker 2: their card, because then you can potentially overestimate your ability
Speaker 2: to guess the mind of the individual. Okay, this is
Speaker 2: the kind of person who's going to choose a king
Speaker 2: or a queen, or they going to try and outsmart
Speaker 2: me by, you know, choosing a two or a three
Speaker 2: something that isn't superficially interesting.
Speaker 3: I guess that would introduce other elements because it would introduce, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if the other person picking a card
Speaker 3: in the scenario is technically a competitor. But we did
Speaker 3: talk last time about how like competition in some experiments
Speaker 3: seem to increase the illusion of control, and I don't
Speaker 3: know it. That's an interesting scenario because it adds these
Speaker 3: other variables too. My intuition is that that would increase
Speaker 3: illusions of control. It feels like it would for me.
Speaker 3: It would it would falsely increase my belief that I
Speaker 3: could control the outcome even though I can't. And just
Speaker 3: to go again on my intuitions, it would seem to
Speaker 3: me that the choices could increase illusions of control, Like
Speaker 3: if I get to pick the lottery numbers, it would
Speaker 3: feel more likely like I had a better chance of winning,
Speaker 3: But again. This twenty twenty one study found that in
Speaker 3: some circumstances, no, that's not the case. So it might
Speaker 3: It might have to do with just like how people
Speaker 3: are primed to think about the task they're they're about
Speaker 3: to do, you know, like, are you say, as we
Speaker 3: talked about earlier, like, are you given some kind of
Speaker 3: hint of remembering how probable these actually work as you're
Speaker 3: engaging in the task.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But anyway, So to come back to more factors that
Speaker 3: can apparently influence it, according to experiments, one factor is
Speaker 3: success or failure emphasis. This is the second thing Thompson lists.
Speaker 3: So does the task or the context highlight the idea
Speaker 3: of success or failure? One example here would be early
Speaker 3: streaks in a game where you, you know, repeatedly guess
Speaker 3: or draw something. So experiments have found if you let
Speaker 3: somebody gamble on calling coin tosses. Again, coin tosses something
Speaker 3: that in reality might not be truly perfectly random, it
Speaker 3: is close enough to random. It's basically random, So you
Speaker 3: should not have any skill at calling a coin toss.
Speaker 3: But if people are gambling on coin tosses and they
Speaker 3: have an early string of successes, at making the right call.
Speaker 3: This will apparently increase the illusion of control relative to
Speaker 3: subjects who have an early string of failures. So if
Speaker 3: you lose a lot at the beginning, outcomes feel random.
Speaker 3: If you win a lot at the beginning, you think
Speaker 3: I'm doing this. In reality, it's equally random either way.
Speaker 3: But we can get tricked into thinking that we have
Speaker 3: control because we've been winning and it just seems like
Speaker 3: winning is happening, so somehow I must be making it happen.
Speaker 2: See. I feel rather opposite in Dungeons and Dragons. If
Speaker 2: like the first couple of D twenty rolls of the
Speaker 2: night are really high for me, or or heaven forbid
Speaker 2: their natural twenties on things that don't matter, I have
Speaker 2: this sinking suspicion that I'm just doomed when we get
Speaker 2: to actual combat, because that's when the ones are going
Speaker 2: to come out.
Speaker 3: That is really funny. I've had the same feeling before.
Speaker 3: It's almost as bad as like rolling a critical fail
Speaker 3: on something important. Is rolling a critical success on something
Speaker 3: that doesn't matter at all? Feel like I've wasted it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, X, check to see if you can pick up
Speaker 2: a stick and it's a natural twenty it's like, all right,
Speaker 2: I needed to get like a three on that probably. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So on the other hand, though, in this success failure thing,
Speaker 3: failure apparently sometimes neutralizes illusory beliefs of control. So in
Speaker 3: some studies they have found this is only true if
Speaker 3: failure is clear and explicit. If there's like ambiguity in
Speaker 3: the feedback and it's not one hundred percent clear whether
Speaker 3: you have failed or not, the illusion of control can persist.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, a natural one on your D twenty row. Definitely.
