Skip to main content

Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Landau, MJ; Kay, AC; Whitson, JA
Published in: Psychological bulletin
May 2015

People are motivated to perceive themselves as having control over their lives. Consequently, they respond to events and cognitions that reduce control with compensatory strategies for restoring perceived control to baseline levels. Prior theory and research have documented 3 such strategies: bolstering personal agency, affiliating with external systems perceived to be acting on the self's behalf, and affirming clear contingencies between actions and outcomes within the context of reduced control (here termed specific structure). We propose a 4th strategy: affirming nonspecific structure, or seeking out and preferring simple, clear, and consistent interpretations of the social and physical environments. Formulating this claim suggests that people will respond to reduced control by affirming structured interpretations that are unrelated to the control-reducing condition, and even those that entail otherwise adverse outcomes (e.g., pessimistic health prospects). Section 1 lays the conceptual foundation for our review, situating the proposed phenomenon in the literatures on control motivation and threat-compensation mechanisms. Section 2 reviews studies that have demonstrated that trait and state variations in perceived control predict a wide range of epistemic structuring tendencies, including pattern recognition and causal reasoning. We posit that these tendencies reflect a common desire for a structured understanding of one's environment. Accordingly, a new meta-analysis spanning the reviewed studies (k = 55) revealed that control reduction predicts nonspecific structure affirmation with a moderate effect size (r = .25). Section 3 reviews research on individual differences and situational moderators of this effect. The discussion addresses the interplay of compensatory control strategies and practical implications.

Duke Scholars

Altmetric Attention Stats
Dimensions Citation Stats

Published In

Psychological bulletin

DOI

EISSN

1939-1455

ISSN

0033-2909

Publication Date

May 2015

Volume

141

Issue

3

Start / End Page

694 / 722

Related Subject Headings

  • Social Psychology
  • Meta-Analysis as Topic
  • Humans
  • Defense Mechanisms
  • 52 Psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology
  • 1505 Marketing
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
NLM
Landau, M. J., Kay, A. C., & Whitson, J. A. (2015). Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological Bulletin, 141(3), 694–722. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038703
Landau, Mark J., Aaron C. Kay, and Jennifer A. Whitson. “Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world.Psychological Bulletin 141, no. 3 (May 2015): 694–722. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038703.
Landau MJ, Kay AC, Whitson JA. Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological bulletin. 2015 May;141(3):694–722.
Landau, Mark J., et al. “Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world.Psychological Bulletin, vol. 141, no. 3, May 2015, pp. 694–722. Epmc, doi:10.1037/a0038703.
Landau MJ, Kay AC, Whitson JA. Compensatory control and the appeal of a structured world. Psychological bulletin. 2015 May;141(3):694–722.

Published In

Psychological bulletin

DOI

EISSN

1939-1455

ISSN

0033-2909

Publication Date

May 2015

Volume

141

Issue

3

Start / End Page

694 / 722

Related Subject Headings

  • Social Psychology
  • Meta-Analysis as Topic
  • Humans
  • Defense Mechanisms
  • 52 Psychology
  • 1702 Cognitive Sciences
  • 1701 Psychology
  • 1505 Marketing