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 to begin today's episode,
Speaker 3: I want to start by sketching out a little scenario
Speaker 3: to help you imagine something and investigate your intuitions. So
Speaker 3: I want you to imagine you are waiting on a
Speaker 3: friend in the lobby of a casino hotel. Maybe you're
Speaker 3: in Las Vegas, and you realize you've got some time
Speaker 3: to kill, maybe fifteen minutes before your friend gets there,
Speaker 3: and you've got a few spare bucks in your pocket.
Speaker 3: You kind of get the itch to go blow it
Speaker 3: on one of the slot machines that keeps making all
Speaker 3: these exciting noises nearby. And by the way, this is
Speaker 3: just to illustrate a point. This is not behavior that
Speaker 3: we're necessarily advising, because, oh, I don't know, we've done
Speaker 3: episodes on slot machines before, and you know, even if
Speaker 3: you plan to lose all the money you bet, there's
Speaker 3: always the chance that you just might have too much
Speaker 3: fun with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Back in twenty fifteen, we did an episode titled
Speaker 2: one arm Bandits the Science of slot machines, and I
Speaker 2: found it rather illuminating myself. So I'd recommend anyone who's
Speaker 2: interested and just just to what extent these are fair
Speaker 2: or unfair, I recommend go back and listen to that
Speaker 2: episode spoiler the House always wins.
Speaker 3: I haven't been to Vegas, but from what I understand,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of fun stuff to do other than gambling.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Vegas is great. My family and I went
Speaker 2: out there for the first time a few months back,
Speaker 2: and yeah, there's some great restaurants. You see the Hoover
Speaker 2: Dam not too far away, and they have a tremendous
Speaker 2: male wolf, so lot to see.
Speaker 3: There is that one Omega Mart.
Speaker 2: That's Omega Mart. Yeah it's special. It's pretty great.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so back to the scenario. So you decide
Speaker 3: you're going to blow some money at a slot machine.
Speaker 3: You go up to the machine, you put your money in,
Speaker 3: but you're new to this and you don't see the
Speaker 3: button that spins the digital wheel. So you start looking
Speaker 3: around and there's a lady sitting at the slot machine
Speaker 3: next to you, and she plays these things all the time.
Speaker 3: She sees you scanning the machine in confusion, and she
Speaker 3: leans over and says it's right here, and she reaches
Speaker 3: across and presses the button for you, And then you
Speaker 3: see the wheel spin on the digital screen. It slows down,
Speaker 3: there's a ding, and it's a bus. Do you lose
Speaker 3: your bet? Now? Everybody's reaction to the scenario might be
Speaker 3: somewhat different, but I think an extremely common reaction for
Speaker 3: people to have would be annoyance and a feeling of
Speaker 3: having been wronged by the woman who pushed the button
Speaker 3: for you. And this could be for a number of reasons.
Speaker 3: Some of those reasons might be purely social, like it
Speaker 3: might feel like a violation of your personal space by
Speaker 3: a stranger. You might be upset that somebody robbed you
Speaker 3: of the fun of pressing a button, because sometimes it
Speaker 3: can be fun to press a button. But beyond all that,
Speaker 3: I think a very common reaction, even among people who
Speaker 3: rationally know better, would be a feeling of having been cheated.
Speaker 3: This random stranger didn't just invade your personal space and
Speaker 3: interrupt your fun. She lost your money for you. It's
Speaker 3: her fault you lost that money and did not win.
Speaker 3: At the same time, you would probably realize correctly that
Speaker 3: a slot machine is not a game of skill. It's
Speaker 3: a game of chance, and thus it literally makes no
Speaker 3: difference whatsoever to your probability of winning whether you push
Speaker 3: the button or someone else does. It is not as
Speaker 3: if you placed a bet on, you know, throwing darts
Speaker 3: at a dartboard or something where conceivably you might be
Speaker 3: better at hitting the center than the person who throws
Speaker 3: the dart for you. Everybody knows that with the slot machine,
Speaker 3: it truly does not matter who presses the button. And yet,
Speaker 3: even though we know this rationally, I think I think
Speaker 3: if I personally were in this situation, it would be
Speaker 3: really hard for me to shake the feeling that this
Speaker 3: stranger had cheated me out of possible winnings. So I
Speaker 3: would know it's not true, but it would just be
Speaker 3: an extremely tenacious illusion that whoever presses the button really matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting to think about it. I hadn't
Speaker 2: really thought about it so much. You know, we'll get
Speaker 2: into the idea of other rituals associated with this sort
Speaker 2: of behavior, like, you know, am I wearing my lucky
Speaker 2: shirt or not? When I go to gamble, or when
Speaker 2: I go to watch my favorite sports team or take
Speaker 2: a test, et cetera. So it's interesting to think about
Speaker 2: how this scenario I push the button versus a stranger
Speaker 2: pushes the button. How that compares or doesn't compare to
Speaker 2: the luck related scenario of I push the button with
Speaker 2: my lucky shirt on or I push the button without
Speaker 2: my lucky shirt on. Are we more likely to disregard
Speaker 2: the logic of the latter? What have we left the
Speaker 2: stranger wear our lucky shirt? That still doesn't seem right?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, these are all you know, who presses the button,
Speaker 3: whether they're wearing their lucky charm or not. These are
Speaker 3: all variations on the idea that there is something you
Speaker 3: can do to increase or decrease your chance of winning
Speaker 3: at the slot machine. And it's just not true, Like,
Speaker 3: none of these things influence what your chances of winning are.
