Abstract
Individuals interpret themselves as causal agents when executing an action to achieve an outcome, even when action and outcome are independent. How can illusion of control be managed? Once established, does it decay? This study aimed to analyze the effects of valence, probability of the outcome [p(O)] and probability of the actions performed by the participant [p(A)], on the magnitude of judgments of control and corresponding associative measures (including Rescorla–Wagner’s, Probabilistic Contrast, and Cheng’s Power Probabilistic Contrast models). A traffic light was presented on a computer screen to 81 participants who tried to control the green or red lights by pressing the spacebar, after instructions describing a productive or a preventive scenario. There were 4 blocks of 50 trials under all of 4 different p(O)s in random order (0.10, 0.30, 0.70, and 0.90). Judgments were assessed in a bidimensional scale. The 2 × 4 × 4 mixed experimental design was analyzed through General Linear Models, including factor group (between-subject valence), and block and p(O) (within subjects). There was a small effect of group and a large and direct effect of p(O) on judgments. Illusion was reported by 66% of the sample and was positive in the productive group. The oscillation of p(O) produced stronger illusions; decreasing p(O)s produced nil or negative illusions. Only Rescorla–Wagner’s could model causality properly. The reasons why p(A) and the other models could not generate significant results are discussed. The results help to comprehend the importance of keeping moderate illusions in productive and preventive scenarios.
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Notes
This situation does not make sense in many countries today. Despite legislation, in Brazil, it is still common for pedestrians not to have a preference between red and green lights. Pedestrians and vehicles often continue during the red light.
In a pre-analysis made immediately after the 18th participant’s session, a systematic sampling error was detected: Block 1 had unbalanced probabilities, with few cases of p(O) = 0.10 and 0.70 in the productive sample and few cases of p(O) = 0.30 and 0.90 in the preventive sample. The computer script was corrected, including compensation of the proportions. Unfortunately, after some days the script containing the error was put back into use by mistake. However, the chosen statistical models for the analysis were robust to unbalanced groups and were also calculated with the numeric probabilities recoded to the categorical values Low p(O), corresponding to p(O) = 0.10 and 0.30, and High p(O), corresponding to p(O) = 0.70 and 0.90, the conclusions were the same.
As participants used a mouse to click on a graphical scale without numerical labels, values from − 5 to 5 were counted as zero.
Schultz (1998) argued that dopamine neurons show activation–depression responses after liquid and food (unconditioned stimuli) reward information and conditioned reward-predicting stimuli, as well as new and salient ones, and consequently are involved in learning behavior. These neurons fail to discriminate between rewards, and emit alerting messages in situations where presence or absence of a reward is surprising: event predictability is necessary for rewarding responses. Events that are better than predicted activate dopamine neurons, events as good as predicted do not influence them, and events worse than predicted depress the neurons. So, dopamine systems are dependent on unpredictable events, and are related to reinforcement learning theories as they signalize prediction errors (both for better and for worse) through which learning occurs. Fully acquired behaviors are predictable and related events do not activate dopamine neurons.
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This study was financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001, grant number 1,364,428. The content is associated with and the published results are part of the doctoral thesis of the first author, Behavioral and psychophysiological measures on illusion of control in productive and preventive scenarios and in the context of safety risks in Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul and in Programa de Doctorado em Psicología de Universidad de Granada. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The study has been approved by the UFRGS Instituto de Psicologia Research Ethics Committee and has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Any original materials used to conduct the research (including all primary data) will be made available to the journal and other researchers for purposes of replicating the procedure or reproducing the results; they can be obtained from the first author upon reasonable request (via email to: reinaldoags@gmail.com). The authors would like to thank Fernando Blanco and Helena Matute, who kindly provided the original E-Prime light bulb task script to be adapted for the current experiment; and Adriane Ribeiro Teixeira and Pricila Sleifer, from Laboratório de Audiologia do Curso de Fonoaudiologia da UFRGS, where data were collected.
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Simões, R.A.G., Benvenuti, M.F.L., Rodrigues, A.d.S. et al. Persistence of repeated self-reported illusion of control as a product of action and outcome association in productive and preventive scenarios. Psychological Research 84, 1184–1197 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01147-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01147-9