Proximity of Self As A Prerequisite for Illusion of Control

The illusion of control is a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their ability to influence the outcome of chance events (e.g., Langer, 1975). In this study, we showed that the decision maker's self construct to the event (proximity of self) is a prerequisite that must be met before the illusion can manifest, to be then explained by one or more of these factors. Participants in Experiment 1 who viewed their completion of a coin toss task on a monitor were less likely to show an illusion of control than participants who gave their responses to the experimenter directly. Experiment 2 extended this finding to another cognitive bias, the framing effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). We discuss the findings within the framework of explanations offered for illusion of control and suggest that a prerequisite of proximity may generalize to other biases, as well.