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IOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 25, 46.5480 (198%

Motivation and Cognition: Control Deprivation and the Nature of Subsequent Information Processing

THANE S. PITTMAN AND PAUL R. D'AGOSTINO

Gettysburg College

Received June 29. 1988

This research was designed to investigate the cognitive processes underlying the finding that subjects appear to make more use of available information in forming attributions following a control-deprivation experience. We propose that control deprivation has this effect because it leads subjects to engage in careful and accurate processing of new material so that new situations will be rendered amenable to prediction and control. Experiment I demonstrated that control- deprived subjects were better able to recognize and identify the implications of previously presented sentence pairs. In Experiments 2 and 3, control-deprived subjects showed better recognition of both facts and inferences in a text-processing task. The pattern of results in these two studies cleady suggested that these effects were produced at the time of encoding rather than during retrieval. Experiment 3 also showed that this improved initial processing by control-deprived subjects could be reversed by raising self-esteem concerns that in turn led to self-protective effort withdrawal and poorer recognition performance. The implications of these findings for the proposed theoretical explanation, and the possibility that this theoretical view can organize and explain other research on when attributions will be made, are discussed. o 1989 Academic press, hc.

When and why do people make attributions? Several different ap- proaches to the question of when attribution processes will be initiated or intensified have been pursued (cf. Pittman & Heller, 1987). Some of the recent research has been focused on examining characteristics of the available stimulus information that may trigger attributional activity, such as negativity (e.g., Harvey, Yarkin, Lightner, & Town, 1980; Wong & Weiner, 1981) and unexpectedness (e.g., Clary & Tesser, 1983; Hastie, 1984; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1981; Wong & Weiner, 1981); in effect this point of view locates the cause of attributionai activity in the stun-

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BNS 81- 11829) and the Gettysburg Cotlege Institutional Self-Renewal fund. We thank Leila T. Worth for her comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Requests for reprints and correspondence should be addressed to Thane S. Pittman, Department of Psychology, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA 17325.

465 0022-1031/89 $3.QO

Copyright 0 1989 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

466 PITTMAN AND D’AGOSTINO

ulus. Others have looked to contingencies in the current situation that may foster attributional analyses, such as personal involvement (e.g., Heller, 1972; Pittman, Scherrer, & Wright, 1977), expectation of future interaction (e.g., Bersheid, Graziano, Monson, & Dermer, 1976; Harvey et al., 1980; Miller, Norman, & Wright, 1978), and outcome dependence (e.g., Erber & Fiske, 1984; Harkness, DeBono, & Borgida, 1985; Neu- berg & Fiske, 1987).

A different approach to this general question was proposed by Pittman and Pittman (1980). They examined the influence of a motivational state created by prior experience on subsequent attributional activity, while holding the characteristics of the stimuli and the situation constant. The central assumption in this approach is that persons come into new situations in varying motivational states which may have been created by prior experiences that have no clear direct relation or connection to the new situation. Nevertheless, these motivational states may affect attributional activity, presumably by changing the way that new information is processed and used. In this paper we present the results of several studies that were designed to explore how information processing is affected by control motivation, a motivational state created by a prior experience with deprivation of control.

RESEARCH ON CONTROL MOTIVATION AND A-l-l-RIBUTIONS

Kelley (1967, 1971) has suggested that the basic underlying reason for making attributions is to render one’s world predictable and hence po- tentially controllable. Pittman and Pittman (1980) proposed an expansion of this general control motivation hypothesis: given that persons do vary from time to time in the likelihood that they will process available information (e.g., Enzle & Schopflocher, 1978; Pittman et al., 1977), one might explain these variations by assuming that control motivation is not static, but that it also varies from time to time. This dynamic version of the control motivation hypothesis implies that the more one is motivated to have control, the more likely it is that available information will be processed so that attributional implications can be extracted.

