Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick. Today, Rob and I are out,
Speaker 1: so we are bringing you the third and final part
Speaker 1: in our Vault series on the illusion of control. This
Speaker 1: episode originally aired on February thirteenth, twenty twenty four. Let's
Speaker 1: dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 3: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 1: three in our series on the psychology concept known as
Speaker 1: the illusion of control. This is a cognitive illusion, meaning
Speaker 1: a common type of error in thinking and judgment that
Speaker 1: has been studied fairly intend going back to about the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. So, according to most of the illusion of
Speaker 1: control literature, humans on average have a tendency too believe
Speaker 1: we have some level of control over outcomes that are
Speaker 1: completely outside of our influence, such as the outcome of
Speaker 1: a lottery and other games of chance. And in situations
Speaker 1: where we do have some control but not total control,
Speaker 1: we on average believe that we have more control than
Speaker 1: we do, according to illusion of control theory. Now, if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard the other two episodes already. You should
Speaker 1: probably go back and listen to them first. They'll help
Speaker 1: bring you up to speed for today. But we'll do
Speaker 1: a brief recap on what we talked about the last
Speaker 1: couple of times. First of all, just to illustrate the
Speaker 1: idea of illusion of control, we talked about ways that
Speaker 1: you might see people expressing or illustrating their illusions of
Speaker 1: control in everyday life, such as the way we concentrate
Speaker 1: on a dice throw as if they will this like
Speaker 1: increase our chances of hitting the number we want, or
Speaker 1: maybe pressing the door close button on an elevator after
Speaker 1: somebody else has already pushed it. Questionable whether the first
Speaker 1: press actually does anything. The second one's just ridiculous, you know,
Speaker 1: But sometimes we just feel that way. We're in a hurry,
Speaker 1: and we feel like this other guy he couldn't make
Speaker 1: it happen, couldn't close the doors, but I can.
Speaker 3: That's right. I mean these two examples alone, along with
Speaker 3: the walk button at crosswalks, I think we can all
Speaker 3: relate to these on one level or another.
Speaker 1: But another one that's been observed in research is when
Speaker 1: driving a car, thinking that you will somehow be able
Speaker 1: to avoid an auto collision by exerting some vague type
Speaker 1: of control that other drivers are not capable of.
Speaker 3: I mean, I often think that other drivers are incapable
Speaker 3: of a lot when I'm observing their driving. But were
Speaker 3: talking about very specific things here, or we're getting into
Speaker 3: that that realm of control that goes above and beyond
Speaker 3: just being able to drive your car safely and correctly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's true I feel the same way
Speaker 1: when driving, and yet at the same time, for everybody
Speaker 1: else in the world, I am one of the other drivers.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. I see a lot of
Speaker 3: not using turn signals, et cetera out there. Some people
Speaker 3: seem in capable of that. But this need not be
Speaker 3: a tie rate about other people's driving.
Speaker 1: Now, in part two of the series, we talked about
Speaker 1: a bunch of different types of experiments that have found
Speaker 1: various sorts of evidence for the illusion of control, and
Speaker 1: we also talked about factors that tend to influence how
Speaker 1: much illusory control we experience. Just a few examples that
Speaker 1: came up last time. One is mood. We apparently experience
Speaker 1: more illusory control on average when we're in a positive mood.
Speaker 1: The salience of success, or what's called success emphasis. So
Speaker 1: we tend to experience more illusory control when we have
Speaker 1: a string of early successful outcomes getting what we want.
Speaker 1: So maybe if you're doing a coin flip a bunch
Speaker 1: of times and the coin flip comes up your way
Speaker 1: several times in a row, might start to make you
Speaker 1: feel like somehow you're making that happen. Another factor was
Speaker 1: the need or desire for the outcome, So the more
Speaker 1: you want an outcome, the more likely you are to
Speaker 1: overestimate your control over it happening. One example of experiments
Speaker 1: that showed this was like if the prize of a
Speaker 1: lottery is a sandwich, On average, hungry people are more
Speaker 1: likely to show illusions of control over the lottery than
Speaker 1: people who just stayed, who might have a more realistic
Speaker 1: idea of their chances. Another interesting one was power. Positions
Speaker 1: of power or feelings of power are somewhat correlated with
Speaker 1: illusory control, so maybe having more actual control over real
Speaker 1: things could also bring about more illusions that you can
Speaker 1: control things you can't. And another interesting factor was the
Speaker 1: intrusion of reality. So the illusion of control is fortunately
Speaker 1: one of the illusions that has been found to be
Speaker 1: fairly well neutralized or mitigated by giving somebody a reality check,
Speaker 1: you like, remind them in the moment what the odds
Speaker 1: on the slot machine actually are, and that seems to
Speaker 1: somewhat reduce a person's belief that they can somehow get
Speaker 1: better odds through their behavior. Now, also in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about in interesting paper I found by Geno
Speaker 1: at All from twenty eleven somewhat challenging the illusion of
Speaker 1: control framework by doing experiments showing that illusions of control
Speaker 1: can go in both directions. So, for example, there's a
Speaker 1: task where you're trying to solve puzzles on a computer screen,
Speaker 1: and there's a button you can press that will sometimes
Speaker 1: work to make the screen easier to read. And maybe
Speaker 1: the button works fifteen percent of the time you press it,
Speaker 1: or maybe it works eighty five percent of the time
Speaker 1: you press it. In this type of experiment, Gino at
Speaker 1: All found that people with little control thought they had
Speaker 1: more control than they did, but people with a lot
Speaker 1: of control thought they had less control than they actually did.
Speaker 1: And so the authors of this paper argued that maybe
Speaker 1: this type of finding should cause us to reevaluate the
Speaker 1: findings of the illusion of control experiments, so that we
Speaker 1: think of them not as evidence of a systematic human
Speaker 1: tendency to overestimate our level of control, but that that
Speaker 1: is just one half of a more general tendency to
Speaker 1: misjudge our level of control in both directions, So overestimating
Speaker 1: your control happens more often for outcomes that we, to
Speaker 1: begin with have very little or no control over.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know how well the Geno at All study
Speaker 1: here challenging the illusion of control framework is held up,
Speaker 1: but there, from what I can tell, still seems to
Speaker 1: be a pretty robust research consensus about the illusion of
Speaker 1: control being basically real, And I guess we should just
Speaker 1: keep in mind that it does seem to probably be real,
Speaker 1: but maybe it's only the picture.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Another thing that comes up in this twenty eleven paper
Speaker 1: by Geno at All is something we haven't really focused
Speaker 1: on all that much yet. I guess we've generally acknowledged it.
