{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,13]],"date-time":"2026-06-13T13:04:57Z","timestamp":1781355897747,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)","issue":"5898","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2008,10,3]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>We present six experiments that tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception, which we define as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli. Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions. Additionally, we demonstrated that increased pattern perception has a motivational basis by measuring the need for structure directly and showing that the causal link between lack of control and illusory pattern perception is reduced by affirming the self. Although these many disparate forms of pattern perception are typically discussed as separate phenomena, the current results suggest that there is a common motive underlying them.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1159845","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,10,2]],"date-time":"2008-10-02T17:14:26Z","timestamp":1222967666000},"page":"115-117","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":781,"title":["Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception"],"prefix":"10.1126","volume":"322","author":[{"given":"Jennifer A.","family":"Whitson","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Management, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA."},{"name":"Department of Management and Organizations, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Adam D.","family":"Galinsky","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Management, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA."},{"name":"Department of Management and Organizations, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA."}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"221","reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_1_2_2","unstructured":"H. H. Kelley Attribution in Social Interaction (General Learning Press Morristown NJ 1971)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/h0040934"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_4_2","unstructured":"R. deCharms Personal Causation (Academic Press New York 1969)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_5_2","first-page":"457","volume":"60","year":"1972","unstructured":"D. C. Glass, J. E. Singer, Am. Sci.60, 457 (1972).","journal-title":"Am. Sci."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.33.5.508"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_7_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"S. Cohen Behavior Health and Environmental Stress (Plenum Press New York 1986).","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4757-9380-2"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_8_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1467-6494.1973.tb00112.x"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_9_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0140-6736(98)10495-6"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_10_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/1467-8721.ep10836912"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_11_2","unstructured":"J. W. Brehm A Theory of Psychological Reactance (Academic Press New York 1966)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.40.1.31"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.46.1.44"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_14_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0146167283094010"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_15_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0146167292186001"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0033-2909.97.1.74"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_17_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.39.3.377"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/h0058484"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_19_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/00223980.1942.9917096"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_20_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1467-6494.1988.tb00901.x"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_21_2","unstructured":"D. Pipes Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (Free Press New York 1997)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_22_2","unstructured":"B. Malinowski R. Redfield Magic Science and Religion and Other Essays (Beacon Press Boston 1948)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_23_2","first-page":"856","volume":"48","year":"1977","unstructured":"P. Simonov, M. Frolov, V. Evtushenko, E. Sviridov, Aviat. Space Environ. Med.48, 856 (1977).","journal-title":"Aviat. Space Environ. Med."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_24_2","first-page":"39","volume":"9","year":"1971","unstructured":"G. Gmelch, Trans Action9, 39 (1971).","journal-title":"Trans Action"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_25_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/BF02249399"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_26_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/h0035588"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.37.1.39"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_28_2","unstructured":"A pretest experiment found that this manipulation did not affect self-esteem {lacking control condition ( M = 5.33 SD = 1.4) versus the baseline condition [ M = 5.15 SD = 0.90; t (26) = 0.38 P = 0.70]}."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_29_2","unstructured":"Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science Online."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_30_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.65.1.113"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_31_2","unstructured":"R. B. Ekstrom J. W. French H. H. Harman D. Dermen Manual for Kit of Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests (Educational Testing Service Princeton NJ 1976)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_32_2","unstructured":"The two raters independently coded each situation for \u201cHow much did the person experience or feel threat in the situation?\u201d using a 7-point scale with anchors 1 (very little) and 7 (very much). Because inter-rater reliability was acceptable (\u03b1 = .71) we averaged the coders' ratings."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_33_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.45.1.5"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_34_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.51.3.531"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_35_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1037\/0022-3514.77.1.111"},{"key":"e_1_3_1_36_2","unstructured":"Because the conspiracy and superstition scenarios used in the previous experiments were written from a first-person perspective it may be that illusory pattern perception in social domains only occurs when the self is affected by or implicated in the pattern. To test this possible boundary condition we altered the conspiracy scenarios used in experiment 6 to be from a third-person perspective (other-focused) and manipulated the lack of control by using the recall task from experiments 3 and 6 We submitted conspiratorial perceptions to a 2 (control: control lacking control) by 2 (scenario focus: self other) analysis of variance (ANOVA). The analyses revealed a main effect of lacking control ( F 1 82 = 9.96 P = 0.002) and no interaction between scenario focus and lacking control ( F 1 82 = 0.001 P = 0.98). Separate analyses showed that the effect of lacking control significantly increased the perception of conspiracies in both the other-focused scenarios [ M lack of control = 4.76 SD = 0.76; M control = 4.18 SD = 0.78; t (43) = 2.49 P = 0.02] and the self-focused scenarios [ M lack of control = 4.87 SD = 0.85; M control = 4.30 SD = 0.95; t (39) = 2.01 P = 0.05] demonstrating that illusory pattern perception increased regardless of whether the self was affected by the possible conspiracy."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_37_2","unstructured":"Focused contrasts are the preferred analysis with three levels of a single experimental factor when researchers have a hypothesis that one condition will be different from the other two conditions ( 37 ). For the interested reader we report the omnibus ANOVA testing the overall variance among the conditions: for snowy pictures F 1 47 = 2.49 P = .09; for conspiracy F 1 47 = 2.17 P = .13."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_38_2","unstructured":"R. Rosenthal R. L. Rosnov Essentials of Behavioral Research: Methods and Data Analysis (McGraw-Hill New York 3rd ed. 2008)."},{"key":"e_1_3_1_39_2","unstructured":"This work benefited from the generous financial support of the Dean's office of the Kellogg School of Management. We thank C. Appleton K. Dover-Taylor L. Howland and A. Marfia for research help. The research was based in part on the doctoral dissertation submitted by J.W. to Northwestern University and has benefited from the comments of the committee members W. Gardner V. Medvec and K. Murnighan. We also thank L. Egan Z. Kinias G. Ku K. Liljenquist L. Nordgren N. Sivanathan C. Wang and C. Zhong for their helpful comments."}],"container-title":["Science"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1126\/science.1159845","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,10]],"date-time":"2024-01-10T04:44:46Z","timestamp":1704861886000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.1159845"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2008,10,3]]},"references-count":38,"journal-issue":{"issue":"5898","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2008,10,3]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1126\/science.1159845"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1159845","relation":{"has-review":[{"id-type":"doi","id":"10.3410\/f.1124277.581430","asserted-by":"object"}]},"ISSN":["0036-8075","1095-9203"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0036-8075","type":"print"},{"value":"1095-9203","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2008,10,3]]}}}