Pittman and Pittman (1980) manipulated level of control motivation by giving subjects an experience with failure to control their outcomes on a concept-identification task (cf. Pittman & Pittman, 1979). In a second apparently unrelated experiment, they provided subjects with attributional materials containing an attribution-relevant informational variation that had been shown to be sensitive to changes in level of personal issue involvement (Pittman et al., 1977). The prediction was that failure to exercise control on the task would increase subsequent control motivation and hence increase subsequent attributional activity. Consistent with this prediction, subjects did show increased utilization of the available information when responding to a variety of questions about the

MOTIVATION AND COGNITION 467

motivation and attitudes of the communicator portrayed in the stimulus materials in the second part of the experiment. This result has been replicated using the same manipulations and materials (Liu & Steele. 1986) and in studies in which the experimental concept-identification manipulation was replaced with naturally occurring variations in depres- sion (McCaul, 1983) and in desire for control (Burger & Hemans, 1988).

CONTROL MOTIVATION AND INFORMATION PROCESSING

Through what mechanism does control deprivation change subsequent attributional activity? Our view (Pittman & D’Agostino, 1985) is that an experience with inability to control, in a context where one wishes control and expects to have it, is disturbing in part because it undermines feelings of self-efficacy or effectance by calling one’s understanding of causal or process aspects of the setting into question. Such an experience should lead a person to be very careful and cautious when constructing an understanding of situations immediately following the control deprivation experience in order to acquire an accurate understanding likely to render the new situation controllable. In the Pittman and Pittman (1980) study, we assume that control-deprived subjects were more motivated to process the available information carefully and deliberateIy, and that it was this change in initial information processing that produced their sensi- tivity to informational variations. However, no direct examination of this information-processing account was made in that study. Experiment 1 was designed to test whether control deprivation would indeed lead to improved performance on an information-processing task requiring the recognition and identification of inferential material.

Our argument also assumes that the effects of prior control deprivation are encoding phenomena, occurring mainly during the initial processing of information. However, a retrieval explanation, one assuming that control motivation effects occur at retrieval when subjects may expen more effort on memory-based processing, is a viable and not entirely incompatible alternative explanation of how control deprivation might improve performance on information-utilization tasks. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to assess the relative contribution of encoding and retrieval processes following control deprivation.

We also assume that control deprivation will not ai~~wklys lead to these kinds of information-processing changes. The response to an experience with failure to exert control that we have described thus far is one in which the person acts so as to regain control (or avoid further i~ab~~~~y to control) by engaging in careful processing of new information. How- ever, if the new situation is one in which the possibility of a diagnostic failure is made salient, the person’s response may instead be essentially defensive, and ego-protective devices such as effort withdrawal may be employed (Snyder, Stephan, & Rosenfeld, 1978; Jones & Berglas, 1978).


The determining factor should be the relative salience of the benefits of trying to acquire a detailed and accurate understanding in the service of gaining control versus the further costs to self-esteem that a failure of such effortful attempts might incur. The learned helplessness literature provides many examples of effort withdrawal and poor performance following control deprivation; indeed, in the Pittman and Pittman (1980) study such effects on an anagram solution task were demonstrated at the same time that subjects in other conditions were showing increased utilization of attribution-relevant information. Frankel and Snyder (1978) have shown that such performance deficits can be reversed by providing subjects with an ego-protective excuse in the event of failure before performance is assessed. We predict, therefore, that the enhancement of subsequent information processing can be disrupted by making salient the possibility of a diagnostic failure. This hypothesis was tested in Experiment 3.

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 was designed to determine if control deprivation does affect the processing of new information in an unrelated subsequent task. To do this we examined the performance of control-deprived and baseline subjects on a sentence-recognition task. Following the control manipulation all subjects studied a list of sentence pairs; some of the pairs consisted of statements that suggested an obvious inference. All subjects were then given a recognition test consisting of old sentences, inferences based on old sentences, and new sentences.