Speaker 2: I think we'll knock that illusion out of place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay. Third factor that seems to influence it
Speaker 3: need or desire for outcome. So evidence shows that how
Speaker 3: much you want an outcome can increase the illusion of
Speaker 3: control over the process of getting it. So an example
Speaker 3: would be in a computer screen on set task we
Speaker 3: talked about that earlier. That's the one with the green
Speaker 3: exes and the red o's where people are pressing a
Speaker 3: button trying to figure out if they can control making
Speaker 3: the green exes appear on the screen. In this kind
Speaker 3: of experiment, people believed that they had more they had
Speaker 3: significantly more control if they received cash payments proportional to
Speaker 3: the number of greenexes that appeared compared to people who
Speaker 3: did the same task but did not get a cash reward.
Speaker 3: There was no cash involved. And remember in this experiment
Speaker 3: either way, subjects have zero control at all. A study
Speaker 3: by Biner at All in nineteen ninety five found a
Speaker 3: similar kind of thing, that the illusion of control was
Speaker 3: increased for a random lottery with a food reward if
Speaker 3: people getting a hamburger if the subject was hungry, compared
Speaker 3: to subjects who were not hungry. So like, if the
Speaker 3: reward is food and you are currently hungry, you have
Speaker 3: more illusions of control over a chance outcome than if
Speaker 3: you're not hungry.
Speaker 2: All right, well that makes sense. I mean the scenario,
Speaker 2: I mean the outcome, not so much the hamburger lottery.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've encountered one of those in real life.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the more desirable the outcome, the more acceptable
Speaker 2: the gambling risk becomes, the more confident you are that
Speaker 2: you can pull it off. I think I've felt this
Speaker 2: way in the past, regarding things like DVD giveaways and
Speaker 2: all you know, where it's like, oh, I'd like to
Speaker 2: win that, Sure, it's worth my worth my time to
Speaker 2: go ahead and and enter because yeah, I can imagine
Speaker 2: that on my shelf.
Speaker 3: Do you have a specific disc in mind here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I ages ago I entered a contest and
Speaker 2: won DVD copies of The Fly and The Fly Too,
Speaker 2: and it was and it was it was like magic,
Speaker 2: you know, because I'm like, yeah, I would mind winning that,
Speaker 2: and bam I won it. And in a way, it
Speaker 2: kind of like ruined it. It ruined things for me
Speaker 2: moving forward because then anytime there's like a DVD giveaway,
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, I won this. I won this once
Speaker 2: before it could happen again. I'm good at this. Apparently.
Speaker 3: Oh so you apparently had an early success that increased
Speaker 3: the success salience of that kind of lottery for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had a similar scenario happened with my son.
Speaker 2: I took him to a local bowling alleys for years
Speaker 2: and years ago when he was much younger. And you know,
Speaker 2: the claw machines. We've talked about claw machines before. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: got on the show. You know, they're they're they're tricky
Speaker 2: if you're predatory, if you want to describe them as such.
Speaker 2: You know, it seems like an easy thing. You just
Speaker 2: put in a quarter of claw grabs, a toy, you
Speaker 2: get the toy, but there are a number of additional
Speaker 2: tricks in play that that enable the house to win.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, of course he was interested in
Speaker 2: trying out his claw machine, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: this is a teaching moment. I'd say it. Tell him,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm going to give you, give you one
Speaker 2: quarter or whatever it took to use the machine, and
Speaker 2: but I want you to know that this. These machines
Speaker 2: are tricky. They are made to trick you. You're not
Speaker 2: going to win anything. And then then I'm like, go
Speaker 2: forth and lose, you know, learn this lesson immediate jackpot.
Speaker 2: He got some stuffy out of that, and I think
Speaker 2: he still has that stuffy that I occasionally see in
Speaker 2: his room. And it mocks me because I'm like, you
Speaker 2: were never supposed to come out of that machine, and
Speaker 2: you gave him too much confidence in these claw machines.
