We may not be aware of this, but the lack of control can often fuel our incoherent perception of things, and make us perceive illusory aspects around us, such as strange noises or images, as well as develop conspiracy beliefs and superstitions. According to study appeared in the online journal Science, and signed by Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas, Austin, and Adam Galinsky at the Northern University, Evanston, there is a direct connection between the lack of control and the illusory pattern perception.

The mechanism at the base of people’s misperceptions resides in the efforts to reach for a solid, logical structure when things get chaotic, which often leads them into making connections that are not real. As a proof of that, the authors of the study took into consideration a total of six experiments which suggested that as people get more insecure, they are more likely to see images that do not exist, develop superstitions or perceive conspiracies.

Co-author Adam Galinsky pointed out that as people start losing control over their lives, they become inclined to regaining control through “mental gymnastics.” This is especially important because people start feeling threatened when they start losing control, he explained, so they try to regain the feeling of control. The effects of that are either misperceptions that can be bad or lead one astray, or common ones that are most likely to satisfy a deep, enduring psychological need, Galinsky pointed out.

People have a genuine need for control, psychologists say, and they want to be able to minimize uncertainty and predict the courses of action, for their benefit, co-author Jennifer Whitson explained. In order to get to the bottom of the mechanism behind people’s need to gain back control, researchers analyzed a theory according to which people believe there are unseen mechanisms working in secrecy in situations where they lack control.

The subjects of the experiment were asked to look at images depicting snowy patterns, half of which only depicted dots, while the other half also contained some extra images slightly visible in the background.  All subjects correctly identified almost all hidden images, however the people who had felt a loss of control from a previous experiment also identified hidden images in 43 percent of the pictures that did not contain any.

“People see false patterns in all types of data, imagining trends in stock markets, seeing faces in static, and detecting conspiracies between acquaintances,” Whitson explained. “This suggests that lacking control leads to a visceral need for order – even imaginary order.”

Another interesting reaction to the loss of control is gaining superstitions, and in order to back that affirmation and to better understand superstitions, the authors of the study conducted an experiment on a group of subjects, asking them to write about situations they had experienced, and then read short stories with significant outcomes.

Those subjects whose past experience involved the loss of control expressed greater belief in superstition, and made connections between these superstitions and the outcome of the stories they had read. They also seemed more concerned about what might happen in the future if they did not repeat the superstitious rituals accordingly.

Furthermore, the researchers also noted that while restoring the sense of control, people regain their normal behavior and perceptions. In order to establish that, they asked participants in the study to rate the values in which they believed the most, such as aesthetic beauty or scientific theory, and then write about situations when they felt out of control. Afterwards, half of them were asked to elaborate on the values they rated the lowest, and half of them on the values they rated as most important.

The individuals who regained their feeling of control by focusing on the values that are most important to them acted as normal as people who never lost their self-control, while the rest of the participants focusing on low esteem values were more likely to perceive images that did not exist or identify conspiracies in the most normal of situations.

“It’s exciting,” Galinsky said, “restoring people’s sense of control normalized their perceptions and behavior.”  People’s reaction when losing control however is very natural, as they try to re-establish the lost equilibrium. When chaos begins to reside in our lives, we become eager to push it away; however, sometimes the desire grows so big that it often leads us to seeing or believing things that are not real.