Speaker 1: But the idea of noting with specifics the ways that
Speaker 1: false beliefs generated by illusions of control can have real
Speaker 1: negative consequences, like on our lives and on the world,
Speaker 1: and the authors here site studies making these connections. So
Speaker 1: illusions of control when you think about it, could make
Speaker 1: you incorrectly imagine that you are influencing other people's behavior.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we can all remember plenty of
Speaker 1: scenarios when we got up in our heads imagining that
Speaker 1: somebody else was doing something or acting in a certain
Speaker 1: way because of us or in reaction to something we did.
Speaker 1: But then later you realize like, oh, actually they were
Speaker 1: acting that, you know, you find you get more information,
Speaker 1: you find, oh, they were acting that way because of
Speaker 1: something else going on in their lives. You know, other
Speaker 1: people are living whole lives of their own, and we
Speaker 1: often don't know what's happening in their heads and in
Speaker 1: their lives, and so we can have a kind of
Speaker 1: very self oriented interpretation of other people's behavior. And one
Speaker 1: form that might take would be or one reason that
Speaker 1: might arise is an illusion of control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's often this self centered nature of modeling out
Speaker 3: other people's intents and mental states.
Speaker 1: The authors here also note that people who overestimate their
Speaker 1: level of control over outcomes might quote make bad decisions
Speaker 1: about where to direct their efforts. And that totally makes sense, right.
Speaker 1: You know, imagine you're trying to get something that you want,
Speaker 1: and whether you get that outcome is influenced by multiple factors.
Speaker 1: Maybe one factor is something that's amenable to practice and skill,
Speaker 1: and the other factor is purely luck. If you think
Speaker 1: that the luck based factor is within your control, you
Speaker 1: could waste time focused on trying to manipulate that when
Speaker 1: you should have been focused on, you know, practicing the
Speaker 1: skill based factor influencing what you can instead of wasting
Speaker 1: your efforts trying to influence what you can't. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: also note research pointing out that illusions of control could
Speaker 1: cause you to make bad judgments about whether or not
Speaker 1: to listen to the opinions and input of others. And
Speaker 1: this just that totally seems true, But it also makes
Speaker 1: me think about how if you generalize illusions of control
Speaker 1: beyond the self. It seems to me that illusions of
Speaker 1: control could potentially overlap with the just world illusion, you know,
Speaker 1: the belief that people get what they deserve. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure we can all think of cases where we've, you know,
Speaker 1: encountered somebody who is inclined to blame other people who
Speaker 1: are suffering misfortune for their predicament, even if it's clearly
Speaker 1: due to factors outside of their control. Just the mentality
Speaker 1: that you must have done something to deserve this. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe if you had a positive attitude, this wouldn't have
Speaker 1: happened to you, and so forth. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: see that even in scenarios where it's logically absurd, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to think that there would be real causal
Speaker 1: factors of that sort, and so applying that to other
Speaker 1: people would almost seem like a sort of universalizing or
Speaker 1: generalizing of the principle of illusions of control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can imagine in these scenarios where I mean,
Speaker 3: there is kind of a self protective rationale in some
Speaker 3: of these judgments. So something that is, you know, that
Speaker 3: random outside of someone's control happens, something negative happens to
Speaker 3: someone you know or someone like You're just aware of
Speaker 3: the obvious ramification of that is that something out of
Speaker 3: my control could happen to me, something just like this
Speaker 3: or similar, and that puts you in that place of
Speaker 3: not having control over your events. But if there's a
Speaker 3: reason for it happening to this other person, then perhaps
Speaker 3: there is a reason for it to not happen to you,
Speaker 3: or you know, it puts something conceivably within the realm
Speaker 3: of your control. If there is this causation you can
Speaker 3: focus on with this other individual situation.
Speaker 1: That's a version of the thing we're talking about with
Speaker 1: like driving that you know, we believe auto collisions that
Speaker 1: you somehow would be able to avoid, collisions that other
Speaker 1: people would be less able to avoid because somehow you
Speaker 1: can exert a type of control over driving outcomes that
Speaker 1: other people can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go to be clear, everyone can use turn signals.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, consider turn signals. If you haven't used
Speaker 3: to turn signal today, treat yourself.
Speaker 1: So I think it's pretty clear that having the false
Speaker 1: belief that you can control outcomes that you actually can't
Speaker 1: will have negative impacts on your life and on the
Speaker 1: lives of others. There are like an infinite number of
Speaker 1: imaginable scenarios where this type of illusion would be harmful,
Speaker 1: which raises the question, then why do we still experience it?
Speaker 1: Like I haven't we as creatures gotten a lot better
Speaker 1: at seeing the difference between things we can influence and
Speaker 1: things we can't. So to examine this question, I want
Speaker 1: to come back to a chapter in an academic psychology
Speaker 1: book that I brought up in the last episode. This
Speaker 1: is a chapter called Illusions of control written by a
Speaker 1: psychologist named Suzanne C. Thompson. This is from a book
Speaker 1: called Cognitive Illusions from Psychology Press twenty sixteen, edited by
Speaker 1: Rudiger F. Pohl. So this book chapter does an overview
Speaker 1: of illusion of control research, the research that has taken
Speaker 1: place since the nineteen seventies, comparing different methods of studying
Speaker 1: the phenomenon and synthesizing the major findings of this subfield.
Speaker 1: Now Later in this chapter, Thompson does cover some of
Speaker 1: the main explanations that have been offered in the scientific
Speaker 1: literature for why illusions of control occur. One explanation she
Speaker 1: brings up that she ends up not agreeing with is
Speaker 1: the explanation given in the original paper by Ellen J.
Speaker 1: Langer from nineteen seventy five. This was the one about
Speaker 1: where Langer essentially said that illusions of control happen because
Speaker 1: people literally confuse chance determined outcomes with skill determined outcomes.
Speaker 1: So we actually mistakenly believe the slot machine is to
Speaker 1: some extent a game of skill, and like elements of
Speaker 1: the skill game cause us to really think that this
Speaker 1: connects to the finding that skill based elements like familiarity, involvement,
Speaker 1: and competition, which we talked about in the other episodes,
Speaker 1: could actually cause people to have more illusions of control,
Speaker 1: and Thompson brings up some reasons to doubt that Langer's
Speaker 1: skill chance confusion explanation is the right one. The main
Speaker 1: thing she brings up about this theory that resonates with
Speaker 1: me is she says, you know, this theory doesn't explain
Speaker 1: some of the secondary factors that change how much illusory
Speaker 1: control we experience, for example, success emphasis, or the level
Speaker 1: of need or desire for an outcome, et cetera. That
Speaker 1: just doesn't really make sense if this is the reason
Speaker 1: we have illusions of control. So instead, Thompson and her
Speaker 1: co authors in previous research have offered an explanation for
Speaker 1: illusions of control based on what they call a control heuristic.