Speaker 3: Your chances are equally low no matter what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your chances are all locked up in that machine already,
Speaker 2: they are programmed into it. And who pushes that button?
Speaker 2: Who actually ends up executing the final the final button push,
Speaker 2: whatever form that takes in a given gambling machine, it's
Speaker 2: already been figured out by the.
Speaker 3: Machine, right, And so I sketched out this scenario to
Speaker 3: illustrate a concept in psychology called the illusion of control.
Speaker 3: So the illusion of control refers to a common type
Speaker 3: of cognitive illusion, a mistaken pattern of reasoning in which
Speaker 3: we overestimate the extent to which our choices or behavior
Speaker 3: can effect outcomes, even totally random or uncontrollable outcomes. So,
Speaker 3: according to illusion of control theory, either we think we
Speaker 3: have control over an outcome when we have no control
Speaker 3: at all, or we do have some control, but we
Speaker 3: think we have more control than we actually do. So
Speaker 3: today we're kicking off a series where we're going to
Speaker 3: take a look at research on the illusion of control,
Speaker 3: to what extent the concept is a valid description of
Speaker 3: how we think, what the evidence for it is, some
Speaker 3: criticisms of the concept, how it works in theory and practice,
Speaker 3: and why we might experience it to the extent that
Speaker 3: we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's going to be interesting to talk about
Speaker 2: this and think about it, especially in a world that
Speaker 2: can very often feel rather out of our control, and
Speaker 2: that as well discuss plays into the whole scenario.
Speaker 3: That's right. But before we dive into the research on
Speaker 3: this subject, I thought it would be good to kick
Speaker 3: off with some just classic examples that we can think
Speaker 3: of from day to day life stuff. You don't even
Speaker 3: need an experiment to see. You can just you know,
Speaker 3: it happens to us all the time we do it.
Speaker 3: You already mentioned Rob the idea of lucky rituals that
Speaker 3: people put in place to help steer the outcome of
Speaker 3: a public event on which the ritual has no rational
Speaker 3: reason to have any influence. So whether your football team
Speaker 3: wins that, you know, does that depend on whether you're
Speaker 3: wearing your lucky shirt. And people might participate in lucky
Speaker 3: rituals like this for a number of different reasons. Not
Speaker 3: all of those reasons would be a genuine expectation that
Speaker 3: it will help influence the outcome of the event. But
Speaker 3: to the extent that someone does feel it will actually
Speaker 3: change the probability of you getting the outcome you want,
Speaker 3: that would be an example of the illusion of control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because sometimes these activities, you know, various lucky items.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's probably more in the fun category than anything.
Speaker 2: You know, you wear your lucky scarf to go enjoy
Speaker 2: a football game other football fans. You know, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just a fun thing to.
Speaker 3: Do, or just to regulate your own emotions. Like it
Speaker 3: might be literally functional, but operating on the self instead
Speaker 3: of on the external world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and as always, you know, to what degree
Speaker 2: does something become maladaptive or a hindrance. I mean, you
Speaker 2: do hear cases of Okay, someone's wearing their their lucky
Speaker 2: shirt to a game. Okay, fair, someone's wearing their lucky
Speaker 2: underwear to a game. Fair, Someone's wearing their lucky underwear
Speaker 2: to this game and they wore it to last game
Speaker 2: and hasn't been washed since last game. You hear about
Speaker 2: cases like that as well. And I don't know, I
Speaker 2: think maybe in some of those cases there's another discussion
Speaker 2: to have there, But I don't know. Sports and their rituals.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the version that's truly maladaptive.
Speaker 2: Now other times, you know, I think we shouldn't dismiss
Speaker 2: the importance of religious faith in all of this, particularly
Speaker 2: regarding amulets. Various traditions, various religions out there have some
Speaker 2: sort of an amulant tradition, some sort of essentially a
Speaker 2: lucky charm tradition, be it a crucifix or a small
Speaker 2: statue of a deity that you may carry around with
Speaker 2: you and that may be used casually or you know,
Speaker 2: very devotedly. There are different approaches to that as well.
