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The illusion of external agency
D T Gilbert1, R P Brown, E C Pinel
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. dtg@wjh.harvard.edu
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|November 18, 2000
Summary
People often fail to recognize their ability to create satisfaction. This can lead them to attribute their positive feelings to external agents, potentially influencing beliefs about supernatural beings.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Individuals often underestimate their capacity for generating satisfaction with future outcomes.
- Self-generated satisfaction may be misattributed to external agents.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether people recognize their own role in generating satisfaction.
- To explore if a failure to recognize self-generated satisfaction leads to attributing it to external agents.
Main Methods:
- Three laboratory experiments were conducted.
- Participants generated satisfaction with various outcomes.
- Attribution of satisfaction to external vs. internal sources was measured.
Main Results:
- Participants who generated satisfaction were more likely to attribute it to external influences.
- Specific examples include attributions of partner choice, musical preference insight, and gift intentions to external agents.
- This suggests a failure to recognize self-generated satisfaction.
Conclusions:
- Belief in benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent external agents may stem partly from an inability to recognize self-generated satisfaction.
- Understanding this cognitive bias can inform research on belief formation and attribution processes.
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