Speaker 1: And so a heuristic just generally means a process that
Speaker 1: people use to try to quickly solve a problem or
Speaker 1: make a determination, not perfectly, but efficiently. So instead of
Speaker 1: like doing a full analysis of a situation where you
Speaker 1: really deliberately think everything out, you can mentally use a
Speaker 1: heuristic to come to a solution or make a determination
Speaker 1: that is fast and good enough. So another way to
Speaker 1: think about a heuristic is a mental shortcut. We use
Speaker 1: heuristic reasoning all the time. Basically, anytime we're not slowing
Speaker 1: down to do deliberate analytical thinking, we're probably using various
Speaker 1: kinds of hereistics.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, this has come up on the show a
Speaker 3: lot because it really is quite revealing about like what
Speaker 3: we are and how we interact with into what degree
Speaker 3: we're aware of our world. You know, like there's just
Speaker 3: not enough like mental capacity and or energy to do
Speaker 3: a deep analysis all the time. It's also not helpful.
Speaker 3: You've got to move through the world. You have objectives
Speaker 3: to get to, and the brain is helping you get
Speaker 3: there without folks getting lost in all the details.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So Yeah, you might think, well, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be better if we tried to like do a really
Speaker 1: deep analysis on everything, But no, it would not. You
Speaker 1: don't have time to do that. Like that's that's not
Speaker 1: a way that you could live a life. You have
Speaker 1: to do most mental determination fast and cheap. So in
Speaker 1: Judgments of control, Thompson says a control heuristic is quote
Speaker 1: a shortcut that people use to judge the extent of
Speaker 1: their personal influence, and Thompson and co authors came up
Speaker 1: with a model of how this informal heuristic works, and
Speaker 1: they say, as two factors, there are two things that
Speaker 1: we in theory look at to make this calculation fast
Speaker 1: and dirty calculation about whether we are influencing outcomes or not.
Speaker 1: And those two ingredients are number one, your intention to
Speaker 1: achieve an outcome and number two, a perceived connection in
Speaker 1: the world between your actions and the desired outcome. And so,
Speaker 1: in Thompson's own words quote, when one acts with the
Speaker 1: intention of obtaining a particular outcome and there is a
Speaker 1: relationship temporal, common meaning, or predictive between one's action and
Speaker 1: the outcome, people judged that they had control over the outcome.
Speaker 1: So to connect this to a real world example, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine you are playing a slot machine. You have the
Speaker 1: intention of winning a bunch of money, and you play
Speaker 1: it a bunch and you do have a pretty big win.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's on the day when you are wearing your
Speaker 1: lucky underwear. So according to the control hereistic model of
Speaker 1: Thompson and co authors here, this would be a situation
Speaker 1: likely to give rise to illusions of control because both
Speaker 1: conditions here are met. The intention you did intend to
Speaker 1: win the money and then the connection you did take
Speaker 1: some action that was connected to you getting the money.
Speaker 1: So it was in this case you could say wearing
Speaker 1: the lucky clothing, but in fact you don't even really
Speaker 1: need the lucky charm to establish this relationship. You could
Speaker 1: have an illusion of control simply for playing the machine
Speaker 1: because in regular play like you have the intention to win,
Speaker 1: and then some intermittent winnings occur, and simply the action
Speaker 1: of playing the machine could also cause illusions that the
Speaker 1: gambler has some control over getting that outcome of the
Speaker 1: intermittent winnings, so they believe they have some way to
Speaker 1: beat the system and win big. So I was thinking
Speaker 1: about even though this particular connection would be an illusion
Speaker 1: when it comes to like the slot machine, you don't
Speaker 1: really control the outcomes, the control heuristic, like many heuristics,
Speaker 1: would still be very useful because it is good enough
Speaker 1: most of the time. Most of the time, it does
Speaker 1: help you accurately determine your influence over all kinds of
Speaker 1: processes every day. So I was just thinking about cooking.
Speaker 1: You know, you're cooking in the kitchen. Maybe you're making
Speaker 1: the tomato basil sauce that you've cooked a bunch of
Speaker 1: times before, and this time it came out tasting better
Speaker 1: than it usually does. And then you connect that temporally
Speaker 1: to an action that you took, like I added more
Speaker 1: garlic than I usually do, and then you use that
Speaker 1: to correctly determine that your actions adding the extra garlic
Speaker 1: influence the desirable outcome of the food tasting good. So
Speaker 1: you know, for situations like that, this kind of heuristic
Speaker 1: would work just fine. It's not that the heuristic is bad.
Speaker 1: We use it all the time, and most of the
Speaker 1: time it's good enough. You can imagine the alternative of
Speaker 1: like being frozen in place trying to consider, like what
Speaker 1: role chance factors outside of your control may also have
Speaker 1: influenced how much you liked your tomato basil sauce. You know,
Speaker 1: this is just like not a useful scenario to be in.
Speaker 3: And of course the thing about tomato basil sauce is
Speaker 3: you will, in theory make it again, so this process
Speaker 3: of testing and learning and making these judgment calls will continue.
Speaker 1: That's right, So you could refine your understanding in the future.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe if you make it with more garlic
Speaker 1: again and you don't like it, you could you can
Speaker 1: update your beliefs. But in this situation, a heuristic that says, okay,
Speaker 1: I combine, I intended for an outcome, I took an
Speaker 1: action and that outcome occurred. That's good enough. I can say, then, okay,
Speaker 1: I did have control. My action was what determined the outcome.
Speaker 1: But of course there are situations in the world that
Speaker 1: can turn this normally very well functioning heuristic against you.
Speaker 1: Games of chance are one of them. Remember you know,
Speaker 1: so you think like I have the intention of winning
Speaker 1: the slot machine. I take the act of placing the
Speaker 1: bets and pulling the lever. Sometimes I do get small,
Speaker 1: intermittent payouts. Therefore I am at least partially in control.
Speaker 1: I can beat the odds. But it's not just games
Speaker 1: of chance. It's also everyday scenarios where the amount of
Speaker 1: control you have over an outcome that you care about
Speaker 1: is ambiguous. So I was trying to think of some
Speaker 1: scenarios like this. Here's a very common one. Trying to
Speaker 1: persuade people to agree with you about something a very
Speaker 1: very common human activity. It occurs in workplaces and friendships
Speaker 1: and families and sales. At every level of human life.
Speaker 1: There's persuasion, and so it's happening all the time, and
Speaker 1: whether you succeed or fail at this task, you never
Speaker 1: know exactly how much of the outcome was due to
Speaker 1: factors within your control, like the kind of persuasive case
Speaker 1: you made, or to other factors outside of your control,
Speaker 1: like everything else going on in this other person's life
Speaker 1: and mind. So the level of control that you have
Speaker 1: is always kind of ambiguous. You will have intermittent successes
Speaker 1: and failures at persuading people of things, but it's easy
Speaker 1: to see how illusions of control can arise here, and
Speaker 1: maybe you can start thinking that you have more influence
Speaker 1: over people than you actually do, because like, sometimes you're
Speaker 1: going to win at this game, and you can never
Speaker 1: really know for sure why you won, if it was
Speaker 1: because of something you did or because of something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean the reverse is true as well.