The recognition test was given under two different instruction conditions. In the inference-instruction condition subjects were told to respond “old” both to sentences that were actually presented and to sentences that were implied by those that had been presented. While this condition assessed knowledge about the study sentences and their implications, it did not require that subjects discriminate between the two types of knowledge. In the memory-instruction condition, however, subjects were told to respond “old” only to sentences that actually had been presented, and “new” to everything else. This condition required subjects to discriminate between the facts that were studied and the inferences that might be drawn from those facts. Together these two instruction conditions provide a means for assessing subjects’ ability to make a variety of judgements about information implied by, but not included in, the original materials.

Subjects

Method

The 64 subjects were Gettysburg College undergraduates who received credit in partial fulfillment of a course requirement in an introductory psychology class.


Materials and Lists

The study list consisted of 26 sentence pairs, including 10 target pairs, 10 filler pairs, and 6 buffer pairs (2 primacy and 4 recency). The target pairs consisted of two sentences which suggested an obvious inference. For example, the sentences “John rarely studies for any of his courses” and “John always gets good grades” were considered by pretest judges strongly to imply that “John is smart.” A sentence pair was used as a target pair only if more than 80% of the subjects in a pilot study strongly agreed that a third sentence was implied by the two statements. Filler and buffer pairs consisted of two sentences which did not suggest any obvious implication.

The 10 target and 10 filler sentence pairs were randomly ordered and recorded on audio tape. Each member of a pair was read consecutively at a normal rate with a 5-s delay between the last sentence of one pair and the first sentence of the next pair. The study list began with two primacy filler pairs and ended with four recency pairs.

The recognition list consisted of one sentence from each target and filler pair plus the inference sentence for each target pair and an unrelated sentence for each filler pair. This set of 40 sentences was randomly ordered and presented to half the subjects in each condition. The remaining subjects received the list in the reverse order.

Procedure Control deprivation. Subjects engaged in a concept-identification task commonly used

in the learned-helplessness literature and described in detail in Pittman and Pittman (1979). Briefly, all subjects received 10 trials on each of six concept-identification problems. On each trial the subject was shown a card with a pair of stimuli each consisting of comple- mentary values of five dimensions (letter, A or T; color, black or red; letter size, upper- or lowercase; border surrounding letter, circle or square; and underline, dotted or solid). In the control-deprived condition subjects were told for each problem that a “correct.’ value had been chosen and that their task was to learn the correct value from the experimenter’s feedback (the experimenter saying “correct” or “incorrect” after each choice) and to choose correctly as often as possible. Subjects actually were given random non- contingent feedback (the experimenter said “correct” after 50% of the subject’s responses and “incorrect” after the other half of the subject’s reponses in a predetermined random order) on all trials, with “incorrect” feedback given on the last trial for each problem. In the baseline condition, subjects were instead told that their task was simply to respond without feedback for all of the problems in order to provide a baseline for a correction- for-guessing adjustment to be made for other subjects. This procedure controlled for time and task exposure without providing a control-related experience (Pittman & Pittman, 1979; Pittman & Pittman, 1980).

Following the concept-identification problems all subjects listened to the list of sentence pairs. Subjects were instructed to study each fact because they would later be asked to remember the exact information they had heard. Following a 15.min interpolated task which involved simple verbal and mathematical problems, all subjects were given the recognition test.

Inference and memory instructions. Subjects were seated in front of a response console containing an old and a new switch connected to an electronic timer. In the inference- instruction condition, subjects were instructed to press the old switch if the sentence presented either was one of the ones heard earlier or was implied by the sentences heard earlier. In the memory-instruction condition subjects were instructed to press the old switch only when the sentence presented was exactly the same as a sentence that they had heard earlier.

Each sentence was projected on a screen in front of the subject, and the subject was instructed to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible. The experimenter said


“ready” prior to the presentation of each sentence and recorded the subject’s response and reaction time before presenting the next statement.

Results

Recognition Performance

Separate analyses were performed on target and filler sentences. Since the analyses for filler facts and unrelated statements showed no relevant effects, they will not be discussed further.