Speaker 2: There's all spectrum in that area of religious faith as well. Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'd say that might well be one of
Speaker 3: those things that is literally efficacious in some way. Maybe
Speaker 3: not in the sense of changing the outcome of a
Speaker 3: game or something, but it does change something about you
Speaker 3: and is helpful in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there's the notion that a lot of times
Speaker 2: the addition of a lucky totem or a lucky practice
Speaker 2: of some sort very often does not necessarily induce added
Speaker 2: cost or burden. You know, even if we're mostly dismissive
Speaker 2: of the idea that said item or said activity will
Speaker 2: enhance our luck or will make some sort of experience
Speaker 2: you know, passes buy with more ease. And even if
Speaker 2: we're not we don't have a huge investment in that idea.
Speaker 2: It kind of comes down to, well, why not, right,
Speaker 2: is it going to hurt? I might as well have
Speaker 2: the amulet on me. Maybe it will help if there's
Speaker 2: a one percent chance it helps, great, because all it
Speaker 2: is just setting in my pocket.
Speaker 3: Right and you know, I plan to get into this
Speaker 3: more in one of the later episodes in the series,
Speaker 3: maybe in part two. But there is a question of
Speaker 3: to the extent that we experience an illusion of control,
Speaker 3: why do we experience one? Are there ways in which
Speaker 3: it might actually be beneficial to human life even if
Speaker 3: it's generating false beliefs?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean we kind of get into that basic
Speaker 2: area of like, yeah, and it makes life a little easier,
Speaker 2: and it's not hurting you, it's not hurting other people,
Speaker 2: then why not?
Speaker 3: Okay? I want to mention another example from everyday life.
Speaker 3: This one comes up a lot when people think about
Speaker 3: illusion of control. The closed door button on an elevator.
Speaker 3: Does that button actually do anything? I think this example
Speaker 3: actually has two levels of possible illusion of control. The
Speaker 3: first one and we can quibble with whether this counts
Speaker 3: as illusion of control or not. But the first level
Speaker 3: is the question of whether the closed door button actually
Speaker 3: closes the door. I was reading some articles about this
Speaker 3: and was getting some contradictory conclusions from them, but like
Speaker 3: according to there was an article in the New York
Speaker 3: Times that cited some people in the elevator industry who
Speaker 3: says who say that in most cases the button actually
Speaker 3: does not change how fast the door closes. Maybe it
Speaker 3: does in some percentage of elevators, but in the majority,
Speaker 3: at least within the United States, it doesn't. I was
Speaker 3: reading in another article that lifts in the UK are
Speaker 3: more likely to have a fully functional closed door button
Speaker 3: that does accelerate how fast the door shut. Elevators in
Speaker 3: the US most of the time close on a timer,
Speaker 3: and even when the closed door button is functional, it
Speaker 3: probably works on a delay from when you press it
Speaker 3: instead of immediately, So it's really questionable how much faster,
Speaker 3: if at all, the doors will close after the button
Speaker 3: is pressed. So I think the answer is not totally
Speaker 3: clear on how often the closed door button does anything
Speaker 3: in the States, but many people consider these buttons in
Speaker 3: the US just a placebo. It does nothing except maybe
Speaker 3: makes the passengers feel better.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I feel like the closed door button exists mostly
Speaker 2: to enhance the awkwardness of reaching for the open door button.
Speaker 2: When someone tries to catch the elevator behind you one
Speaker 2: of the doors close closing, will they correctly assume that
Speaker 2: you were trying to help them, or will they think
Speaker 2: that you were desperately trying to keep them from boarding
Speaker 2: the elevator Like close faster. No one else on this
Speaker 2: elevator with.
Speaker 3: Me that's a good point. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: I think you could make a good case that the
Speaker 3: closed door button shouldn't count as illusion of control because
Speaker 3: there is genuine ambiguity about whether it does something or not, Like,
Speaker 3: people really don't have information that should tell them whether
Speaker 3: or not it works, and there's a reasonable assumption that
Speaker 3: it should work. So pressing it is even whether or
Speaker 3: not it works because you have a reasonable expectation that
Speaker 3: it would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it says it works. You're just doing what the
Speaker 2: button is inviting you to.
Speaker 3: Do, exactly. But there's the second level of door closed
Speaker 3: button that I think is definitely illusion of control, which
Speaker 3: is have you ever seen somebody who's in a hurry
Speaker 3: they get in an elevator, they not only press the button,
Speaker 3: which may or may not work, they press the button
Speaker 3: after watching somebody else press it already, like, oh, the
Speaker 3: other guy didn't press it, right, I need to press
Speaker 3: it to make sure it'll work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes you get on board an
Speaker 2: elevator and there's this moment of uncertainty did the other
Speaker 2: person press it? You didn't see them press it, you
Speaker 2: would maybe assume they did, and it might be a
Speaker 2: little awkward if you press it now, because then you're
Speaker 2: saying like, I'm not sure you did this right, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure you did it. I'm going to press it,
Speaker 2: but yeah, if you see them do it, that is
Speaker 2: an extra level of social awkwardness right there. And I
Speaker 2: guess you're leaning into the idea that, Okay, if I
Speaker 2: press it more then it'll be more likely.
