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As soon as you enter a lift, you will have felt the need to compulsively press the door lock button. Have you ever wondered why this happens?

The common perception is that by pressing the button, the doors will close sooner. But in most cases, the control is disabled for safety reasons.

Like the buttons at crossroads that turn green at pedestrian traffic lights beforehand: they don’t work. Buttons designed not to work, but to reassure the user, deluding us into thinking that they serve a purpose.

Illusion of control

In jargon, they are called placebo buttons: you do something expecting a result and, if the result comes, you continue to do that thing. Only there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the thing and the result.

Placebo buttons are not placed there by cruel technicians. They only have a psychological function that has to do with the theory of the illusion of control, proposed in the 1970s by Harvard professor Ellen Langer. Langer noticed that the other players had become overly nervous when she got the order of the cards wrong in a poker game. She tried to explain to them that, in practice, their chances of winning or losing were identical. But he also realised that, by upsetting the distribution order, he had taken away their illusion of control over an uncontrollable situation (the randomness of the cards received).

Hence the expression illusion of control to demonstrate the tendency of human beings to believe that they have control, or at least some influence, over events over which they have no power.

Another example is gamblers, who believe they have an ability, a kind of magical power, that allows them to be more successful than others. In an experiment, Langer showed that when rolling the dice, players tend to apply more force when they want high numbers, less for low numbers. Obviously this does not alter the odds in any way, but players like to think it does.

Langer defined the illusion of control as “the expectation that the odds of one’s personal success are higher than the objective odds”. And although “many people claim to be aware of the influence of chance, they unconsciously behave as if they had control over random events”.

Steve Jobs

The illusion of control quietly applies to everyday life, and we are all victims of it, even Steve Jobs. As Don A. Moore, Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour, tells us, when the founder of Apple was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, as he was used to doing in the company, he believed he could control his illness himself. He said no to emergency surgery and chemotherapy, to ‘cure’ himself with acupuncture, natural remedies and diet. Nine months later he agreed to undergo surgery, but by then the cancer had spread irreparably: although doctors removed his gall bladder, stomach, bile duct and small intestine, they could not cure him.
“Overestimating our ability to control it can lead us to make tragic and costly mistakes,’ Moore comments, ‘such as refusing medical treatment because we have the false hope that, for example, cancer can be cured by laughter or positive thoughts.

Positive illusions

In psychology, the illusion of control is described as a ‘positive illusion’. Positive illusions,’ Makridakis and Moleskis explain in a study, ‘are associated with unrealistic optimism about the future and overestimation of one’s abilities. They are very common in everyday life and are considered essential for maintaining a healthy mental state, although there is no unanimous agreement among scholars on this.

An example is what is known as ‘better than average‘. Demonstrated by Brown in 2011, this illusion leads us to think that we are a little better than other people in certain areas: driving, studying, working, and so on. This and other illusions would lead us to be more hopeful in the face of difficulty and uncertainty, thus managing to overcome the toughest obstacles and achieve challenging goals.
While it is dangerous to give too much credence to these illusions, it can also be dangerous to do the opposite. “Is it wise, then, for us to think that we have no control over our health or our choices? – asks Moore – This can lead to the opposite mistake: underestimating what we can control. It’s easy to see how many opportunities we miss because we think this way. Many people refuse to ‘control’ the situations they can ‘control’.
So ‘controlling’ what we can ‘control’ is the best antidote to resignation, helplessness and lack of self-confidence. Ideally, we should find the right balance between delusion and resignation.

Laura Mondino

Sources:

Langer E.J. (1975). The illusion of control, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 311–328

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/perfectly-confident/201807/illusions-control

Makridakis S., Moleskis A., The costs and benefits of positive illusions, Front Psychol, 2015; 6: 859.Brown J.D., Understanding the Better Than Average Effect: Motives (Still) Matter, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011