Illusion of Control in Internet Users and College Students

When people try to obtain a desired event and this outcome occurs independently of their behavior, they often think that they are controlling its occurrence. This is known as the illusion of control, and it is the basis for most superstitions and pseudosciences. However, most experiments demonstrating this effect had been conducted many years ago and almost always in the controlled environment of the psychology laboratory and with psychology students as subjects. Here, we explore the generality of this effect and show that it is still today a robust phenomenon that can be observed even in the context of a very simple computer program that users try to control (and believe that they are controlling) over the Internet. Understanding how robust and general this effect is, is a first step towards eradicating irrational and pseudoscientific thinking.