The mean percentage of correct responses for target facts and inferences is shown in Table 1. The 2 x 2 x 2 mixed analysis of variance revealed an interaction between control deprivation and the inference- fact variable, F(1, 60) = 8.89, p < .Ol, such that in both instruction conditions, control deprivation produced higher recognition performance but only for inference statements. Consistent with the control motivation hypothesis, in the inference-instruction conditions control-deprived subjects were better than baseline subjects at recognizing inference items as implications of the original fact pairs. In the memory-instruction conditions control-deprived subjects were also better than baseline subjects at recognizing inference items as new sentences.

The analysis also revealed a main effect for sentence type indicating that facts were recognized better than inferences, F(1, 60) = 34.85, p < .OOl, and an interaction between sentence type and instructions, F(1, 60) = 5.20, p < .05, such that the fact-inference difference was greatest in the inference-instruction condition.’

Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 showed that control-deprived subjects were better at recognizing the implications of the original sentence pairs and were also better at discriminating between original and inference sentences than baseline subjects. These results are consistent with our prediction that control deprivation would lead to changes in information processing that would improve subjects’ ability to make judgments about inferential material.

We assume that this improved performance occurred because control- deprived subjects processed the original sentence pairs more carefully and deeply at encoding, thereby making them more accessible during

’ For purposes of brevity, the effects of control deprivation on reaction times for all three experiments are summarized here. In Experiments 1 and 3, control-deprived subjects tended to show slower reaction times, but these effects were not significant. In Experiment 2, control-deprived subjects had significantly slower reaction times overall. In none of the experiments did the reaction time patterns follow the patterns found for correct judgments. That control-deprived subjects generally showed longer reaction times is consistent with the view of control-deprived subjects as trying to be careful and thoughtful. A complete analysis of all of the reaction time results is available from the authors.

MOTIVATION AND COGNITION

TABLE I MEAN PERCENTAGE OF CORRECT RESPONSES. EXPERIWENT 1

Group

Inference instructions Memory instructions

Inference Fact Inference Fact

Control deprivation 16 91 84 84 Baseline 65 94 70 89

the recognition task; enhanced accessibility would lead to better performance under either set of recognition instructions. Control-depriv subjects may or may not actually have made the inferences implied the sentence pairs at the time of encoding. If they did draw those inferences, the data pattern suggests that they must have been stored so that they later could be distinguished from the original sentences, sirme control-deprived subjects did show improved performance on those judgments.

However, these results could instead be due to changes in processing at the time the judgments were made. Control-deprived subjects may not have done anything differently at input, but instead may have ex- pended more effort retrieving the original sentences at the time of the recognition test; this would also be expected to facilitate performance under both instruction conditions. Since our view of the nature of control- deprivation effects assumes more careful and cautious initial processing of information, the relative contributions of encoding and retrieval cesses were assessed in Experiment 2.

One puzzling result from Experiment 1 was that control-deprived and baseline subjects did not differ in their ability to recognize facts (i.e., original sentences). Both the encoding and retrieval hypotheses woman predict better recognition performance by control-deprived subjects for both facts and inferences. However, since the overall recognition performance for facts was quite high (90%), such potential differences may simply have been obscured by a ceiling effect. In the second experiment, a different set of materials was employed, in part to assess this possibility.

EXPERIMENT 2

A text-processing task was substituted for the sentence-pair mat used in Experiment 1. Control-deprived and baseline subjects stu short text and then were asked to verify both facts and inferences. In the encoding condition the control manipulation preceded the presentation of the text; in the retrieval condition the control manipulative followed the presentation of the text but still preceded the verification test. If control deprivation has its primary effect on the encoding of information, then the verification accuracy of control-deprived and base-


line subjects would be expected to differ only in the encoding condition, since only in that condition could the effects of control deprivation affect the initial processing of the text material. On the other hand, if control deprivation primarily affects retrieval performance, then control-deprived subjects should outperform baseline subjects in both the encoding and the retrieval conditions.

