Individual Differences and Illusion of Control Report

This report investigates the relationship between individual differences and the illusion of control, drawing on a study involving two experiments. The first experiment examined dice-throwing behavior and tested hypotheses related to the Drake Belief scale and anticipation of outcomes. The second experiment involved a computer software task, comparing naturalistic and analytical instruction conditions to assess perceived control and strategy use. The study involved 365 participants, and the results, analyzed using statistical methods, revealed that most of the hypotheses were invalidated. The discussion highlights the limitations of the study, such as the homogenous sample population and suggests directions for future research, including exploring age-related differences and cognitive abilities and their impact on the illusion of control.

Running head: LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 1
Learning and Behavior
Name:
Institution:

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 2
Individual Differences and Illusion of Control
INTRODUCTION
When people behave in a manner likely to suggest that they have control over certain actions or
situations which are really determined by probability or chance, this is called illusion of control
(Langer, 1975). They, under this illusion, feel that they have absolute control over the outcome
of the events that they undertake. Sometimes, when cues related to skills, such as choice,
practice, or competition are introduced to situations that are determined by chance, people
behave as if the outcomes of their actions in the situation were determined by skill (Goffman,
1967). For instance, when it comes to the rolling of a dice, or picking the numbers of lottery
tickets, people prefer to roll the dice themselves rather than having someone else do it for them.
When someone else does this for them, they will blame the other person for any negative
outcomes associated with the rolling of the dice or the picking of the lottery ticket.
Many explanations have been fronted for why individuals feel that they are in control of events
that are otherwise by chance. Langer for example, says that choice, stimulus familiarity and
thinking time are critical components of skilled tasks and therefore they encourage people to
strategies in situations of chance. However, this cannot explain how all outcomes of chance
situations turn out.
Individual differences describe the sum of all the characteristics that make a person unique.
Nature has one principle of dissimilarity i.e. for example, in human beings, no two human beings
are similar, including twins. Differences are in physical aspects such as weight, height,
complexion of the skin, color of the hair etc., while psychological differences arise in
intelligence, interest, achievement, attitude, learning habits, scholastic aptitude, and skills.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 3
Differences are also manifested in how individuals work on or control their emotions of anger,
fear, love, pain and pleasure. All these contribute to differences between individuals.
Given these individual differences, and combined with illusion control, make for an interesting
study of how human differences relate to control illusion. One way to examine the issue of
control illusion has been through the idea of inspiration: people’s judgments and perceptions of
control are influenced by personal needs geared towards the sustenance of self –esteem; with the
need for control being key here. The sense of having an illusion of control, irrespective or
individual differences, has been directly linked to positive well-being. On the other hand, the
reverse perception of not being in control has been related to negative consequences, some of
which may be fatal such as depression and suicide.
Don’t need to describe what sort of tasks was undertaken. Just say that” in this experiment”
please describe procedure in method section not in introduction section.
In this study, 2 tasks were undertaken: one dice involved throwing the dice 30 times with the
aim of getting as many sixes as possible, while the other involved controlling or influencing the
trend line of a stock exchange. The following hypotheses were tested for the dice throwing
activity:
Hypothesis 1: There will be more throws made by those who believe that they will score higher
than by those who believe the contrary.
Hypothesis 2: there will be higher Drake Belief Scores for those participants who anticipate to
get sixes in subsequent throws of the dice.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 4
Hypothesis 3: there is a direct positive relationship between those who throw dices on their own
and the probability or anticipation to get more 6s in subsequent throws of the dice.
Hypothesis4: for each participant, there is a direct connection between the number of 6s obtained
during the trial and the number that can be made in future attempts.
Additionally, in the computer software task, some four more hypotheses were set to be tested and
these are:
Hypothesis 5: the participants who exercised the naturalistic condition considered the task more
controllable and they felt that they were in control more than those who received analytical
instructions and therefore seemed to be passive participants in the exercise.
Hypothesis 6: the participants in the naturalistic condition, being active participants in the
process, were more likely to press buttons than those receiving analytical instructions.
Hypothesis 7: The participants in the naturalistic condition, due to their active engagement in the
activity, are more likely than their counterparts in the analytical condition to report a strategy for
engaging in the activity.
Hypothesis 8: There is a strong connection between the Drake Scales and: the number of button
presses, the ratings of control and those who report having established a strategy.
The above hypotheses were all tested in this series of two experiments.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 5
METHOD
Participants
This study sampled a total of 365 participants, and these constituted 191 females and 172 males.
The sample was drawn from students who were not in the same class as the researcher.
Measures
The interval scientific measures were used, which are the most common and applicable to this
type of experiments. The interval scales were divided according to the various categories of data
to be measured.
Procedure
Instruction was given to all participants to perform the first experiment. In the second
experiment, they participated either in naturalistic mode or in analytical mode.
RESULTS
Testing the hypotheses
Hypothesis 1: There will be more throws made by those who believe that they will score higher
than by those who believe the contrary.
In contrast with Hypothesis 1, a negative connection was established between the Drake Scores
and number of thrown chosen, r(361)=-.10, p>.01. which showed that higher Drake Scores did
not necessarily translate to higher 6s scores. This hypothesis is therefore invalid.
Hypothesis 2: There will be higher Drake Scores for those respondents who anticipate to get
sixes in subsequent throws of the dice.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 6
No relationship was noticed between the Drake Scores and the participants anticipating to get 6s
in subsequent throws of the dice, r (356) = .022, p < .01, which shows that higher scores on the
Drake Belief were not related to higher 6s scores made”. Therefore, this hypothesis is invalid.
Hypothesis 3: There is a strong connection between those who throw dices on their own and
the probability or anticipation to get more 6s in subsequent throws of the dice.
For the third hypothesis, a negative association was found to exist between the participants’ dice
throws made on their own and the anticipation to get 6s, r (357) = .44, p > .01, which suggested
that more dice throws did not necessarily result in more 6s. Therefore this hypothesis is invalid.
Hypothesis 4: For each participant, there is a strong connection between the number of 6s
obtained at trial phase and those anticipated in the future.
For the fourth hypothesis, no connection was found to exist between the participants’ dice
throws made on their own and the anticipation to get 6s, r (356) = .51, p < .01, which suggested
that more dice throws did not result in more 6s. Therefore this hypothesis is invalid.
Hypothesis 5: The participants who exercised the naturalistic condition considered the task
more controllable and they felt that they were in control more than those who received
analytical instructions and therefore seemed to be passive participants in the exercise.
P>0.01
t(347.17)=1.85
Cohen’s d= 0.19, confidence interval (-0.32, 11.11)

