Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Psychology in Shaanxi Province, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, China.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, United States of America.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2021 Mar;214:103262. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103262. Epub 2021 Feb 1.
People are more likely to make choices themselves than delegate to an agent, even when it may not be the most optimal decision based on a cost-benefit analysis. Previous studies have demonstrated that retaining authority and controllability might be the primary reason for preferring self-choice. The current study asks whether impairment of controllability associated with self-choice can increase the rate of delegation and whether there are self-other discrepancies in self-choice preference. In three studies, we directly manipulated participants' controllability associated with choice through literal instructions (experiment 1) and visual presentation (experiments 2 and 3). We found that participants showed a robust propensity to under-delegate even when they were aware of their impaired controllability associated with self-choice. Moreover, only 40% impairment of controllability (but not 20%) can decrease the propensity to under-delegate. This trend differed between decision-for-self and decision-for-other. These findings suggest that pursuing a sense of control cannot fully explain self-choice preference and appears to occur equally in decisions for oneself as well as for others.
人们更倾向于自己做选择，而不是将任务委托给代理人，即使这可能不是基于成本效益分析的最佳决策。先前的研究表明，保留权力和控制权可能是偏好自我选择的主要原因。本研究探讨了与自我选择相关的控制感受损是否会增加委托的可能性，以及自我选择偏好是否存在自我与他人之间的差异。在三项研究中，我们通过字面指令（实验 1）和视觉呈现（实验 2 和 3）直接操纵参与者与选择相关的控制感。我们发现，即使参与者意识到与自我选择相关的控制感受损，他们仍然表现出强烈的过度委托倾向。此外，只有 40%的控制感受损（而不是 20%）会降低过度委托的倾向。这种趋势在自我决策和为他人决策之间存在差异。这些发现表明，追求控制感并不能完全解释自我选择偏好，而且似乎在自我决策和为他人决策中同样存在。