Speaker 3: Like you often hear, it's kind of like the you know,
Speaker 3: the old thing, Little pictures have big ears, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: you might not think you're having an influence on someone
Speaker 3: that someone's looking up to you or looking to you
Speaker 3: or noticing how you're responding to something, but that influence
Speaker 3: may be in place. So it kind of goes both.
Speaker 1: Ways, totally yeah. I mean, in fact, that could be
Speaker 1: the other side of that geno at all study, right that,
Speaker 1: And sometimes we have a lot of influence and we
Speaker 1: underestimate the amount we have. Yeah. Yeah, But another kind
Speaker 1: of extremely common human scenario where the feedback is ambiguous
Speaker 1: would be health outcomes. You know, we do this all
Speaker 1: the time. It's like, I feel some kind of pain
Speaker 1: or discomfort in my body. I want to feel better.
Speaker 1: Maybe I do something, like I take some kind of medication,
Speaker 1: or I do some kind of exercise, and then sometime
Speaker 1: soon after I do that something, whatever it is, I
Speaker 1: feel better. Therefore, I'm kind of inclined to conclude that
Speaker 1: whatever it was I did created the outcome of me
Speaker 1: feeling better. And maybe it did or maybe it didn't.
Speaker 1: Like without clear evidence, the kind of clear evidence that
Speaker 1: we have from like a randomized controlled trial, it's hard
Speaker 1: to know whether the intervention is what did it or
Speaker 1: whether you simply started to feel better anyway due to
Speaker 1: regression to the mean. But you know, according to the
Speaker 1: control heuristic, you would like you would have a hit
Speaker 1: on whatever that intervention was, and then therefore it would
Speaker 1: feel like whatever you did was the decisive factor. You
Speaker 1: were the controlling factor there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and even when you're aware of this,
Speaker 3: you're kind of left sometimes. I mean, I speak from
Speaker 3: my own experience here in a situation where you're like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: my doctor said to try taking the supplement, and I did,
Speaker 3: and then I got to feeling better. But I could
Speaker 3: have easily just that could have just been at the
Speaker 3: point at which my body was healing back up again.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like there might not be a connection there,
Speaker 3: But maybe I just keep taking them because it you know,
Speaker 3: like it kind of comes back to, you know, the
Speaker 3: reduced cost of keeping an ambulant in your pocket. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not inconvenience me and inconveniencing me to do this,
Speaker 3: So I guess I'll keep doing it just in case
Speaker 3: there was some line up between these two things.
Speaker 1: Sure, and you never know, So if the feedback is ambiguous,
Speaker 1: maybe it is doing something. And if it's not like
Speaker 1: super costly or hurting you in some other way, why
Speaker 1: not do it it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so it can be frustrating that a lot
Speaker 3: of things in life end up being like this, for sure.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think this control heuristic model makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I don't think we can say for
Speaker 1: sure that this is the best explanation for why we
Speaker 1: experience of illusions of control, But it seems like a
Speaker 1: good candidate to me. It seems at least to have
Speaker 1: a pretty to work as a pretty strong working hypothesis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this brings us to the next question addressed in
Speaker 1: Thompson's chapter, which connects to something we've we've brought up
Speaker 1: in both directions now, which is what are the implications
Speaker 1: of illusions of control in our lives? Like, how do
Speaker 1: these illusions affect us? And do they do they ultimately
Speaker 1: help us more or hurt us more?
Speaker 3: Because I think a lot of us here that we're
Speaker 3: illusion and we think of illusion as unreality, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe we don't like the idea that we're just wandering
Speaker 3: about in our daily lives confronted by illusions. But of
Speaker 3: course there's a lot to our perception of real that
Speaker 3: is illusory, you know, as we've discussed many times in
Speaker 3: the show before. So just because as an illusion doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily mean it's bad, but also illusions can be disruptive
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Right, So I just think it's worth looking at ways
Speaker 1: in which illusions of control can be both bad and
Speaker 1: good and spoiler alert, it seems that the evidence is
Speaker 1: that they are both. They both help us and hurt us.
Speaker 1: So on the positive side, one thing that Thompson talks
Speaker 1: about is, you know, the idea that human beings are
Speaker 1: clearly motivated to believe that we have agency over outcomes
Speaker 1: in our lives. And research has found that in general,
Speaker 1: belief in quote control and a sense of self efficacy
Speaker 1: the fact that you have agency over your life, you
Speaker 1: can take actions and they do have an effect. That
Speaker 1: those things are correlated with desirable outcomes like better coping
Speaker 1: with stress, better performance on tasks, and some health related outcomes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes health has been shown to benefit from these feelings.
Speaker 1: So it seems that in multiple ways it is good
Speaker 1: for us to believe that we have the ability to
Speaker 1: affect what happens in our lives. And you can see how.
Speaker 1: Of course, in one sense that would be good because
Speaker 1: it is actually good to have control over your own
Speaker 1: life to a certain extent, you know, so like it
Speaker 1: is good to in reality be in control over your fate.
Speaker 1: But would the belief in self efficacy itself be beneficial
Speaker 1: even if it weren't always true, And it seems there
Speaker 1: is some research indicating the answer to this, at least
Speaker 1: in some ways is yes. So there are some findings
Speaker 1: that show that a tendency toward illusions of control might
Speaker 1: help us avoid discouragement when pursuing a goal. So the
Speaker 1: illusion of control could help inculcate a sense of persistence
Speaker 1: in goal attainment behavior, especially when facing difficult conditions or setbacks.
