Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World

Marcin Bukowski,Immo Fritsche,Ana Guinote,Miros?aw Kofta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317340157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Coping with Lack of Control in a Social World offers an integrated view of cutting-edge research on the effects of control deprivation on social cognition. The book integrates multi-method research demonstrating how various types of control deprivation, related not only to experimental settings but also to real life situations of helplessness, can lead to variety of cognitive and emotional coping strategies at the social cognitive level. The comprehensive analyses in this book tackle issues such as:

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• Cognitive, emotional and socio-behavioral reactions to threats to personal control

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• How social factors aid in coping with a sense of lost or threatened control

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• Relating uncontrollability to powerlessness and intergroup processes

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• How lack of control experiences can influence basic and complex cognitive processes

This book integrates various strands of research that have not yet been presented together in an innovative volume that addresses the issue of reactions to control loss in a socio-psychological context. Its focus on coping as an active way of confronting a sense of uncontrollability makes this a unique, and highly original, contribution to the field. Practicing psychologists and students of psychology will be particularly interested readers.

Part 1
Cognitive, emotional, and socio-behavioral reactions to uncontrollability

1
From coping to helplessness

Effects of control deprivation on cognitive and affective processes

Marcin Bukowski and Mirosław Kofta

Author note

Work on this chapter was supported by grants awarded by the Polish National Science Centre (NCN) to Marcin Bukowski (DEC-2011/01/D/HS6/00477) and to Mirosław Kofta (DEC-2014/15/B/HS6/03755).

We would also like to thank Janina Pietrzak for her valuable help with language editing.

Contact: [email protected]

1. Facing uncontrollability: Helplessness or coping?

Individual strivings to exert, maintain, or restore a sense of personal control over the environment have long been considered to be a core and basic type of motivation (Bandura, 1977; Burger, 1992; DeCharms, 1968; Skinner, 1996; White, 1959). Early research on the control motive in humans was particularly focused on how control deprivation affects cognitive and emotional functioning (e.g., Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Seligman, 1975). In his seminal work, Seligman (1975) proposed that prolonged and stable experiences of uncontrollability (operationalized as response-outcome non-contingency) result in the learned helplessness syndrome, including cognitive deficits (understood as the inability to detect new contingencies), a depressed mood, and the inability to pursue important goals. Since then, numerous studies have shown that a lack of contingency between action and outcome results in deterioration of performance and affective disruption (e.g., Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Kofta & Se˛dek, 1989; Tennen, Drum, Gillen & Stanton, 1982). Extending Seligman’s original framework, Sedek and Kofta (1990; see also Kofta & Sedek, 1998) developed the idea that prolonged, inefficient investment of cognitive effort is a critical aspect of uncontrollable situations, leading to the emergence of cognitive exhaustion. In this mental state, a person shows cognitive deficits in problem solving and avoidance learning associated with a negative mood. Inspired by this theoretical idea, subsequent studies investigated these cognitive deficits at the levels of basic processes of selective attention, as well as of reasoning and the formation of meaningful mental models (Kofta, 1993; Kofta & Sedek, 1998; Ric & Scharnitzky, 2003; von Hecker & Sedek, 1999). Several cognitive malfunctions observed in this line of experimental research appear to be shared by people suffering from clinical depression or with elevated depressive mood (e.g., von Hecker & Sedek, 1999; Kofta & Sedek, 1998; McIntosh, Sedek, Fojas, Brzezicka-Rotkiewicz, & Kofta, 2005). Also, very much in line with these findings, Hertel and her colleagues (e.g., Hertel, 2000; Hertel & Hardin, 1990; Hertel & Rude, 1991) showed that memory malfunctioning in depressive patients is not due to limited cognitive resources, but to lack of cognitive initiative, i.e., deficits of focal attention to relevant stimuli. Once attention-directing stimuli were introduced to experimental instructions, memory deficits of depressive participants disappeared.¹

In contrast to research rooted in the learned helplessness/depression tradition, in other theoretical frameworks, lack of personal control is frequently seen as a challenge, mobilizing people to regain control (Brehm, 1966; Pittman & Pittman, 1980; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). In this line of studies, rather than viewing humans as victims of uncontrollability, researchers consider people to be active agents who cope with loss-of-control experiences to regain control and fulfill their needs. Brehm’s reactance theory (1966) assumed that threat to freedoms activates a motivational process called reactance, which drives people to engage in behaviors aimed at the restoration of those threatened freedoms. Further research on reactance motivation revealed that moderate levels of uncontrollability evoke negative emotional states (such as anger) but simultaneously increase motivation to succeed and improve performance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Miron & Brehm, 2006; Wortman & Brehm, 1975). When discussing the nature of the mobilization phase of the response to loss of control, we will analyze in this chapter various ways of coping with uncontrollability. Undoubtedly, one of the most important distinctions is that between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; see also Skinner, 1996). Some strategies employed to manage uncontrollability are aimed at changing the situation, whereas others aim at dealing with one’s own emotional reactions to it. In the domain of research on learned helplessness, a fine-grained analysis of various coping strategies was done by Mikulincer (1994), who makes a distinction between several strategies of coping with control loss, including problem solving, reappraisal, avoidance, and reorganization (revision of self-schemas).