Speaker 3: To comply exactly. Yeah, maybe there is reasoning of that sort,
Speaker 3: like I wonder if button presses are cumulative.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I often fall into this as well. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'll do this thing where I go to use the
Speaker 2: clicker to lock the car, and I won't press it once.
Speaker 2: I'll press it two or three times, which confounds members
Speaker 2: of my family when I do this, But for some reason,
Speaker 2: like it just feels like three is more certain, even
Speaker 2: though there's no cumulative effect there. There's not like, Okay,
Speaker 2: if you press it three times to lock, you have
Speaker 2: to press it three times to unlock it, which I
Speaker 2: don't know. I'd kind of like that feature personally, but
Speaker 2: that's just not how it works. One click should do it,
Speaker 2: but my mind thinks additional clicks would be necessary.
Speaker 3: Triples is best. Then you know it's safe.
Speaker 2: That's true, but it's not true. It's just one of
Speaker 2: those things we do. Another thing, another like clear example
Speaker 2: of this one that I think a lot of us
Speaker 2: encounter rather frequent, and another potential placebo button is the
Speaker 2: crosswalk button, and a lot of the same situations apply here.
Speaker 2: You know, you get up there to the crosswalk, there's
Speaker 2: someone else already standing there. You assume they pressed it already,
Speaker 2: but you're gonna press it as well, or you're waiting
Speaker 2: on it. Seems to be taking forever. You know it's
Speaker 2: been pressed, you've pressed it once, Maybe press it two
Speaker 2: or three more times to let it know that you
Speaker 2: mean business. You need to get across the street, Throw
Speaker 2: up the red light, throw up the little green walk
Speaker 2: in or white or light up walking man.
Speaker 3: Also, as with the elevator button, there's legitimate question over
Speaker 3: whether the button does anything or not.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was looking into this a little bit,
Speaker 2: and the broad answer on whether the cross button works
Speaker 2: at all seems to be a resounding. It depends so
Speaker 2: different countries, different city traffic systems, They're gonna have the
Speaker 2: button function differently. Sometimes it actually speeds up crossings, other
Speaker 2: times it doesn't. But what do we do? We push
Speaker 2: it anyway, And part of that is again, standing there,
Speaker 2: you probably don't have anything else to do, Push it
Speaker 2: a few more times and see if it works.
Speaker 3: As we already established, sometimes it's just fun to push
Speaker 3: a button.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're in a situation where you either
Speaker 2: have no control or you realize you have a limited
Speaker 2: amount of control. What can you do. You can't get
Speaker 2: out there and stop cars, you can't stop traffic, but
Speaker 2: you can press the button again and again, and it
Speaker 2: feels like at least you're doing something now. The illusion
Speaker 2: of control also applies to situations in which we know
Speaker 2: experience anxiety due to perceived lack of control. And one
Speaker 2: of these, and I can relate to this a bit,
Speaker 2: is flying. Two examples I've read about with this scenario.
Speaker 2: Or of course, there's of course pre enduring flight routines.
Speaker 2: Many of these are so slight that we might not
Speaker 2: even think about them as being pre flight rituals having
Speaker 2: to do with an illusion of control. The examples given
Speaker 2: in the Air Travel Design Guide include things like wearing
Speaker 2: comfy clothing or brushing on one's teeth before a flight.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I those just sound like good things
Speaker 2: to do before a long flight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they also controlling an outcome. I mean that
Speaker 3: just seems like that's what you do to feel good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean, I guess, and I can relate
Speaker 2: to this a bit. It's like, maybe, like feeling good
Speaker 2: is that thing you have control over, and so maybe
Speaker 2: you've become more indulgent of those in a way to
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, to make something that can be
Speaker 2: uncomfortable more comfortable, which is just obviously you want to
Speaker 2: do that. But also it's like so many things are
Speaker 2: out of my control here, but the exact headpillow have
Speaker 2: I have is in my control. The exact playlist I
Speaker 2: download ahead of time is in my control. How you
Speaker 2: know which movie I downloaded my phone prior to the flight,
Speaker 2: that's within my control. I will do that, and I'll
Speaker 2: put a lot of effort into.
Speaker 3: That, and maybe from all of that effort at control,
Speaker 3: there could be some conceptual creep where actually it makes
Speaker 3: you feel like the plane is less likely to crash.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, and I don't even know if necessarily
Speaker 2: everyone's mind directly goes there, you know, but it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, you're you're dealing with one thing that they
Speaker 2: When I was reading this ear Travel Design Guide website
Speaker 2: that they pointed out, you know, it's like there's a
Speaker 2: lot going on when you fly. Obviously, you know you're
Speaker 2: you're traveling, your your your your circadian rhythms are are interrupted,
Speaker 2: you may eat lunch three times in a given day,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, and then there are all these
Speaker 2: other constraints. So there's a lot going on in the
Speaker 2: mind and in the body. They also cite gamification as
Speaker 2: a as a way that we interact with this illusion
Speaker 2: of control. I found this bit interesting. This is a quote.
