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.