10/04/2025 – Marcin BUKOWSKI
jeudi 10 avril 2025, par
The Costs of Lacking Control : Cognitive and Motivational Consequences of Uncontrollability Amphi P. Collomp, 10/04/2025, 10h30
Date : | Jeudi 10 avril 2025 |
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Heure : | 10h30 - 12h00 |
Lieu : | Amphi P. Collomp |
Résumé
Lacking control in everyday life can be an important predictor of a host of negative personal and social consequences. They can be observed in such contexts as education, work and unemployment, health and aging, but also intergroup cognition. Experimental research on the after-effects of uncontrollability focused mainly on deficits in cognitive performance and on identifying the specific processes affected by control deprivation. Some explanations of these effects highlighted the role of decreased efficiency of cognitive control. In line with this approach, we showed that prolonged experiences of control deprivation affect attentional control and cognitive flexibility, indexed by decreased ability to select goal- relevant information and to flexibly shift attention in accordance with changing task rules. We also found that prolonged exposure to uncontrollability leads to a decrease of the intentional binding effect, suggesting that a lack of control can have a detrimental effect on the ability to detect consequences of one’s actions, the basis of implicit self-agency. Still, an alternative approach that can explain such cognitive deficits resulting from control deprivation focuses on motivational factors, such as a tendency to avoid cognitive effort. In a recent set of studies, we tested whether uncontrollability results in effort avoidance. We used behavioral (e.g., the Demand Selection Task or the Voluntary Task Switching procedure) and psychophysiological (e.g., Pre-ejection Period) measures to examine this question and obtained initial evidence that high (vs low) levels of uncontrollability can lead to withdrawal of mental effort.
In this talk, I will discuss how cognitive and motivational processes are affected by experiences of uncontrollability. Specifically, focusing on conditions that can determine cognitive effort investment (vs withdrawal) as a response to uncontrollability and highlighting the importance subjective experiences associated with uncontrollability (e.g., difficulty, uncertainty). I will also contextualize the findings within a broader theoretical framework that integrates work on different psychological dimensions of personal control that can help to explain, how people cope with uncontrollability in different – individual and social - settings.
Marcin Bukowski

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