Speaker 2: The airport is a unique type of architectural typology where
Speaker 2: the spaces are subdivided and arranged to usher large groups
Speaker 2: of people to move uni directionally. This encourages people to
Speaker 2: develop strategies to game the system and to feel competitive
Speaker 2: with other passengers moving through the airport.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's right. I feel seen that. That's
Speaker 3: like I do not I'm not normally a competitive walker,
Speaker 3: like trying to get ahead of people walking, you know,
Speaker 3: around me on the sidewalk. The only scenario in which
Speaker 3: I catch myself doing that is at the airport, and
Speaker 3: I want, yeah, that may be right. That it's like,
Speaker 3: because it's funnel, you know, structured to have everybody moving
Speaker 3: in the same direction, and it's so yeah, controlled like that.
Speaker 3: It's some for some reason, makes you feel like I've
Speaker 3: got to get in front of this this guy here,
Speaker 3: you know, I've got Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting to think about it from a design
Speaker 2: standpoint where a lot of control needs to be taken
Speaker 2: away from people going through this system, but you also
Speaker 2: need to give them a sense of control, control over
Speaker 2: little things, and and also realize that there's going to
Speaker 2: be this illusion of control in place as well. But
Speaker 2: you have another example to to to bring up here,
Speaker 2: and this one is even more fun than flying. Oh.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you had the same experience. So I
Speaker 3: was thinking back to childhood, and this may be an
Speaker 3: embarrassing admission, but I'm thinking about the illusory functionality of
Speaker 3: objectively non responsive video game controls. A couple of examples here.
Speaker 3: I am at the Pizza Hut. I'm a little kid.
Speaker 3: I desperately want to play the Neogo machine or the
Speaker 3: X Men Arcade cabinet, but I have no quarters, so
Speaker 3: I can't play. But while these machines are idle, there
Speaker 3: is a kind of pre recorded gameplay demo that loops
Speaker 3: on the screen, so it looks like somebody's playing. You know,
Speaker 3: the characters are walking around fighting the bad guys and stuff,
Speaker 3: and according to vague memories, I can't be sure I'm
Speaker 3: right about this, but I think I would sometimes go
Speaker 3: up to the machine and falsely believe that I was
Speaker 3: maybe somewhat partially controlling the gameplay in this demo by
Speaker 3: moving the joystick around without putting money in. Or maybe
Speaker 3: what I'm remembering is that I would stare at the
Speaker 3: machine while the demo's going, and I would not be
Speaker 3: touching it, but I would be imagining that this were possible.
Speaker 3: Another variation is a trick. Sometimes I think people would
Speaker 3: play on their little siblings with home video game consoles,
Speaker 3: so instead of fighting over whose turn it is to
Speaker 3: play Mario, maybe the big sister actually plays Mario and
Speaker 3: gives the little sister another controller which is not plugged
Speaker 3: in to make her think she's playing, while actually she's
Speaker 3: just watching the big sister play on the screen and
Speaker 3: pressing buttons that do nothing. I recall this happening around
Speaker 3: me and being surprisingly convincing.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe's more convincing with some games than others,
Speaker 2: But I remember I did this as well with arcade
Speaker 2: games when I was a little kid, and arguably with
Speaker 2: I mean X Men Arcade Cabinet. That was a pretty
Speaker 2: great game. But on the other hand, you're probably better
Speaker 2: off just thinking you were playing it. Looking back at
Speaker 2: it from a modern standpoint.
Speaker 3: I really liked being Colossus and doing the roar.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the yeah, it's funny. I had an experience
Speaker 2: with just this the other day. We were out to
Speaker 2: eat at a place that had arcade machines and they
Speaker 2: were old arcade machines, and my son and one of
Speaker 2: his friends and my son's eleven. Now, they went up
Speaker 2: to these machines and I hadn't given them any quarters,
Speaker 2: and I think I should give them some quarters so
Speaker 2: they can play these machines. But they're over there moving
Speaker 2: the sticks around, watching the screen, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I think they're just pretending to play.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: And then I was like, I think maybe they're a
Speaker 2: little too old to be doing that. And then I
Speaker 2: asked them, do you guys want some real quarters? They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: these machines are free, so it was a non issue.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, the reaches, you reach a point where
Speaker 2: you outgrow it for sure, where You don't just want
Speaker 2: to watch the games. You don't just want to watch
Speaker 2: other people play these games. You want to get in there,
Speaker 2: even if you are going to fail miserably and just
Speaker 2: have to sing more quarters in the thing.
Speaker 3: I will pay the endless tax to be Colosses. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 3: what was your X Men Arcade game character?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, oftentimes when I would play, there were
Speaker 2: like a lot of people, so it's like whoever you
Speaker 2: could get. But you know, obviously Colossus will Cyclops was
Speaker 2: pretty great. He had the ibam attack, you know, that
Speaker 2: would really tear up the screen.
