Page 192 - The Social Animal

174 The Social Animal

It goes without saying that world leaders aren’t the only ones who
believe that they control events. It is a common phenomenon among
us ordinary folks, as well. Ellen Langer demonstrated the power of the
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“illusion of control” in a simple experiment. In this study, subjects
bought lottery tickets. Half were allowed to choose their numbers, and
half had their numbers randomly assigned. Later, the subjects were
given the opportunity to sell the ticket back to the experimenter.
Langer found that those who had chosen their own lottery numbers
demanded up to four times as much money for it as those who were
assigned numbers. The subjects in this experiment were under the il-
lusion that choosing their own number increased their chances of win-
ning. Of course, as we all know, the winning ticket is determined by
chance alone; no number has a greater chance of winning than any
other number—regardless of who chose it. But the illusion of control
fostered by egocentric thought is a powerful one. It is small wonder
that most state lotteries allow us to select our own numbers.
Another interesting manifestation of egocentric thought is the
assumption in social situations that others are paying more attention
to us than they are. For example, a teenager may dread going to
school with a pimple on his forehead or on a bad hair day because
“everyone will notice.” Thomas Gilovich and his associates have
found, however, that such worries are often greatly exaggerated. In a
clever experiment, he had college students don an attention arous-
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ing T-shirt—one with a large picture of Barry Manilow on it—and
then enter a room full of other students. After interacting with the
students for a while, the participant was asked to estimate the num-
ber of students who had noticed the decidedly uncool T-shirt.
Gilovich also asked everyone in the room if they had noticed the
shirt. The participants thought that about 50 percent of the people
in the room noticed their shirt. In reality, however, only about 20 per-
cent had noticed. Because we always see the world through our own
eyes it is very difficult for us to see ourselves through the eyes of oth-
ers—we imagine they see us the way we see ourselves.
The belief that one’s self is the center of the universe helps ex-
plain a paradox that occurs every day in U.S. newspapers. Although
many Americans are proud of our country’s technological and scien-
tific achievements, fewer than 10 percent of daily newspapers carry
a regular column on science. In contrast, more than 90 percent of
these newspapers carry a daily feature on astrology—a means of at-