[Lee Yongbeom's Psychology of Happiness] The Happy Illusion of "It's in My Hands"

<28>The Belief in Controlling Life

Iyongbeom Novelist

Everyone dreams of becoming a superhero. How wonderful would it be to swing a red cape, punish villains, and save humanity in crisis? However, superheroes exist only in movies and comics. Ordinary people struggle not only with transcendent powers but even with managing daily life. Yet one reason we live with hope is due to the ‘Illusion of Control,’ the tendency to overestimate our own influence.

If Only Things Went Our Way

According to Kant, happiness is ‘a state in which one can do everything according to one’s own will in one’s existence.’ Of course, we cannot experience that state. We cannot make our favorite baseball team win a game, nor can we manipulate the stock market as we wish. Only God can control everything at will. Those who cannot control anything feel powerless. To escape this helplessness, people fall into the illusion that they can change even things decided by luck. When playing card games, they believe that if they shuffle the cards themselves, they will get better hands, and they trust that rolling the dice themselves will yield higher numbers. They also prefer lottery tickets where they write the numbers themselves over those with printed winning numbers.

The illusion of control provides us comfort. Americans believe they are safer when carrying guns, but more police officers die by suicide with their own guns than in shootouts with criminals. They fear airplane crashes more than car accidents, even though the latter are far more likely to be fatal. The illusion that holding the steering wheel reduces accident risk stems from fear of uncontrollable situations.

Feeling control brings pleasure. People enjoy controlling avatars in games and invest generously to enhance their avatars’ combat power. Conversely, losing control removes pleasure. Recorded soccer matches are boring because cheering hard does not affect the outcome. Even newborn babies experience a sense of control. Professor Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University connected a string to the hand of a baby about four months old so that music played whenever the baby moved its hand. Then she released the string and played music at regular intervals. The baby realized it could not control the music and burst into tears. Even pleasant music is just noise if you cannot listen to it when you want.

Between Control and Helplessness

Martin Seligman's Dog Experiment.

Animals feel extreme anxiety when they lose control. Imagine an animal that cannot move freely. This signals danger. The same applies to humans. People who believe they can do nothing are unhappy. Therefore, people try to escape unhappiness by overestimating their control. In 1979, researchers Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson at Northwestern University divided students into depressed and happy groups through pre-tests and gave them a button to turn on a green traffic light. One group received a real button, and the other a fake button that did not control the light, which blinked automatically. About 35% of the happy students mistakenly believed they controlled the situation even when they did not.

The belief that one can control the external world significantly affects happiness. According to psychologists’ research, people who believe they have control have strong achievement motivation, are well motivated, experience less anxiety, and cope better with difficulties. Conversely, believing one cannot control the external world leads to helplessness. Psychologist Martin Seligman called this ‘learned helplessness.’ He demonstrated how helplessness becomes habitual through a series of animal experiments.

He divided dogs into three groups: the first was trained to avoid electric shocks, the second was subjected to shocks without protection, and the third had no conditions applied. Later, all three groups were placed in an experimental box and given electric shocks. The dogs could avoid shocks by jumping over a partition. The first group avoided shocks as trained, and the third group learned to escape on their own. However, the second group did not even try to escape or find a solution, enduring pain until mercy was shown. Human experiments yielded similar results. People who adapted to situations without a switch to turn off noise did not try to press the switch even when it was available. Resignation had become habitual.

A sense of control also affects health. Psychologists Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin divided 26 elderly residents of a nursing home into two groups. One group received all services under staff control, while the other was given choices. The group with choices could freely select meal menus, plants to care for, and movies to watch. The results were remarkable. After three weeks, the group exercising choice felt happier and interacted more actively with others. Conversely, the group without choices experienced deteriorating health. After 18 months, the mortality rate was significantly higher among those without choices.

Control the ‘Self’

Photo by Pixabay

Low control increases stress. The workplace is a battlefield over control. Corporate executives’ ability to withstand stress comes from feeling they control others. For women, interpersonal relationships determine satisfaction, but for men, the degree of control influences satisfaction. The value of control is realized when one can stop the worst situations. However, most workers lack such power.

Happiness depends not on how much control one has but on how much control one feels they have. Even with great power, if one feels unable to influence others, they are unhappy. Conversely, even with low status, believing one controls their life brings happiness. People caught in the illusion of control are confident. They take pride in minor past successes and expect more success in the future. Of course, their expectations are not always correct. A 2003 study of 107 stockbrokers found that those with stronger illusions of control had lower internal evaluations and salaries. The illusion of control did not lead to positive outcomes.

There are two ways to exercise control: controlling the external world and controlling oneself. Controlling the external world is nearly impossible. Controlling one’s inner self is much easier. Reflecting on daily life reveals many opportunities to exercise control. Devoting passion to what you want to do, expanding knowledge and experience, striving to improve, and becoming the person you want to be are all possible through self-control. There is no need to complain about why the world does not go your way. People blame the world because they obsess over uncontrollable things. To be happy, you must turn your attention from what you cannot control to changing your mind.

To avoid conflict with the world, it is important to know what you can control. Without trying, you gain nothing. You must learn to control small, everyday things first. Of course, we need the positive illusion that we can control the world. The happiness this illusion brings is not much different from the satisfaction real control provides. Happy people believe they can control more. That belief comes from controlling themselves.

Lee Yongbeom, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.