Speaker 1: And also, illusory control seems to help in mitigating disappointment
Speaker 1: leading to negative mood. It possibly is even protective to
Speaker 1: some degree against depression. So to the extent that it
Speaker 1: is able to provide sort of like mood regulation and
Speaker 1: help maintain motivation and protect against depression, that seems like
Speaker 1: that would have very clear benefits on well being.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that's interesting is we talked in the last
Speaker 1: episode about research finding an association between illusory control and
Speaker 1: personal power. But the kind of interesting thing is that
Speaker 1: that causation could go either way or both ways. So
Speaker 1: it could be that positions of power cause people to
Speaker 1: have more illusions of control, but it could also be
Speaker 1: that illusions of control tend to increase the likelihood that
Speaker 1: somebody ends up in a position of power, So it
Speaker 1: could literally lead to you know, you being essentially better
Speaker 1: able to attain goals, or I don't know, maybe having
Speaker 1: other people vw you you more positively and wanting to
Speaker 1: promote you in some way or empower you in some way. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know. When you combine all this together, it
Speaker 1: looks like there's pretty good reason to think that illusions
Speaker 1: of control help maintain positive emotions and can help a
Speaker 1: person maintain a sort of confidence or action orientation, essentially
Speaker 1: the motivation to keep actively doing things to try to
Speaker 1: achieve your goals. But it's not all flowers and butterflies.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier that list of negative consequences that have
Speaker 1: been found to flow from illusions of control, and Thompson
Speaker 1: mentions a bunch of negative consequences as well. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get into all of them here because there's
Speaker 1: some overlap with what we've already talked about and so forth,
Speaker 1: but just briefly, a couple of things. One is, remember
Speaker 1: the study we talked about last time from McKenna from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, which found the tendency to believe that
Speaker 1: you would be able to exert more control than other
Speaker 1: drivers on the road. Subsequent research by Schlehofer twenty ten
Speaker 1: that Schlehelfer and co authors from twenty ten found that
Speaker 1: people who show greater illusions of control about driving were
Speaker 1: also more likely to drive while trying to use a
Speaker 1: cell phone simultaneously. In reality, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: see how that would extend from the belief that you
Speaker 1: have more control over chance based outcomes than other people do.
Speaker 1: But it actually, in this case leads to a behavior
Speaker 1: that compromises your control, you know, it compromises your driving
Speaker 1: ability and makes a fatal crash more likely. And there
Speaker 1: are apparently a lot of examples like this where people
Speaker 1: who exhibit greater illusions of control, which might not necessarily
Speaker 1: be a you know, like a stable feature of a
Speaker 1: person's personality across their whole life. It could also be situational.
Speaker 1: But in situations where people show greater illusions of control,
Speaker 1: it has been linked to taking fewer protective measures against diseases,
Speaker 1: to making worse decisions as financial traders, and to engaging
Speaker 1: in problem gambling behaviors. In fact, there was one thing
Speaker 1: in particular in this part of the chapter Thompson brought
Speaker 1: up that I thought was an interesting finding. So this
Speaker 1: was from a paper by cow Leie at all in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and it found that there was a difference
Speaker 1: in how high illusory control gamblers would review a gambling
Speaker 1: session after it was over versus people who had low
Speaker 1: illusory control. So you have gamblers, they go out, they
Speaker 1: gamble a bunch, and then they lose a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: and then they are asked to reflect back on the
Speaker 1: gaming session. Apparently, high illusory control gamblers would focus on
Speaker 1: their highest individual win within the session, whereas low illusory
Speaker 1: control gamblers would have a more total view of the
Speaker 1: session and note like their the final outcome, like what
Speaker 1: were their winnings or losings at the end of it.
Speaker 1: And so I think I thought that was really interesting. So,
Speaker 1: if you're in a condition where you're especially prone to
Speaker 1: illusions of control about gambling, apparently the salient piece of
Speaker 1: information to you about the whole session was like your
Speaker 1: best hand of the night, your best payout at the
Speaker 1: slot machine in a single moment, and maybe even though
Speaker 1: you like lost everything overall, the important thing to remember
Speaker 1: was that moment when everything was looking really good.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of twisted, right, because it's in it
Speaker 3: to a sense, it's looking on the sunny side of life, right,
Speaker 3: it's being an optimist. It's looking back on your experiences
Speaker 3: and not focusing on the negatives but focusing on the positives.
Speaker 3: But and that's great. I mean that to a certain extent,
Speaker 3: that's what you should do. But also you want to
Speaker 3: be able to correctly learn from your mistakes and do
Speaker 3: an accurate postop on things that you've done in life.
Speaker 1: That's a great point that this is an instinct that
Speaker 1: in other contexts is a very positive one. Like if
Speaker 1: you can, you know, if you had you know, you
Speaker 1: had a rough day or something, if you can like
Speaker 1: step back and focus on the best thing that happened
Speaker 1: all day, well, you know, that's wonderful. That's like a
Speaker 1: great thing to be able to do, unless that's like
Speaker 1: guiding you in how you should invest your money in
Speaker 1: the future or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting that like the main case we're talking
Speaker 3: about here gambling, especially with you know, slot machines and whatnot,
Speaker 3: but just sort of gambling in general. It's basically it's
Speaker 3: an artificial scenario that lines up with a lot of
Speaker 3: real life survival experiences that are a part of our
Speaker 3: heritage and a part of our evolutionary development. You know.
Speaker 3: But you know, there's competition for resources and so forth,
Speaker 3: the use of skill, or at least a perception of
Speaker 3: the use of skill in those pursuits. But the world
Speaker 3: of gambling, the world of games in general, like even
Speaker 3: if you're not playing for stakes, it is an artificial
Speaker 3: construct that involves a lot of those survival activities.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right, and in fact interesting thing Thompson brings
Speaker 1: up in this chapter. She highlights how the gambling industry
Speaker 1: directly exploits known illusion of control triggers to pull you
Speaker 1: in that like slot machines, it's almost like they were
Speaker 1: designed by somebody who read a book chapter on the
Speaker 1: illusion of control, and they were doing a checklist like okay, familiarity, involvement, success, emphasis,
Speaker 1: They really like, quite fiendishly like hit on all of
Speaker 1: the things that seem to illicit higher illusions of control.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing about illusion of control and gambling brought
Speaker 1: up in this chapter is a neuroimaging study. This was
Speaker 1: research done by hudgens Haney at All in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: They're studying real time brain activity of people who had
Speaker 1: gambling problems versus non problem gamblers when playing games that
Speaker 1: have some level of control. Like poker versus games that
Speaker 1: are purely chance based, like Roulette. And the interesting finding
Speaker 1: was that, Okay, you take people who don't have a
Speaker 1: history of gambling problems, they show a very different level
Speaker 1: of neural engagement in skill games versus chance games. So
Speaker 1: you put them in a game of skill, they're going
Speaker 1: to be very engaged. You put them in a game
Speaker 1: of chance, and they will show less activity in the
Speaker 1: visual and prefrontal cortex than they did in the skill game.
Speaker 1: People who have a history of gambling problems did not
Speaker 1: exhibit this same difference, so for them that in chance games,
Speaker 1: the visual and prefrontal cortex was fully engaged as it
Speaker 1: was in skill games, which, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know exactly how to interpret that, but so at least
Speaker 1: one possible way of thinking about that is that is
Speaker 1: that when you have high illusions of control, you are
Speaker 1: looking at a chance based game as if there's like
Speaker 1: some way that you can engage to do better at it.
Speaker 1: You're still scanning the table for advantages, but you know, actually,
Speaker 1: if it's like Roulette, there's nothing you can do. Now.