Speaker 3: Oh that's terrible. Though, I would say at least the
Speaker 3: claw machine is not a slot machine, because there is
Speaker 3: some minor amount of skill involved.
Speaker 2: Minor yes, and if memory serves like we'd have to
Speaker 2: go deeper in. But I believe there's some additional shenanigans
Speaker 2: going on. With those machines that enable occasional win because
Speaker 2: that's the thing. People need to occasionally win those toys
Speaker 2: out of those machines. Otherwise people will realized that, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's just a bunch of dust covered stuff. He's in there.
Speaker 2: Nobody's getting anything out of there.
Speaker 3: I'm very sorry your son had an early success emphasis
Speaker 3: on claw machines. That is an unfortunate fate.
Speaker 2: Well, I let him have a number of failures after
Speaker 2: that and on other visits, so I think the lesson
Speaker 2: finally hammer him.
Speaker 3: Oh but the flip side of the success failure emphasis
Speaker 3: is that research has also found that there are increased
Speaker 3: illusions of control in a situation where somebody is trying
Speaker 3: to avoid an outcome they find extremely undesirable. Don't worry,
Speaker 3: these experiments didn't have actual torture or anything. The really
Speaker 3: undesirable conditions were things like having to speak in front
Speaker 3: of a group, which is is a very terrifying prospect
Speaker 3: to many of us, including myself, even though I speak
Speaker 3: into a microphone for a living. So let that be
Speaker 3: a comfort to you out there who have this same fear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a different scenario, to be sure.
Speaker 3: Another one was like having to put your hand in
Speaker 3: cold water. That's another common thing tested here. So people
Speaker 3: who strongly wanted to avoid these outcomes mistakenly believed they
Speaker 3: had more agency in the task that determined whether they
Speaker 3: would have to do them or not. So it's just
Speaker 3: a flip side of the thing, like, if you really
Speaker 3: want that hamburger, you have more illusion of control over
Speaker 3: the chance process of getting it. If you really want
Speaker 3: to avoid speaking in front of a group, apparently you
Speaker 3: have more illusions of control in avoiding that fade. Another
Speaker 3: interesting thing noted here is that some studies have found
Speaker 3: a greater illusion of control when people are experiencing heightened stress.
Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting. Fourth factor is mood. This
Speaker 3: is pretty straightforward, but studies have found on average, people
Speaker 3: experience more illusory control when they're in a better mood,
Speaker 3: and people with a negative mood showed less illusions of
Speaker 3: control on average. Of course, this is probably not a
Speaker 3: reason to try to be in a bad mood, but
Speaker 3: you know, one advantage if you're currently feeling down is
Speaker 3: that in this state of being in a bad mood,
Speaker 3: you might be less likely to think you can control
Speaker 3: things you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, though, of course, like we've been saying it's
Speaker 2: complex anything human psyche's doing. So on the flip side,
Speaker 2: you might find yourself more inclined to go after a
Speaker 2: quick dopamine hit of initiating a gamble if you're in
Speaker 2: a bad mood. So you know, a lot going on there.
Speaker 3: Okay, fifth factor. We sort of already alluded to this one,
Speaker 3: but this is what Thompson calls the intrusion of reality.
Speaker 3: This basically means giving people a reality check. Illusion of
Speaker 3: control is one type of cognitive illusion that seems pretty
Speaker 3: easy to overcome in the moment by simply reminding people
Speaker 3: what the probabilities actually are. So if you remind people
Speaker 3: of the objective probability of winning a gambling task before
Speaker 3: they place their bets, the illusion of control can be
Speaker 3: significantly reduced or neutralized completely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you see this a lot with coverage of
Speaker 2: lottery odds, you know, the advertisements for the lottery and
Speaker 2: like general buzz for the lottery make it seem like
Speaker 2: anything as possible. You know, the winning ticket might be,
Speaker 2: you know, it might have been sold to the gas
Speaker 2: station down the street. But then oftentimes news reporting on
Speaker 2: these situations will often drive home like no, you have
Speaker 2: like this astronomically small chance of winning if you enter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's your reality check. And it seems like with
Speaker 3: illusions of control, a simple reality check is quite useful
Speaker 3: to people. Next factor I thought was quite interesting. Thompson
Speaker 3: mentions power. Apparently, people in positions of power and authority.
