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control
You overestimate your control over random outcomes.
When participants in a 1975 study were asked to pick a card, they were more confident of winning if they picked it themselves.
The illusion of agency makes you feel that your involvement dictates the outcome of chance events. This is why you feel more luck when you roll dice yourself than when someone else rolls them for you.
Your brain confuses participation with causation.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Langer, 1975, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- What the check found
- The claim refers to Ellen Langer's seminal 1975 paper, 'The Illusion of Control,' which is a foundational study in the field and matches the described effect.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.