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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 23, 2025

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

Does Choice Cause an Illusion of Control?

Joowon Klusowski¹, Deborah A Small¹, Joseph P Simmons²

¹Department of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Psychological Science

|January 5, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Choice rarely creates an illusion of control, contrary to prior beliefs. People do not feel more likely to achieve desired outcomes simply by having a choice between identical options.

Keywords:

choice illusion of control open data open materials preregistered

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Area of Science:

Decision-making psychology
Behavioral economics
Cognitive biases

Background:

Prior research indicated choice fosters an illusion of control, enhancing perceived likelihood of favorable outcomes even with identical options.
This effect was accepted as evidence for choice's welfare impact, irrespective of actual control conferred.

Purpose of the Study:

To empirically test if choice genuinely induces an illusion of control across diverse experimental settings.
To investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying the perceived link between choice and outcome control.

Main Methods:

Conducted 17 experiments involving 10,825 participants in online and laboratory settings.
Participants made choices between functionally identical options with identical probabilities of success.
Measured participants' perceived likelihood of achieving preferable outcomes post-choice.

Main Results:

Choice did not significantly increase the perceived likelihood of favorable outcomes when options were truly identical.
When perceived control increased, it was linked to participants' pre-existing beliefs that options differed, not to choice itself.
The illusion of control attributed to choice was largely unsubstantiated by the experimental data.

Conclusions:

The study challenges the established notion that choice inherently creates an illusion of control.
The findings suggest that perceived control stems from beliefs about option differentiation rather than the act of choosing itself.
Choice's welfare effects may not be mediated by an illusion of control as previously assumed.