Speaker 3: Of course, they do have more actual control over many situations,
Speaker 3: that's what power means. But it seems power also correlates
Speaker 3: with increased illusions of control. So if you like do
Speaker 3: an experiment where you assign someone a position of power
Speaker 3: over others in the experiment, or you prime them to
Speaker 3: remember times in their life when they were in a
Speaker 3: position of power, this seems to come with an increased
Speaker 3: tendency toward the illusion of control. And that seemed very
Speaker 3: interesting to me because you might imagine that it would
Speaker 3: work the opposite way that you know, it's when you
Speaker 3: feel disempowered that you dream of having more control. Maybe,
Speaker 3: But the way this is framed actually does gel with
Speaker 3: my experience. Like the people who get to be the
Speaker 3: boss or get to be the leader in some way
Speaker 3: seem more susceptible than regular people to thinking they can
Speaker 3: like magically will a dice roll to come out the
Speaker 3: way they want it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's easy to apply this to various like
Speaker 2: well known scenarios contemporary and historic. You know, you look
Speaker 2: to some person in a position of power who ends
Speaker 2: up in a situation where like, clearly the odds are
Speaker 2: stacked against them, but they they continue on with like
Speaker 2: a seeming overconfidence that we often just attribute to you
Speaker 2: just to pure ego and so forth. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: illusion of control could also play a huge part in it.
Speaker 3: I wonder if there's actually some overlap with the idea
Speaker 3: of success emphasis here, because like, if you are in
Speaker 3: a position of power, you've had some reinforcement already of
Speaker 3: like in some scenario where you didn't know what the
Speaker 3: outcome was, like you got what you wanted, like you
Speaker 3: got you know, promotion or increased status or whatever, and
Speaker 3: you're in this position of power now, so you've sort
Speaker 3: of been trained to think like, oh, yeah, I can
Speaker 3: make things happen for me, and that could be that
Speaker 3: could lead to illusions that you can do that in
Speaker 3: scenarios when you can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3: Another thing Thompson mentions that can affect it is what
Speaker 3: she calls regulatory focus. This basically hinges on a theory
Speaker 3: of motivation that distinguishes between situations where you have a
Speaker 3: focus on getting an outcome you do want, versus situations
Speaker 3: where you have a focus on avoiding an outcome you
Speaker 3: don't want. And research by Langan's in two thousand and
Speaker 3: seven found that when you're in the mindset of getting
Speaker 3: an outcome you do want, that was more associated with
Speaker 3: illusions of control than the other mindset.
Speaker 2: That's interesting, But I guess, on the other hand, like
Speaker 2: we shouldn't then desire a life where we're just focusing
Speaker 2: on avoiding negative outcomes, because right that sounds pretty dreadful.
Speaker 2: I guess in reality, you'd want some sort of healthy
Speaker 2: balance of the two without you know, too much tendency
Speaker 2: towards either illusion exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean in the same way that you might be
Speaker 3: less prone to illusions of control if you're in a
Speaker 3: negative mood, but that probably shouldn't make you want to
Speaker 3: be in a negative mood. Another one I just happened
Speaker 3: to come across. This is not on Thompson's list, but
Speaker 3: another paper mentioned it, so I thought i'd take a look.
Speaker 3: Is the idea of what's called deliberative versus implemental mindset.
