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Why People Try to Actively Change Unchangeable Situations: The Role of Anticipated Affect

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Abstract

Past research revealed that people were prone to persist with losing courses of action. However, in these studies, it was unclear in advance whether discontinuation of the course of action was not too early. The present research showed that participants tried to actively change a troubling situation (primary control) even if they were aware that the situation was not amenable to change. It was further examined why people use primary control in unchangeable situations. It was hypothesized and found that unchangeable (relative to changeable) situations give rise to extreme anticipated affect, which in turn is associated with the use of primary control strategies. Thus, it appears that anticipated affects (partly) underlie people’s tendency to cling to losing courses of action.

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Notes

  1. The concept of primary and secondary control is similar to the coping strategies advocated by Folkman and Lazarus (1980): problem-focused coping (a person undertakes an action to eliminate the causes of the stressor or to change the situation); and emotion-focused coping (a person tries to reduce or to eliminate the emotional stress of a loaded situation). In the following, the terms primary and secondary control are used.

  2. It should be noted that Atkinson’s model would predict that a zero expectancy of success multiplied by even high values of success always results in a zero incentive. However, even when participants themselves labeled a troublesome situation as unchangeable (the present Studies 1 and 2) or when they explicitly learned that they could not repeat an exam (the present Pilot Study), they still believed they could do something to change the situation. Thus, there is reason to assume that people almost never perceive a zero expectancy of success.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Tobias Greitemeyer

  2. Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

    Susanne Lebek & Dieter Frey

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Eva Traut-Mattausch

Authors
  1. Tobias Greitemeyer
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  2. Susanne Lebek
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  3. Dieter Frey
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  4. Eva Traut-Mattausch
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Correspondence to Tobias Greitemeyer.

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Greitemeyer, T., Lebek, S., Frey, D. et al. Why People Try to Actively Change Unchangeable Situations: The Role of Anticipated Affect. Curr Psychol 30, 284–298 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-011-9113-2

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