Speaker 3: I remember Colossus was my first pick and night Crawler
Speaker 3: was my second.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he had a good attack as well. I
Speaker 2: mean really, I would just be happy. I was happy
Speaker 2: to be playing the X Men Arcade game.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I think maybe we should talk about
Speaker 3: some of the research history on the illusion of control,
Speaker 3: some of the papers that have explored this topic in
Speaker 3: the past. And though this phenomenon had been I think
Speaker 3: noticed previously in a variety of ways. It gets the
Speaker 3: name illusion of control from important research by the American
Speaker 3: psychologist Ellen J. Langer, who published a paper in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five called the Illusion of Control in the Journal
Speaker 3: of Personality and Social Psychology.
Speaker 2: Langer was born in nineteen forty seven. She's also known
Speaker 2: for her work on aging and mindfulness theory. I also
Speaker 2: want to call out that she was a series consultant
Speaker 2: on a BBC series title The Young Ones. But this
Speaker 2: is not the classic comedy series, but rather a documentary
Speaker 2: that explored reminiscence therapy.
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar either way. What's the comedy series?
Speaker 2: Oh, the Young Ones? Oh? This is a classic British
Speaker 2: comedy series about these young men living in a like
Speaker 2: a dormitory house type situation. Yeah, and they would also
Speaker 2: have musical guests on the show, like Motorhead was on
Speaker 2: one of the episodes.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, classic classic series. I'm sure it may
Speaker 2: have come up in passing on Weird House Cinema before,
Speaker 2: but I have a feeling in the future we'll probably
Speaker 2: touch on some films on Weird House Cinema that include
Speaker 2: actors from that show. All right, But The Young Ones
Speaker 2: a series that she was associated This is a documentary
Speaker 2: series that came like decades later.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay. But in the nineteen seventy five paper The
Speaker 3: Illusion of Control, Langer defined the phenomenon more narrowly than
Speaker 3: we've been talking about. She defined the illusion of control
Speaker 3: as quote, an expectancy of a personal success probability inappropriately
Speaker 3: higher than the objective probability would warrant. So I'm not
Speaker 3: going to do a detailed breakdown of Langer's full paper here,
Speaker 3: because there are like six experiments total a lot of
Speaker 3: variables being tested, but I'll summarize the main idea and
Speaker 3: a couple of highlights that stuck out to me. So
Speaker 3: her intro mentions a bunch of different reasons for thinking that,
Speaker 3: in her words, quote, while people may pay lip service
Speaker 3: to the concept of chance, they behave as though chance
Speaker 3: events are subject to control. And she produces a lot
Speaker 3: of examples given to provide prima facie evidence of this
Speaker 3: idea before the experiments are carried out. And one of
Speaker 3: these examples that I thought was interesting was a sociological
Speaker 3: observation of how people treat dice when gambling. She mentioned
Speaker 3: particularly behavior observed by Hinslin in nineteen sixty seven. So
Speaker 3: the idea is, if you watch people playing a dice
Speaker 3: based game, maybe you're in a casino in Vegas again,
Speaker 3: and you go up to a craps table. Whatever their
Speaker 3: true beliefs about chance or skill being involved in this game,
Speaker 3: and it is a game of chance, their externally visible
Speaker 3: behavior implies that they think they have some degree of
Speaker 3: control over the numbers they roll with the dice. Examples
Speaker 3: here would include that people tend to roll dice more
Speaker 3: softly if they want to roll low numbers, and throw
Speaker 3: the dice hard if they want to roll high numbers.
Speaker 3: They appear to concentrate in preparation for the dice throw
Speaker 3: the same way a person would concentrate before like doing
Speaker 3: a skill based throw, like an aimed throw if they're
Speaker 3: playing darts or something. And this belief in dice rolls
Speaker 3: as a skilled activity also seem to be present and
Speaker 3: observers because other people at the table would tend to
Speaker 3: bet with a person who appeared to be exerting more
Speaker 3: control in this way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's fascinating, you know, you know, I don't gamble
Speaker 2: with the dice, but I do throw some D twenties
Speaker 2: pretty much every week in Dungeons and Dragons, and I
Speaker 2: know that I do catch myself. I hadn't really thought
Speaker 2: about it before, but like, if I'm rolling especially an
Speaker 2: important D twenty I'm gonna I'm gonna put a little
Speaker 2: time and effort into it, and there's gonna be a pause.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make sure my form is right. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: make sure I get an appropriate clatter, you know. From that,
Speaker 2: From that that twenty as I give it a roll.
Speaker 3: I do exactly the same thing, and I it feels
Speaker 3: like I can roll the dice better or worse. I
Speaker 3: know that I can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still gonna get a natural one here and there,
Speaker 2: but but it feels better for some reason.
Speaker 3: And to be fair, dice rolls in reality are probably
Speaker 3: not perfectly random, like I think. I've read about gambling
Speaker 3: cheats who with a lot of training claim that they
Speaker 3: can learn ways to hold or toss the dice so
Speaker 3: as to increase the chances of getting the role they want.