Speaker 3: So this is the effect of what kind of frame
Speaker 3: of mind you're in when approaching a control judgment. So
Speaker 3: this was a paper by Galwitzer and Kinney in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine called Effects of Deliberative and implemental mindsets on
Speaker 3: the Illusion of control. This is a paper that used
Speaker 3: a light onset experiment like the kinds we've talked about before,
Speaker 3: where you know, you're trying to turn on a light
Speaker 3: by figuring out, you know, if pressing a button turns
Speaker 3: it on or not. And this experiment had two different
Speaker 3: experimental groups doing the same task, but they were separated
Speaker 3: by the independent variable of a mental exercise. Before making
Speaker 3: their judgments, one group was asked to quote deliberate on
Speaker 3: an unresolved personal problem, so you know, thinking about a
Speaker 3: problem considering various solutions. The other group was asked to
Speaker 3: plan the implementation of a personal goal, so you know,
Speaker 3: come up with a plan of action to get what
Speaker 3: you want. And this study found that the deliberation group
Speaker 3: experienced less illusory control on the unrelated light onset task,
Speaker 3: so quote. Overall finding suggests that people who are trying
Speaker 3: to make decisions develop a deliberative mindset that allows for
Speaker 3: a realistic view of action outcome expectancies, whereas people who
Speaker 3: try to act on a decision develop an implemental mindset
Speaker 3: that promotes illusory optimism. And that was to the extent
Speaker 3: that this is a valid finding that that was illuminating
Speaker 3: to me because it's like, Okay, if you're more just
Speaker 3: sort of exploring ideas, thinking about different contingencies and all that,
Speaker 3: you apparently might be more realistic about how much control
Speaker 3: you have. But once you get into thinking about how
Speaker 3: to get something done, then you're more prone to illusions
Speaker 3: of control, which might actually be useful even though it's
Speaker 3: just as we said last time, the illusion of control
Speaker 3: could be useful even though it generates false beliefs, because
Speaker 3: maybe it maybe those false beliefs could be motivating, could
Speaker 3: help you, you know, spur you to action.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, you're working on something that's going
Speaker 2: to be entered in a contest. Let's say you know,
Speaker 2: your chances of actually winning that contest may be to
Speaker 2: small due to you know, various various factors that have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the quality of the work, but
Speaker 2: you may be inspired to put more work into that,
Speaker 2: into into the quality, you know, to put more effort
Speaker 2: into the creation of whatever it is you're making. And
Speaker 2: you know, you know, we knew that first prize ribbon,
Speaker 2: but it could result in a better product overall.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the last thing I want to talk about
Speaker 3: in this part of our series is I've mentioned there
Speaker 3: are some criticisms of the concept of the illusion of control.
Speaker 3: There is one really interesting, complicating result I found concerning
Speaker 3: when the illusion of control manifests, and that was in
Speaker 3: a paper by Francesca Gino, Zachariah Sharik, and don A.
Speaker 3: Moore published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven. Paper was called keeping the Illusion of Control
Speaker 3: under Control, Ceilings, floors, and imperfect calibration. And so this
Speaker 3: paper offers a critique of illusion of control research by
Speaker 3: suggesting that maybe it's better to think about this as
Speaker 3: a general tendency to make incorrect estimates of our level
Speaker 3: of control over things. And this would include both overestimating
Speaker 3: and underestimating our level of control in situations where the
Speaker 3: evidence is somewhat ambiguous. So, according to these authors, the
Speaker 3: literature appears to support a general overestimation of control merely
Speaker 3: because so many of these studies focus on games of chance,
Speaker 3: and other purely random outcomes, things that we have zero
Speaker 3: control over, and thus belief in any amount of control
Speaker 3: in these experiments will be factually mistaken. But the authors
Speaker 3: of this paper basically they accept that pattern is valid.