Control-regaining efforts also manifest at the level of social information processing: control deprivation has been shown to increase the tendency to be more accurate in judgments and to use a more systematic processing style (Pittman & Pittman, 1980). Pittman and D’Agostino’s (1989) explanation was that control deprivation experiences call into question the adequacy of one’s beliefs and understanding of the way things work. In response, control motivation grows and changes the mode of information processing so as to support restoration of control. Overall, the findings from this line of research suggest that lacking control can improve cognitive performance (or at least, can provoke processes that immunize us against the deleterious effects of uncontrollability). We will refer to these findings in more detail further on (Bukowski, de Lemus, Lupiáñez, Marzecová, & Gocłowska, 2016; Mikulincer, Kedem, & Zilcha-Segal, 1989; Ramirez, Maldonado, & Martos, 1992).

Other lines of research that also conceptualize loss of control as a challenge are increasingly popular in the area of intergroup and political cognition. The first line shows that the experience of control loss is likely to instigate compensatory processes (secondary control) that help to restore the threatened sense of control by regaining a perception of structure, order, coherence, and meaning in the surroundings. This process allows researchers to account both for illusory patterning of phenomenological field and for various types of cognitive shortcuts and biases, such as belief in conspiracies or superstitions, that emerge after loss-of-control experiences (Fast et al., 2009; Kay et al., 2010; Sullivan et al., 2010; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). The second line shows that lack of control can also stimulate people to endorse and support ingroups, and this process might lead to ethnocentric as well as pro-social consequences (Fritsche, Jonas, & Kessler, 2011). The group-based control model (Fritsche et al., 2013), assuming that threats to personal control promote actions at the collective level aimed at the restoration of primary control (see also: Stollberg, Fritsche, Barth, & Jugert, Chapter 8, this volume), constitutes yet another way of explaining how people react to control loss.

Thus, four different lines of theorizing and research – reactance theory, control motivation framework, compensatory control, and group-based control models – commonly assume that a person deprived of control is actively searching for meaningful causal relations and contingencies in the environment in order to regain a sense of control.

The question arises how to come to terms with apparently conflicting views on the consequences of control deprivation: one pointing to helplessness (demobilization) effects, the other to coping (mobilization) effects. We propose that these seemingly incompatible approaches can be combined into a coherent theoretical model. Drawing on the seminal work of Wortman and Brehm (1975), we take a dynamical approach to control deprivation and assume that short exposure to uncontrollability is likely to provoke various types of coping attempts, whereas only long-term uncontrollability results in disengagement and helplessness. Also, we assume that initially adaptive changes in cognitive responding engendered by lack of control (e.g., switching to a more flexible and open-minded information-processing style) can ultimately lead to cognitive and emotional deficits when control-restoration attempts, even if repeated, appear futile. Finally, we postulate that the major process accounting for both coping activity and – after enduring contact with uncontrollable situations – cognitive and behavioral deterioration is mounting behavioral uncertainty – the direct consequence of long-lasting, inefficient attempts to cognitively cope with an uncontrollable situation.

In this chapter, we will first analyze how lack of control affects cognition. To do that, we introduce the notion of behavioral uncertainty as a major process accounting for shifts away from active coping with uncontrollable situations to mental and behavioral disengagement and decreased mood, observed after prolonged confrontation with uncontrollability. Further on, we analyze how coping with behavioral uncertainty manifests at different levels of information processing (information selection, cognitive structuring, causal knowledge formation). Importantly, we look at these processes in the context of different phases of control deprivation (their consecutive emergence depending on the length, intensity, and stability of the loss-of-control experience). Finally, we consider how uncontrollability affects emotional processes and how these processes in turn modify the course of information processing and (inter)group judgment.

2. Control-deprivation effects on cognition and affect

When confronted with an uncontrollable situation in an important domain, people seem likely to engage in intense cognitive effort, because they try to understand what is going on (“Why can’t I do it?”) and generate various hypotheses about how to solve the problem. We propose that the most immediate consequence of a lack-of-control experience is increased behavioral uncertainty. This hypothetical process may explain both vigorous attempts to restore control during early confrontation with uncontrollability, as well as deterioration of performance and decreased mood, emerging after prolonged control loss.

