Control is an important aspect of our psychological
well-being. Many of the most frustrating
situations in life involve cases where events are happening around you, and you
have no say in how they turn out.
Patients suffering from significant illnesses must come to grips with
the lack of control they have over their disease. Low-level employees in a business may be
frustrated by their inability to control their work day.
An interesting paper in the August, 2011 issue of Psychological Science by Ena Inesi,
Simona Botti, David Dubois, Derek Rucker, and Adam Galinsky examines two
sources of control in our lives: choice
and power. They suggest that the motive
for control is so important in our lives that choice and power can substitute
for each other.
Their logic is straightforward. If the goal that is important to people is
control, then in situations in which people do not have power, they should seek
situations that give them more choices.
In situations in which people have limited choices, they should seek
power.
The authors test this possibility in a series of studies.
In one study, participants read about being the boss or
being an employee and had to imagine how they would feel and what they would do
in this role. This task creates a
reliable difference between people in how much power they perceive that they
have.
Then, participants were told about two stores selling
eyeglasses. One store was close by, and
had a choice of 3 pairs of glasses. The
other store was further away, and had a choice of 15 pairs of glasses. When people were asked how much further they
would be willing to drive to get the larger assortment, people who were made to
feel that they had low power were willing to drive 10 miles on average to get
to the store. People who were made to
feel that they had high power were willing to drive only about 6 miles.
Another study demonstrated the opposite effect. In this case, people first read a scenario in
which they had to make a choice about a consumer product. The choice involved either 3 options or 15
options. In this case, the smaller set
made people feel like they had less control over their choice than the larger
set.
Next people evaluated the features of jobs they might take
on. Some characteristics were those associated with being the boss. Others were associated with job enjoyment,
but were not related to power. People’s
ratings of the features related to job enjoyment were not affected by which
choice set they encountered. But, people
rated the features associated with being the boss as more attractive after
making a choice from a small set than after making a choice from a large set.
Finally, a third set of studies manipulated both people’s
feeling of the degree of choice they had as well as the amount of power they
had. Of importance, people acted
similarly when they had either high power or lots of choice as they did when
they had both high power and lots of choice.
As long as people felt that they had control in some way, that was
enough.
Putting all of this together, we all want some kind of
control in our lives. When our control
in one area is restricted, we look for another outlet. That means that it is worth spending some
time thinking about the areas of your life in which you can exert some
control. Perhaps you have a creative
outlet in which you feel that you have mastery.
One reason why these kinds of creative outlets are therapeutic is that
they provide you with an arena in which you have control that you can use as a
refuge when other elements of your life feel out of your control.