Speaker 3: But they also say, if you give people tasks where
Speaker 3: they have a high level of control, sometimes you should
Speaker 3: expect to see subjects systematically underestimate how much control they
Speaker 3: have on those things. So the authors perform several experiments
Speaker 3: to test them, and they found that across three experiments,
Speaker 3: indeed there is a corresponding illusory lack of control in
Speaker 3: some cases where people have a high degree of control
Speaker 3: over outcomes. So I wanted to describe just one example
Speaker 3: of the kinds of experiments they did. Subjects would be
Speaker 3: asked to do a kind of word search puzzle on
Speaker 3: computer screens. They're looking for like patterns of repeating letters
Speaker 3: and a jumble of letters, and occasionally, at random time intervals,
Speaker 3: the background of the screens they're looking at would change color,
Speaker 3: maybe making it harder to pick out the letters and
Speaker 3: solve the puzzle. Participants could press a button to make
Speaker 3: the background revert to its original color and make the
Speaker 3: game easier again. And so the independent variable here was
Speaker 3: how responsive the background was to presses of the button.
Speaker 3: The button could be set to zero percent control, fifteen percent,
Speaker 3: fifty percent, and eighty five percent. And after this puzzle
Speaker 3: search game was over, subjects were asked what level of
Speaker 3: control they thought they had over the background color with
Speaker 3: the button, and as predicted in this experiment, the authors
Speaker 3: found in the low control conditions, like if you have
Speaker 3: zero percent or fifteen percent of control over the background,
Speaker 3: there was an illusion of control, same kind of thing
Speaker 3: you would expect based on these previous experiments, But in
Speaker 3: the high control conditions, where players had like eighty five
Speaker 3: percent control over the background, they thought they had less
Speaker 3: control than they actually did. So they did three experiments
Speaker 3: in total, and in the end, the authors here say
Speaker 3: that this raises doubts about whether people actually do systematically
Speaker 3: overestimate their control, and instead, what might be more accurate
Speaker 3: to say is that people overestimate their control when they
Speaker 3: have little and underestimate their control when they have much.
Speaker 3: And so they they offer this as a critique of
Speaker 3: the sort of theoretical frame work of the illusion of control,
Speaker 3: because they say, really, that's only half of the picture,
Speaker 3: and that it's more accurate probably to say that we
Speaker 3: have a general tendency to make mistaken judgments about the
Speaker 3: level of control we have over events, and that goes
Speaker 3: both ways.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, I mean it reminds me of various discussions
Speaker 2: we've had about occasional, occasionally beneficial errors and cognition. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes overconfidence pays off, like we were just saying, sometimes
Speaker 2: overconfidence just gives you confidence you need to do something,
Speaker 2: and sometimes an abundance of caution pays off. And then,
Speaker 2: of course, in either case, sometimes it doesn't work out
Speaker 2: well for the individual. Either. Overconfidence can screw you up,
Speaker 2: and so can being too cautious, and I guess you
Speaker 2: need to some degree a little bit of both to
Speaker 2: sort of balance out these illusions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is it all right to have one type of
Speaker 3: illusion pretty consistently if you have like a compensating illusion
Speaker 3: that sort of like steers you toward the middle.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe. I mean I feel like a
Speaker 2: lot of our worldviews are kind of arranged like this.
Speaker 2: There are the things that we are unreasonably anxious about
Speaker 2: and unreasonably cautious about perhaps or at least have a
Speaker 2: heightened level of caution, And then there are other areas
Speaker 2: where we may kind of have blinders on and we're
Speaker 2: just kind of like babes in the woods with those
Speaker 2: particular threats. And yeah, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: like you can't be over confident about everything. You're going
Speaker 2: to get plowed over on the but you've got to
Speaker 2: do things like leave the house, so you have to
Speaker 2: have like some level of confidence, even in cases where
Speaker 2: the confidence is outpacing the actual chances a little bit.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I think maybe we should call it
Speaker 3: there for part two on the illusion of control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 2: if you have feedback personal experience on anything we discussed here.
Speaker 2: As usual, remind everybody that stuft to Blew Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursday, we have listener mail. On Mondays, we have
Speaker 2: one of about three different varieties of short form episodes
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, and then on Friday, we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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