Beyond mediation: the direct effect of expectations on the illusion of control

How do our prior beliefs influence our judgments (if at all)? This study uses an expectation-inducing task to assess the influence of prior expectations on efficacy judgments in an illusion of control task. The study was conducted online with 150 psychology undergraduate students. The experiment used a between-subjects design. Participants were assigned to one of two groups, with each group being exposed to either a low or high level of expected efficacy. Following the expectation-inducing task, participants performed a standard associative learning task often used to assess the illusion of control. Interestingly, the effect of group assignments influenced the contingency judgments provided by the participants in the standard task both directly and indirectly through impact on their behavior. Although the indirect effect had been reported in previous illusion of control research, the direct effect of expectations in contingency judgments using casual mediation assessments is a novel result.