Speaker 3: I think, especially if they do things you're not allowed
Speaker 3: to do, like sliding the dice on the velvet instead
Speaker 3: of actually throlling it, throwing them so they tumble. But anyway,
Speaker 3: for the vast, vast majority of regular gamblers, this is
Speaker 3: not the case. People cannot do this most for the
Speaker 3: most part, and dice can be treated as effectively random
Speaker 3: if they weren't effectively, random casinos would not use them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Anyway. To come back to Langer's paper from seventy five,
Speaker 3: so to test for an illusion of control, which she hypothesized,
Speaker 3: she did six experiments in which chance based games had
Speaker 3: various elements that we would associate with skill based games
Speaker 3: introduced and this was her idea. It was that if
Speaker 3: you make a game feel like it is skill based
Speaker 3: even though it's clearly not, people will be confused into
Speaker 3: thinking that they have control over outcomes that they actually don't.
Speaker 3: For one example, one variable that is explored in this
Speaker 3: paper is the variable of competition. If you are competing
Speaker 3: against an opponent in a skill based game, the ability
Speaker 3: of your opponent determines your likelihood of winning. Therefore, if
Speaker 3: you're placing bets on whether or not you're gonna win,
Speaker 3: how much you bet will in part depend on how
Speaker 3: good your opponent is at the game. So you know,
Speaker 3: if you're playing chess against a chess pro, you're probably
Speaker 3: gonna bet less or maybe bet nothing. If you're playing
Speaker 3: chess against somebody you perceive as worse than you at chess,
Speaker 3: you will probably bet more. Of course, if it's a
Speaker 3: purely chance based game, there is no relevant skill variable.
Speaker 3: So if you're offered the chance to bet on outcomes,
Speaker 3: your betting behavior should be based on something else, maybe
Speaker 3: social factors, maybe just baseline appetite for risk, maybe a
Speaker 3: desire to be seen by others as taking risks, etc.
Speaker 3: It should be based on something other than your perception
Speaker 3: of whether you're likely to win based on how good
Speaker 3: your opponent is. That doesn't make any difference in a
Speaker 3: chance based game. So in the first experiment described in
Speaker 3: the study, Langer had people play a purely chance based
Speaker 3: card game. The game was high card draw between two players.
Speaker 3: No skill involved, pure luck of the draw. You pick
Speaker 3: a card out of the deck. Is your card higher
Speaker 3: than the other person's. Is there any room in looking
Speaker 3: at that game to think I'm better than other people
Speaker 3: at this? There shouldn't be. But the independent variable manipulated
Speaker 3: by the experimenters here was the behavior and appearance of
Speaker 3: your opponent. Do they seem confident and self assured or
Speaker 3: do they seem awkward and nervous and prepared to lose?
Speaker 3: In other words, are you playing against somebody who feels
Speaker 3: like a winner or not? And remember, there's no logical
Speaker 3: reason anybody should be a winner at this game. There's
Speaker 3: zero skill involved, and yet the experiment did find that
Speaker 3: people were willing to bet significantly more against a competitor
Speaker 3: who seemed awkward and nervous than they were against a
Speaker 3: competitor who seemed outgoing and confident. Now, I think this
Speaker 3: is a really interesting result, but it's important to note
Speaker 3: the limitations of this experimental design, and Langer herself flags
Speaker 3: some of these limitations in the paper, so they didn't
Speaker 3: go unnoticed by the authors here. So it seems like this.
Speaker 3: It seems likely that this result could be caused by
Speaker 3: a mistaken perception that skill or control would somehow factor
Speaker 3: into this random game, But you can't be sure that's
Speaker 3: the cause guiding the differences in how people bet. Maybe
Speaker 3: other variables are operating here in response to the behavior
Speaker 3: and appearance of the competitor. Maybe they have to do
Speaker 3: with how the subject wants to be perceived in terms
Speaker 3: of taking risks or not. Who knows. There could be
Speaker 3: other things at work here. So that's the competition element,
Speaker 3: which Langer concludes could make a chance based game have
Speaker 3: illusory qualities of a skill based game. Other elements like
Speaker 3: this explored in the paper are choice. So the idea
Speaker 3: is if you give people a choice over, say, which
Speaker 3: lottery ticket they receive. Of course it makes no difference
Speaker 3: in the probability of winning, it increases their feeling of
Speaker 3: the likelihood of winning, though with the choice element in particular.
Speaker 3: There's a study I came across from twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: I might get into this more in the second episode,
Speaker 3: but that study undercuts specifically the choice variable in particular,
Speaker 3: So whether or not choice has this effect is up
Speaker 3: for debate. But other ones explored in this paper are
Speaker 3: familiarity with the game or with elements of the game.
