Who Do I (Not) Ask to Play my Lottery? Effects of Perceived Positive and Negative Agency, Communion and Luck on the Illusion of Control by Proxy

Mateusz Polak; Katarzyna Stasiuk; Karolina Chodzyńska

doi:10.1007/s10899-023-10228-9

Who Do I (Not) Ask to Play my Lottery? Effects of Perceived Positive and Negative Agency, Communion and Luck on the Illusion of Control by Proxy

J Gambl Stud. 2023 Jun 20. doi: 10.1007/s10899-023-10228-9. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Mateusz Polak¹, Katarzyna Stasiuk², Karolina Chodzyńska¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, ul. Łojasiewicza 4, Krakow, 30-348, Poland.
² Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University, ul. Łojasiewicza 4, Krakow, 30-348, Poland. katarzyna.stasiuk@uj.edu.pl.

PMID: 37338740
DOI: 10.1007/s10899-023-10228-9

Abstract

The paper investigates the illusion of control by proxy in games of chance - an attempt to exert control by assigning it to others who are perceived as more capable, communable or luckier. Following up on research by Wohl & Enzle, who showed participants' preference to ask lucky others to play a lottery instead of doing it themselves, we included proxies with positive and negative qualities in the domains of agency and communion, as well good and bad luck. In three experiments (total N = 249) we tested participants' choices between these proxies and a random number generator in a task consisting of obtaining lottery numbers. We obtained consistent preventative illusions of control (i.e. avoidance of proxies with strictly negative qualities, as well as proxies with positive communion but negative agency), however we observed indifference between proxies with positive qualities and random number generators.

Keywords: Agency; Communion; Illusion of control; Lottery; Luck.