Illusion of control for self and others in depressed and nondepressed college students.

Abstract

Recently, it has been discovered that depressed people are less likely than nondepressed people to succumb to an "illusion of control" and judge that their actions influence outcomes that are objectively uncontrollable. This experiment examined the relationship between depression and susceptibility to the illusion of control for oneself and for others. Depressed and nondepressed college students were asked to judge either how much control they themselves had or how much control a male or female confederate had over a noncontingent, but positive, outcome. Replicating past findings on depression and judgments of control, depressed subjects judged relatively accurately that they exerted little control over the experimental outcome, whereas nondepressed subjects overestimated their personal control. Subjects' judgments of the confederates' control were a function of the subject's mood state and sex as well as of the confederate's sex. With one exception (depressed males in the male other condition), depressed subjects tended to overestimate the confederate's (male or female) control over the noncontingent outcome. Nondepressed females also judged that the confederate (male or female) exerted a high degree of control, thus succumbing to the illusion of control both for themselves and others. Nondepressed males, on the other hand, tended to judge more accurately that the confederate (particularly the female confederate) exerted little control and thus, succumbed to the illusion of control for themselves but not for others. These findings imply that an adequate understanding of depressive and nondepressive cognition requires an interpersonal as well as an intrapsychic perspective.

Self-Referent Versus Other-Referent Information Processing in Dysphoric, Clinically Depressed, and Remitted Depressed Subjects

“…In a more recent study, Bargh and Tota (1988) found that negative constructs were more accessible for dysphoric than for nondysphoric subjects only during the processing of self-referential information. Such findings are consistent with the results of other studies in suggesting that processing biases in depression are restricted to self-referent information and involve inhibited processing of positive information and/or facilitated processing of negative information (Greenberg & Alloy, 1989;Martin, Abramson, & Alloy, 1984;Pietromonaco & Markus, 1985;Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987;Sweeney, Shaeffer, & Colin, 1982). In contrast, nondysphoric subjects have been characterized as possessing a positive cognitive set or orientation to the self that inhibits the processing of negative information related to the self (see Taylor & Brown, 1988).…”

Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence

“…In a seminal study, Alloy and Abramson (1979) found that depressed individuals had more accurate perceptions of the contingency between their behavior and some environmental outcome than did nondepressed individuals who tended to overestimate this contingency when the outcome was desirable and underestimate it when the outcome was undesirable. Seemingly more objective perceptions among depressed individuals have been observed in several other studies (e.g., Alloy & Ahrens, 1987;Gotlib, McLachlan, & Katz, 1988;Keller, Lipkus, & Rimer, 2002;Lewinsohn, Mischel, Chaplin, & Barton, 1980;Martin, Abramson, & Alloy, 1984;see Dobson & Franche, 1989, for a review). For example, compared to nondepressive individuals, depressive individuals have been found to attend more evenly to positive, neutral, and negative words (Gotlib, McLachlan, & Katz, 1988) and revise their estimates of health risks more accurately after receiving medical feedback (Keller, Lipkus, & Rimer, 2002).…”

Effects of deliberative and implemental mind-sets on illusion of control.

“…Whenever conditions were such that it was made difficult for subjects to obligate themselves to the goal of achieving target light onset, subjects did not show evidence of an illusion of control. For example, Martin, Abramson, and Alloy (1984) found that when nondepressed subjects assessed the control another person exerted over frequent but noncontingent outcomes, they were likely to judge correctly that the other person did not exert much control. Because subjects were requested to focus on the performance of others, a personal concern with goal achievement should have been absent.…”