Mind & behavior · 2021
If the chances are the same, does choosing for yourself make success feel more likely?
Usually not. Across 17 experiments involving 10,825 online and laboratory participants, choosing among options with the same actual chances rarely made people feel more likely to get the outcome they wanted. When it did, the researchers attributed this to some participants’ existing mistaken beliefs that the options differed, rather than to choice creating a new sense of control.
Details
Earlier research suggested that choosing for yourself could make a favorable outcome feel more likely even when it did not change the odds—for example, when selecting among lottery tickets with identical chances of winning. The researchers tested this idea in 17 experiments.
Overall, choice rarely increased people’s perceived chances of a favorable outcome unless it actually improved those chances. When choice did increase perceived chances without an actual improvement, the researchers found that it reflected some participants’ preexisting mistaken beliefs that the options were not truly identical.
The central finding is that choice itself did not seem to create an illusion of control. This is not a claim that choice never matters: choices that genuinely improved the chances of a favorable outcome were an important exception. The abstract does not provide individual experiment procedures or effect sizes, so it does not establish how large or consistent the effects were in particular settings.
What do you think?
Good conversations begin with curiosity.
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