Speaker 3: So familiarity would be associated with a better chance of
Speaker 3: winning a skill based game. Right, if you've played the
Speaker 3: game before, you're probably better at it. You're more likely
Speaker 3: to win. In a chance game, it doesn't matter. But
Speaker 3: the study found that familiarity made people more confident in
Speaker 3: their ability to win.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean I could see where like if you
Speaker 2: know that what the odds are, even if you know
Speaker 2: the odds are slim, like you do the math, You're like,
Speaker 2: all right, I have a five percent chance of pulling
Speaker 2: the right card. You know you could Still there's still
Speaker 2: plenty of room in the human psyche to lean into
Speaker 2: that and think I've got a five percent shot. That's
Speaker 2: that's a non zero percent chance of winning this game.
Speaker 3: Well, and there are games that have that are largely
Speaker 3: determined by chance, but also have skill elements where familiarity
Speaker 3: can make a big difference. Like I would say familiarity
Speaker 3: with playing poker probably makes a big difference in how
Speaker 3: well you do, because how well you do in poker
Speaker 3: is a mix of chance and skill. You know, it's
Speaker 3: the chance of what cards you draw, but also the
Speaker 3: skill of like your betting strategy and all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it also comes down to, like, what
Speaker 2: does it mean to lose in a given game. I
Speaker 2: haven't played much in the way of poker, but it's
Speaker 2: my understanding like a game like poker gambling games where
Speaker 2: actual money of any value is involved, losing just sucks.
Speaker 2: There's no fun in losing. If you're losing at the game,
Speaker 2: you're not having a good time. Whereas, and certainly you
Speaker 2: can take that attitude, unfortunately into any gaming scenario. But
Speaker 2: if you're doing it right, losing or rolling poorly, whatever
Speaker 2: the exact form this takes in say, Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: is not necessarily bad, it can be a great moment
Speaker 2: for character development, storytelling, and so forth. Likewise, just for
Speaker 2: fun games like I'll play a bit of this little
Speaker 2: phone game called Marvel Snap. It's pretty fun. You're not
Speaker 2: betting any real money on it, and sometimes like losing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes losing is like earlier, but other times it's amusing
Speaker 2: to see how the other person beats you. And then
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, you know, okay, I've got a very
Speaker 2: slim chance of pulling this combo off or you know
Speaker 2: this real hail Mary maneuver to use a sports term,
Speaker 2: But sometimes you go for it because you don't have
Speaker 2: money on the line. It's not the end of the world.
Speaker 2: If you lose, you're likely to lose, but if there's
Speaker 2: a small chance you're going to pull off something amazing,
Speaker 2: you go for it. And you do that in games
Speaker 2: like Dungeons and Dragons as well.
Speaker 3: That's right, and this highlights that, I mean, a big
Speaker 3: thing about studying games is that there are different reasons
Speaker 3: people play games, and not all games are just about winning.
Speaker 3: I think one reason that games like this, if you're
Speaker 3: going to study them in terms of trying to find
Speaker 3: people's real motivation to win, you need things like cash prizes,
Speaker 3: because that makes the winning condition really meaningful. Yeah, because yeah,
Speaker 3: if there's not money involved, I'm just like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's fun to just play a weird game and lose
Speaker 3: and not know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I mean, where a game like high card draw, it's
Speaker 2: only going to be interesting if there's money involved.
Speaker 3: In missum exactly. But anyway, coming back, so, this study
Speaker 3: found in its experiments that familiarity with a game, even
Speaker 3: a game purely of chance, where familiarity would actually not
Speaker 3: make any difference at all, people still seem to behave
Speaker 3: as if they thought it made a difference. Another variable
Speaker 3: looked at in these experiments was the subject's level of involvement.
Speaker 3: You know, how involved or hands on are you with
Speaker 3: the process that decides the winner. So, in general, this
Speaker 3: original nineteen seventy five paper found that, yes, experiments do
Speaker 3: find that adding in elements that superficially remind people of
Speaker 3: skill based games increases the illusion of control. And the
Speaker 3: research did not stop there. There have been many, many
Speaker 3: studies on the illusion of control in the decade since
Speaker 3: this paper from nineteen seventy five. There have been sort
Speaker 3: of three major branches of investigatory methods to look into
Speaker 3: the evidence for the illusion of control and to understand
Speaker 3: what variables influence when and the extent to which it occurs.
Speaker 3: There's also been some criticism of the idea and maybe
Speaker 3: looking at different theoretical ways to make sense of the
Speaker 3: results of these kinds of experiments. And so I think
Speaker 3: maybe in the next episode we're going to talk a
Speaker 3: bit more about the research history, talk about what some
Speaker 3: variables are that determine when people experience an illusion of control,
Speaker 3: and look at criticisms of the concept.
Speaker 2: All right, so join us next time as we'll continue
Speaker 2: this look at the illusion of control. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: we'd love to hear from everyone out there, because you know,
Speaker 2: we've touched on some very basic ideas about human nature
Speaker 2: here and specific examples of gameplay and gambling and so forth,
Speaker 2: and so I know you're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 2: thoughts and we'd love to hear from you, so write in.
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