Speaker 1: One good thing the Thompson mentions is that there's some
Speaker 1: evidence that problem gamblers. Ilutions of control can be mitigated
Speaker 1: by interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy, and like we talked
Speaker 1: about last time, at least in some situations, studies have
Speaker 1: found that illusions of control seem to be well mitigated
Speaker 1: by a basic reality check.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean there are a lot of different
Speaker 3: versions of this, but yeah, like with certain anxieties issues,
Speaker 3: for example, there you can be taught to like put
Speaker 3: your thoughts on trial. I've heard it referred to as such.
Speaker 3: You know, where you're you're taking something that is just
Speaker 3: like a almost kind of an ambient thought or way
Speaker 3: of thinking in your mind, maybe not even expressed verbally
Speaker 3: or otherwise, but take a moment to collect the thought
Speaker 3: and then properly analyze it and saying is this likely?
Speaker 3: Is this reasonable? And so forth? And yeah, and it
Speaker 3: you know, it can. It can work very well with
Speaker 3: anxiety to you know, within you know limits, And then
Speaker 3: it makes sense that it would work in these contexts
Speaker 3: as well, you know, like okay, let's take this impulse,
Speaker 3: let's slow it down, and let's actually let's look at
Speaker 3: it from both sides here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think this is interesting that the illusion of control
Speaker 1: is something that is fundamentally objectively an illusion, an illusion
Speaker 1: like it does generate misperceptions and false beliefs, incorrect judgments,
Speaker 1: but to some degree it does have a positive side.
Speaker 1: It seems illusions of control probably do help improve mood
Speaker 1: and probably do help us persist in attaining difficult goals,
Speaker 1: maintain you know, motivation and action orientation while we're trying
Speaker 1: to implement making positive changes in our lives and so forth.
Speaker 1: But then again, on the negative side, it, of course,
Speaker 1: false beliefs can lead to all kinds of problems and
Speaker 1: negative outcomes in the world, poor choices about how to
Speaker 1: invest our time and efforts, and in the worst cases
Speaker 1: can lead to dangerous and destructive behaviors. So it's a
Speaker 1: complex phenomenon that affects our lives in both directions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Now, given all that we've discussed regarding the illusion
Speaker 3: of control, you know, it should come as no surprise
Speaker 3: that some have linked the concept to magical thinking in general,
Speaker 3: to belief in the paranormal, because you know, what is
Speaker 3: the gap between some level of belief and say, the
Speaker 3: power of prayer, holy amulets, lucky objects, lucky traditions, and
Speaker 3: some level of belief and say personal psychic ability or
Speaker 3: other paranormal concepts. You know, I would even argue that
Speaker 3: there's more than a little bit of crossover between these things,
Speaker 3: in part based on my own experiences, my own observations
Speaker 3: of how I approach certain situations. Take bowling, for example.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, so bowling, great game, great fun. I maybe
Speaker 3: play it two or three times per year. I don't
Speaker 3: know about you, Joe.
Speaker 1: I have not bowled in quite some time, but I
Speaker 1: would love to. I enjoyed bowling a lot when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. It was like one of my I
Speaker 1: never did it all that much, but I feel like
Speaker 1: on those rare occasions when it was like, what would
Speaker 1: you really like to do today, I would I would
Speaker 1: request bowling. But of course with the bumpers, please, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Those bumpers can definitely help. Now, one of the interesting
Speaker 3: things about bowling is that, unlike a lot of the
Speaker 3: examples we've been touching on, bowling is a game of skill.
Speaker 3: So initially, your initial role directly sets the speed and
Speaker 3: trajectory of the ball as it heads towards the pins.
Speaker 3: Now where it gets interesting is, of course, a skilled player,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming may feel entirely more in control of what
Speaker 3: happens than me when eye bowl, though we've plenty of
Speaker 3: info to suggest that even they, even an expert, even
Speaker 3: a professional bowler, may feel like they have less control
Speaker 3: than they do. And obviously plenty of pro athletes engage
Speaker 3: in some kind of good luck ritual. I'd love to
Speaker 3: hear from sports fans out there if you have some
Speaker 3: really telling examples of this, but I feel like you
Speaker 3: kind of hear about them all the time. Like you'll
Speaker 3: have people that are like literally performing at the very
Speaker 3: you know, top of their sport and are very competent
Speaker 3: from a skill and conditioning standpoint. They have all the
Speaker 3: experience in the world. You know, nobody can touch them,
Speaker 3: and yet they will perhaps also engage in some level
Speaker 3: of superstitious, you know, ritual luck scenario.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. That raises a lot of questions in
Speaker 1: my mind. But continue and maybe we'll come back.
Speaker 3: So, whether you are a pro bowler or you know,
Speaker 3: just a casual bowler like myself that maybe bowls, you know,
Speaker 3: a few times a year, the scenario is still the same.
Speaker 3: Once you send that bowl down the lane, once it
Speaker 3: has left your hand, it's all set in motion. And
Speaker 3: yet I certainly have time and time again caught myself
Speaker 3: in that those moments before it hits trying to nudge
Speaker 3: the ball with my mind toward the center pin. You know,
Speaker 3: not actually you know, rationally believing I have that power
Speaker 3: to do it. Not like turning to everyone and being like,
Speaker 3: all right, watch this, everybody, I'm gonna bowl and then
Speaker 3: I'm gonna use my telekinesis to get a stride. No, no,
Speaker 3: but I'll catch myself doing something either with my hands
Speaker 3: or with my will, trying to will the ball towards
Speaker 3: the pins.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. You know what can I say something that
Speaker 1: I think helps influence that, even though this is a
Speaker 1: pure misunderstanding, But rob, if you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: If you watch pro bowlers, they don't just throw the
Speaker 1: ball straight. They put some kind of spin on it
Speaker 1: where it like arcs or hooks. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they're a number of those techniques.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: My father in law at one point was showing me
Speaker 3: some of those and trying to teach me how to
Speaker 3: do the spin. And also, I mean, a very skilled
Speaker 3: bowler can do a lot of impressive things, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't change the fact that once the ball lays their hand,
Speaker 3: it is set in motion. There's no more that there's
Speaker 3: no telekinesis involved.
Speaker 1: That's right, It's all there in the initial throw. So
Speaker 1: that was their moment of control was when they were
Speaker 1: throwing it. It's not, you know, they're not using telekinesis afterwards,
Speaker 1: but it can kind of look like it because it's
Speaker 1: like hooking in a way we're used to, like the
Speaker 1: amateur is used to throwing the ball just straight, but
Speaker 1: when you put the kind of spin on it that
Speaker 1: makes it curve like that, it it encourages the idea
Speaker 1: that somehow the bowler is continuing to exert control after
Speaker 1: it has left their hand. Really, sometimes all in the throw, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes there's a flourish or something. And I guess
Speaker 3: to less experienced bowlers too, like myself is like sometimes
Speaker 3: there is a real disconnect between what you think you're
Speaker 3: about to do what the ball actually does, and that
Speaker 3: can go either way. You can feel like in the
Speaker 3: moment you are in a bowling movie and then you
Speaker 3: get gutterball, or you can feel like you kind of
Speaker 3: fumbled it and oh you got a surprise strike out
Speaker 3: of it. So these sorts of things are possible. So again,
Speaker 3: I don't actually believe I can mentally manipulate bowling balls
Speaker 3: from a distance, but in the heat of the moment,
Speaker 3: there is that feeling that I don't know, it's not
Speaker 3: even a feeling that I should try to do it.