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 7
The Cohen’s d implies that the illusion of control was insignificant in both the naturalistic group
and the analytical group. The hypothesis is therefore invalid.
Hypothesis 6: The participants in the naturalistic condition, being active participants in the
process, were more likely to press buttons than those receiving analytical instructions.
Here, P>.01 not statistically significant
t= M 1−M 2
√ SD12
N 1 + SD 22
N 2
t= 505.571−436.741
√ 566.5172
172 + 506.0582
174
t= 68.83
√1865.939+1471.808
t = 1.191
Cohen’s d = M1 – M2 / [SD1 + SD2/ 2].
= 505.517- 436.741/ [566.517+506.058/2]
= 68.83 / 536.289
= 0.128
Again, the small Cohen’s d implies that participants in the naturalistic group were not more
likely to press the buttons than those in the analytical group. The hypothesis is therefore invalid.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 8
Hypothesis 7: The participants in the naturalistic condition, due to their active engagement in
the activity, are more likely than their counterparts in the analytical condition to report a
strategy for engaging in the activity.
There was no significant association between Instructional condition and whether people chose
to use a strategy, χ2 (df = 1, N = 346) = 0.43, p > .01.
Cramer’s v =0.03,
This therefore shows that the above hypothesis is invalid.
Hypothesis 8: there is a strong link between the drake scales and: the number of button
presses, the ratings of control and those who report having established a strategy.
a. R(345)=-0.015, p>0.01( drake and presses)
b. R(350)=0.39,p<0.01( drake and controlling)
c. Sample t test ( controlling, strategy)
T (331.53) = 8.71,p<.01
Effect size = 0.92
Confidence interval ( 17. 52, 27, 74)
the above mathematical statement show that there is an insignificant relationship between the
three variables: Drake scales, number of button presses and control ratings of those who reported
as having established a strategy.
DISCUSSION

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 9
The major aim of this series of experiments was to establish the connection between individual
differences and the illusion of control. Literature indeed establishes that people are more inclined
to feel that they have control over purely probabilistic events, such as the outcome of the throw
of a dice, as was done in this experiment. Majority of the hypotheses that were employed in this
study have been invalidated, therefore it means that the experiments conducted in this study do
not hold for control illusion.
The study faced the limitation of using people of a specific age group; i.e. those who are in
college. It would have been interesting to conduct the study with a variety of participants of
different ages and who have different cognitive levels. Some participants also elected to
participate in one experiment and not the other, and this constituted a drawback on the study.
Additionally, this research was conducted on college students who may be of an almost similar
composition or level in terms of intelligence / cognitive ability, age, aggressiveness towards
chance games (Segers et al., 2018). Given that the research population is mostly composed of
young people at the peak of their physical, mental and explorative abilities, this may have
contributed to the positive values that were returned on the majority of the hypotheses.
Future studies can be carried out with a larger number of people, people of different ages so as to
establish the variation by age. It would also be interesting to conduct such a study on respondents
of the same age but who are out of school and out of college (they should naturally be of lower
cognitive ability; but such a test would check to see whether their level of aggression is as high
as their college counterparts). Findings from older, conservative people would also be interesting
to capture, given their ‘wisdom’ cultivated over many years of not wanting to burn their fingers

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 10
more after burning them the first time (i.e. they would fail to take all the 30 dice throws or future
dice throws).
References
Assen, E., Meijers, F., Zwaal, W., & Poell, F. (2019). Collective learning, teacher beliefs and
teaching behaviour in management and social-educational university
programmes. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 1-22.
Page, A., & Jones, M. (2018). Rethinking Teacher Education for Classroom Behaviour
Management: Investigation of an Alternative Model using an Online Professional
Experience in an Australian University. Australian Journal of Teacher
Education, 43(11), 84-104.
Segers, M., Mulder, H., Beausaert, S. A., Froehlich, E., Messmann, G., & Gerken, M. (2018).
Informal learning at work as a facilitator of employees’ innovative work behaviour.
In Informal Learning at Work (pp. 80-99). Routledge.

LEARNING AND BEHAVIOR 11
Zheng, Y., Wang, J., Doll, W., Deng, X., & Williams, M. (2018). The impact of organisational
support, technical support, and self-efficacy on faculty perceived benefits of using
learning management system. Behaviour & Information Technology, 37(4), 311-319.