Abstract
Previous research has provided evidence that the need to attain appetitive outcomes positively affects the certainty of winning that outcome in purely chance-based games. Three experiments were conducted to test the notion that the need to avoid an aversive outcome affects winning confidence in the same fashion. In Experiment 1, participants were given the opportunity to avoid having to give an introductory remark (low need) or an impromptu speech (high need) to a group of peers by winning a chance-based card-drawing game. As predicted, confidence-in-winning ratings were found to be a positive function of outcome need. In Experiment 2, participants faced a similar card-drawing procedure but this time could avoid ostensibly having their arms submersed in either room temperature water (low need) or cold water (high need) need. Again as expected, results showed that participants in the high need condition not only displayed greater winning confidence but also believed more skill was involved in playing the purely chance-based game. In Experiment 3, the methodology of Experiment 1 was replicated incorporating a skill measure. The results of this experiment mirrored those of Experiment 2. Results of these investigations are discussed in terms of control theory.
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Notes
The notion that need may influence illusory perceptions can be traced back to the classic work of Bruner and Goodman (1947) which showed that financially poorer children, relative to their wealthier counterparts, generally overestimated the size of various coins.
Pretesting indicated that males were generally insensitive to the manipulation to be used in this experiment. That is, early data showed that male ratings of outcome unpleasantness tended to be both low and uniform regardless of the level of the independent variable. Female ratings of unpleasantness, however, showed excellent variability across conditions. Given this, only females were used in the study.
Also in line with prior studies on illusory control, this scale was identified as measuring “skill.” It should be noted, however, that this label is quite arbitrary considering the bipolar nature of the measure. That is, the scale could just as easily have been labeled a measure of “luck.”
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Benjamin Vold and Elizabeth Goforth in ably conducting Experiment 2.
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Biner, P.M., Johnston, B.C., Summers, A.D. et al. Illusory control as a function of the motivation to avoid randomly determined aversive outcomes. Motiv Emot 33, 32–41 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9111-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-008-9111-3