Speaker 3: I just catch myself doing it, and I feel like
Speaker 3: this is also interconnected with the consciously ambiguous notion of intent, aim,
Speaker 3: and execution. So anyway, this connection isn't just something that
Speaker 3: I've been thinking about. It's also referenced in the sources
Speaker 3: I was looking at. I was looking at a couple
Speaker 3: of different papers. Both of them involve social psychologist Daniel M. Wegner,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen forty eight through twenty thirteen. I believe
Speaker 3: he's come up on the show before, so he mentions
Speaker 3: this connection between magical thinking and the illusion of control
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight self is Magic. And then
Speaker 3: there's also a paper I was looking at on which
Speaker 3: he was a co author, every Day Powers the role
Speaker 3: of apparent mental causation in the over estimation of personal influence.
Speaker 3: The lead author on that was psychologist Emily Pronin. This
Speaker 3: was from two thousand and six. Both of these reference Thompson,
Speaker 3: by the way. Now in the prone and paper, the
Speaker 3: authors argue that magical thinking may serve a motivational purpose,
Speaker 3: especially in times of stress and uncertainty, and they point
Speaker 3: to several different documented cases of this from arise in
Speaker 3: magical thinking among Germans in the interwar period and police
Speaker 3: officers working in high risk environments. They also point out
Speaker 3: some health related scenarios that I believe that this is
Speaker 3: directly from Thompson's research, and then they write, quote, even
Speaker 3: when people recognize the control over life events may be
Speaker 3: impossible to achieve, magical beliefs or may arise out of
Speaker 3: a motivation to find meaning in that which they cannot control.
Speaker 3: So they've gotten to point out that quote, basic cognitive
Speaker 3: errors involving the perception of causal relationships when only non
Speaker 3: causal associations are present, along with a need to control
Speaker 3: things and uncontrollable situations, can lead to these kinds of
Speaker 3: acts and beliefs. And indeed, they stress that these sorts
Speaker 3: of acts may occur even when we rationally deny the connection.
Speaker 3: And you know, this touches on sort of like the
Speaker 3: dual nature of human cognition and belief that we've touched
Speaker 3: on many times before. I mean, you can you can
Speaker 3: have superstitious ideas while also having rational ideas in your head.
Speaker 3: You know, we can. We can balance these things and
Speaker 3: switch back and forth between them, and we're not necessarily
Speaker 3: completely chained to one extreme or the other.
Speaker 1: Right, And another way of thinking about it is like
Speaker 1: we we don't always act on what we know, or
Speaker 1: we don't always act as if we know what we
Speaker 1: know right.
Speaker 3: One example that discussed in this paper is okay, thinking
Speaker 3: ill of someone and then something bad happens that person
Speaker 3: you were thinking ill of. They point out that this
Speaker 3: may well cause feelings of guilt in you, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that mere feelings cannot hurt someone. Your thoughts of
Speaker 3: ill will are not going to actually harm someone without
Speaker 3: without some other things happening in between. You know that
Speaker 3: pure thought is not going to do it. But in
Speaker 3: one of these situations you may feel that guilt. And
Speaker 3: they stress that what the quote, generating consistent thoughts related
Speaker 3: to an event just prior to its occurrence may be
Speaker 3: sufficient to induce feelings of authorship for the event. So
Speaker 3: they carried out a series of experiments that they discussed
Speaker 3: in this paper involving subjects being told about a peer's
Speaker 3: physical ailments on the end, on the flip side, being
Speaker 3: told about a peers athletic success. And they also did
Speaker 3: a third and a fourth experiment involving real athletic competitions,
Speaker 3: and they summarize by saying quote. In each study, the
Speaker 3: relevant outcome occurred regardless of participants. Thoughts was experimentally predetermined
Speaker 3: in our first two studies, and it was part of
Speaker 3: a live sporting event in our second two studies. However,
Speaker 3: in each study, participants were more likely to feel and
Speaker 3: believe that they were responsible for the relevant outcome if
Speaker 3: they had generated prior thoughts related to it.
Speaker 1: You know, this is interesting because this would almost connect
Speaker 1: to Thompson's control heuristic model, except it would cut out
Speaker 1: the need for an external action. It would be kind
Speaker 1: of the control heuristic model if the only action you
Speaker 1: really needed was to think about something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you know they don't get into this
Speaker 3: at all, but you know, I can't help but think
Speaker 3: of you know, various religious worldviews that some of us
Speaker 3: may have come up in where there's a lot of
Speaker 3: emphasis on thought and about like thoughts, having you know,
Speaker 3: thoughts for instance, themselves being sinful and so forth, you know,
Speaker 3: and therefore having like this, this reality that goes beyond
Speaker 3: mir you know, some mint internalness. But in any rate,
Speaker 3: that would have to be something that is explored in
Speaker 3: another paper, another discussion. Now in Wegner's self is magic.
Speaker 3: His words remind me once more of the bowling example.
Speaker 3: We're just we're just talking about again, there's a disconnect
Speaker 3: between my muscle memory, my actions, and my perceptions of
Speaker 3: the ball rolling toward and hopefully hitting the pins. And
Speaker 3: it's not just me, and it's not just bowling. This
Speaker 3: exact situation applies to a great deal of the human condition.
Speaker 3: He points out that our brain only presents us with quote,
Speaker 3: a relatively impoverished account of its own operations, and our
Speaker 3: attempt to make sense of the evidence yields the impression
Speaker 3: that we are freely willing our actions.
Speaker 1: Ah. Yeah, well this is a fantastic point, because I
Speaker 1: mean it not only you know, can you not understand
Speaker 1: the difference of why, you know, one time you throw
Speaker 1: a bowling ball and it was a strike, and another
Speaker 1: time you threw it and it was a butter ball.
Speaker 1: It's not like you know. It can be frustrating that
Speaker 1: you don't know what made the difference in those two attempts.