Behavioral uncertainty

Uncertainty is a multifaceted concept; the experience of uncertainty may emerge in relation to the world or to the self, may be permanent or transient, may refer not only to something in the future but also to something that already happened (e.g., Hogg, 2000; Swann, 2012; Weary & Edwards, 1996). Behavioral uncertainty, we propose, is experienced when a person strives toward a goal but appears unable to reach it despite repeated attempts. Such behavioral uncertainty has three distinct features: first, it refers to action in the near future; second, as long as a person is in an uncontrollable situation, it cannot be reduced despite trying; third and perhaps most importantly, it tends to gradually increase over the course of prolonged exposure to uncontrollability.

How and why does it emerge? Some degree of uncertainty accompanies any goal-oriented, novel behavior (we must find or construct an adequate action program to reduce initial uncertainty about how to achieve a goal before we move to successful action, see e.g., Gollwitzer & Kinney, 1989). An inherent feature of an uncontrollable situation is, however, lack of contingency between behavior and outcome (e.g., Kofta & Se˛dek, 1989; Maier & Seligman, 1976). As a consequence, systematic and valid feedback to the generated hypotheses is unavailable. It immediately follows that, if a situation is objectively uncontrollable, one cannot predict the consequences of whatever action he or she is actually considering, resulting in increased uncertainty (Kofta & Sedek, 1998, 1999; Sedek & Kofta, 1990; Sedek, Kofta, & Tyszka, 1993).

To cope with a continuing lack of control, people generate new hypotheses but can neither prove nor reject any, thus increasing the entropy of the hypotheses set (e.g., Kofta & Sedek, 1999). Moreover, given that the situation remains uncontrollable, any seemingly adaptive shift to new cognitive strategies (e.g., a switch from a default heuristic to a systematic information-gathering strategy, see Pittman & D’Agostino, 1989) results in a further increase of behavioral uncertainty. Finally, when lack of control continues despite a person’s attempts to regain control, the generation and application of mental models is heavily impaired (e.g., von Hecker & Sedek, 1999). Mental models – flexible theories of a situation generated on-line – are uncertainty-reducing mental instruments (e.g., Gentner & Stevens, 1983; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Kofta, 1993). Therefore, impaired mental modeling will further increase the perceived unpredictability of the world, and high, irreducible uncertainty is going to be highly aversive. So, it does not seem very surprising that, after prolonged exposure to uncontrollability, people disengage from active coping, that is, stop investing mental energy in problem-solving attempts and show symptoms of cognitive exhaustion and learned helplessness.

In order to cope with behavioral uncertainty (as with any other type of uncertainty), a person has to efficiently manage inconsistent and often conflicting pieces of information. To better understand the specific nature of behavioral uncertainty resulting from control deprivation experiences, let us distinguish two levels of cognitive processing. At the first level, uncertainty may accompany basic attentional processing involved in filtering and selection of goal-relevant information. At the second level, uncertainty concerns the contingency between goals (intentions) and actions (plans and their execution: e.g., uncertainty increases along with the number of simultaneously held hypotheses).

In addition, a person in an uncontrollable situation might be increasingly uncertain of his or her self-perceived ability to cope with control loss. However, when a person cannot find a problem solution despite trying, and behavioral uncertainty increases – ability uncertainty will ultimately decrease (i.e., the person comes to the conclusion that “I do not have the abilities that are necessary to solve the problem”). The latter self-inference seems critical for the aforementioned withdrawal from behavioral and cognitive coping observed after prolonged exposure to uncontrollability.

Let us now turn to the question of how behavioral uncertainty, emerging from lack-of-control experiences, manifests at two basic levels of information processing: attentional selection to goal-relevant information and the perception of causal relations in the environment.

Uncontrollability and cognitive control

How does uncontrollability affect the attentional processes of information search, selection, and inhibition of distractors? Previous research has revealed that uncontrollability experiences lead to performance impairment on subsequent tasks and to lowered mood (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Kofta & Sedek, 1999). High levels of uncertainty appear to be a valid mediating variable between uncontrollability experiences and subjective symptoms of cognitive difficulties, which are related to decreased performance levels in a variety of cognitive tasks (Kofta & Sedek, 1999; Sedek & Kofta, 1990).

At the level of basic attentional processing, exposure to lack of personal control leads to decreased selectivity in filtering input data (Kofta & Sedek, 1998) and relaxes attentional constraints, resulting in broadened, less selective information intake (Minor, Jackson, & Maier, 1984). Research performed using a dual-task paradigm showed that control deprivation affects attentional selection processes (Kofta & Sedek, 1998). In this study, participants were pre-exposed to the Informational Helplessness Training (exposure to uns...