Speaker 1: But it can also like you can take a step
Speaker 1: further back and try to examine your authorship of all
Speaker 1: the actions you take, not just like throwing a bowling ball,
Speaker 1: but every single thing you do throughout the day, and
Speaker 1: it becomes increasingly unclear what the difference was that made
Speaker 1: you do anything versus anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. He points out there's a certain amount of
Speaker 3: inference when it comes to connecting our thoughts to our
Speaker 3: actions in general and magical thinking, he stresses, occurs when
Speaker 3: people quote draw causal inferences relating their thought to their action,
Speaker 3: so the perception of one's own causality is subject to error,
Speaker 3: and he uses a great example here in his writing
Speaker 3: that of turning on a light in your house. Okay,
Speaker 3: simple thing. We do it all the time. And the
Speaker 3: thing is, though we may do it with varying degrees
Speaker 3: of a parent will flay. So if you think to yourself, well,
Speaker 3: it's dark in here, I should nay, will turn on
Speaker 3: the light, and then you do it. Well, this act
Speaker 3: may feel quite wilful.
Speaker 1: Right, but sometimes it's not that conscious or not that intentional,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: That's right, he says. Sometimes you might think to yourself, Man,
Speaker 3: a cookie sure would be nice right now. So what
Speaker 3: do you do? You walk into the dark kitchen and
Speaker 3: absentmindedly turn on the light on the way to the
Speaker 3: cookie jar. And in this case, the act of turning
Speaker 3: on the light may quote feel less willed and more
Speaker 3: like some sort of alien control.
Speaker 1: Ah. So the connection between intention and efficacy or cause
Speaker 1: in the world can be mysterious in multiple ways. Like
Speaker 1: if I don't remember willing myself to turn on the
Speaker 1: light right before I do it, it can seem like
Speaker 1: some kind of unconscious magic force might have taken over
Speaker 1: and replaced my conscious will. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: going back to the previous study you talked about, if
Speaker 1: I do remember consciously willing something to happen, and then
Speaker 1: it happens without me taking any apparent action to cause it,
Speaker 1: I can start to wonder again if there's some mysterious
Speaker 1: connecting principle at work also regarding mysterious unconscious actions we take.
Speaker 1: I've wanted to mention that as you were talking, Rob,
Speaker 1: I just realized that I've been fiddling with the coiled
Speaker 1: cable that connects my headphones to my microphone, like wrapping
Speaker 1: it around my thumb. I was previously not conscious of
Speaker 1: doing this. I have no idea why I was doing it,
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are so many examples of this in
Speaker 3: our life, and some of them we catch, sometimes some
Speaker 3: we don't, you know. And it's just a peek into
Speaker 3: some of the ways that an individual might develop a
Speaker 3: view that they can exert psychic, magical, or some other
Speaker 3: form of paranormal control over reality. You know, there are
Speaker 3: other possibilities, other factors involved in this as well. This
Speaker 3: is not like a you know, the one recipe for
Speaker 3: this line of thinking. But and then likewise, going back
Speaker 3: we were talking about earlier about people in power and
Speaker 3: so forth, we might factor it into cases where individuals
Speaker 3: put faith in another person's supposed powers magical, psychic, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Or even you can cut all the way away that
Speaker 3: away and get back to just the idea that like, oh,
Speaker 3: this person's influential, this person can get things done. You know,
Speaker 3: if they believe it, and you know, tying in their charisma,
Speaker 3: they're you know, they're seeming authenticity, we might be more
Speaker 3: likely to buy into that, might buy into the fact
Speaker 3: that they're a great leader might buy into the fact
Speaker 3: that they can move things with their minds and so forth.
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's fascinating to to take all this,
Speaker 3: you know, to take the illusion of control and apply
Speaker 3: it to this to some of these scenarios, and think
Speaker 3: about how it could be a contributing factor to some
Speaker 3: of these scenarios. Again where one one believes that they
Speaker 3: have some sort of a power or feeding into this
Speaker 3: this individual that other people believe have a power. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really interesting this connection to the idea
Speaker 1: that really analyzing or interrogating the concept of willful control
Speaker 1: over things makes it more and more mysterious. Yeah, makes
Speaker 1: it seem like maybe magic could be involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And again there are other factors to be sure,
Speaker 3: kind of going back to the example of like sin
Speaker 3: and thought. If there is a worldview that one or
Speaker 3: you know, some sort of script or programming that one
Speaker 3: is privy to that encourages an idea of say miracles
Speaker 3: or psychic powers, you know, be it something that is
Speaker 3: religious in nature or or or even you know, non
Speaker 3: religious and more say based in you know, conspiracy thinking
Speaker 3: and so forth. You know, that also could could play
Speaker 3: a role, among other things, their whole host of things
Speaker 3: influencing our worldview and the way we interact with reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have really enjoyed exploring illusion of control with you, Rob.
Speaker 1: This this has been an interesting one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean it's it's it's always fascinating,
Speaker 3: sometimes a little haunting when when we start teasing apart
Speaker 3: these uh, these subjects that involve our outlook on reality
Speaker 3: and so forth, and especially illusions. Uh, you know, because
Speaker 3: it's sometimes it's pointed out that you know, we are
Speaker 3: also an illusion. Our sense of self is an illusion.
Speaker 3: So uh, you know, it can feel a little a
Speaker 3: little challenging at times to h to start pulling the threads,
Speaker 3: but also rewarding in the end to all right, we're
Speaker 3: going to go ahead and close out here, but we'd
Speaker 3: love to hear from everybody if you have thoughts on
Speaker 3: the illusion of control some of the specific examples we
Speaker 3: touched on here, Even something as simple as your favorite
Speaker 3: example of a professional athlete who has some sort of
Speaker 3: a ritual that they engage in. You know, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that you know their their skill and their conditioning
Speaker 3: and so forth, is is beyond reproach. We'd love to
Speaker 3: hear from you. We'll throw out that email address here
Speaker 3: in a minute, but before we do, let's see what
Speaker 3: else do we need to mention here. Remind everyone as
Speaker 3: usual that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 3: science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, lister
Speaker 3: mail on Monday, short form episode on Wednesdays, in a
Speaker 3: weird house cinemon Fridays. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 3: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird movie.
Speaker 3: Let's see. Also, we'll point out that other ways you
Speaker 3: can get in touch with the show and or other
Speaker 3: listeners of the show. There's a discord group. You can
Speaker 3: email us and we'll send you that discord link. If
Speaker 3: you're on Facebook, there is a Facebook group. It's called
Speaker 3: the Stuff to Blow your Mind Discussion module. Seek it
Speaker 3: out and you can request access and you just have
Speaker 3: to answer a very easy trivia question to gain access.
Speaker 3: So if you want to interact with other listeners, that's
Speaker 3: a great place to go. And in general, yeah, we
Speaker 3: thank everyone out there for listening to the show, and
Speaker 3: if you have time and the power to do so,
Speaker 3: give us some stars, give us a nice review somewhere
Speaker 3: that also helps us out.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Pauseway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
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