Materials and Design

Method

The text used in this study was identical to that used by Walker and Meyer (1980). It was roughly 200 words in length and concerned a revolution in the mythical country of Morinthia. The text consisted of two parts, each typed on a separate page, and contained four pairs of critical facts. One fact from each pair was contained on each page of the text; unlike the first experiment, this arrangement of sentences left it up to the subjects to detect or notice these pairs. Walker and Meyer (1980) also determined the importance or height in the content structure of each pair of critical facts. Facts located high in the content structure are prominent and important. Facts located in the lower part of the content structure tend to be concerned with details and are relatively unimportant. TWO of the critical pairs of facts were located high in the content structure (important) and two were located in the lower part of the structure (unimportant).

The verification test consisted of 12 randomly ordered statements. Four of these statements consisted of the logical implication of each pair of critical facts. For example, for the critical pair “King Egbert is a dictator” and “Albert Profiro hated all dictators” the logical implication was “Albert Profiro hated King Egbert. ” Two of these inference statements were derived from facts high in the content structure (important true inference) and two from facts low in the content structure (unimportant true inference). In addition, the verification list contained two statements which were explicitly mentioned in the text. One statement was high in the content structure (important true explicit) and one was low in the structure (unimportant true explicit).

The list also contained six false statements which either contradicted facts stated in the text or were not necessarily true given the text information. The identical verification test was administered to both control-deprived and baseline subjects.

In the encoding condition, the sequence of events was as follows:

control text 20 min verification -+ + -+

manipulation study filled delay task

In the retrieval condition the sequence was:

20 min text control verification 9 + -3

filled delay study manipulation task

Since the control-deprivation task required approximately 20 min, this design controlled for both toti time and retention interval.

Subjects The 96 subjects were Gettysburg College undergraduates who were randomly assigned

to one of the four (control deprivation x storage-retrieval) experimental groups.


Procedure All subjects were told that the experiment was concerned with problem solving and

learning and that they would perform a variety of tasks. Encoding conditions. In the encoding condition subjects initially engaged in either the

baseline or the control-deprivation version of the concept-identification task used in Ex- periment 1. Following the concept-identification problems all subjects were given the text to read and study. Subjects were told that they could read over the text as many times as needed in order to learn the information. They were told to pay close attention to detail and to try to remember as much as possible and were informed that after they had learned the story they would be asked questions about what they had read.

Following text study, the reading time for each subject was recorded and a booklet containing proofreading material and numerous verbal and number tasks was distributed. Subjects were allowed to work on this booklet for 20 min and then the verification test was administered. Subjects were seated at a tachistoscope with one finger of each band resting on the response keys and were told that they would be presented with a series of statements which they were to judge to be true or false. They were told to respond ?rue by pressing the right-hand key if the test statement actually had been presented in the text or if it could be inferred from what had been stated in the text and to respond false in all other cases by pressing the left-hand key (these instructions were thus similar to the inference instructions used in Experiment 1).

Retrieval conditions. The procedure in the retrieval condition was the same except for the order in which the tasks were administered. In the retrieval condition, text study was preceded by the 20-min filled-delay period and followed by the concept-identification task. The verification task followed the control manipulation.

Results

The primary dependent measures were study time and proportion o correct responses. Separate analyses were performed for true (original sentences and true inference sentences) and false (sentences not seen or implied by what had been seen) judgment items on the latter measure.

Study Time

The analysis of time spent studying the text indicated that controk- deprived subjects tended to study the text for somewhat longer than baseline subjects, F(1,92) = 3.27, p < .OS, and study time in the retrieval condition tended to be longer than that in the encoding condition, F(l) 92) = 3.67, p < .06, although neither of these differences reached con- ventional levels of significance. Most important for the interpretation of the remaining data, there was no evidence of an interaction between control deprivation and encoding/retrieval on study times, F(l , 92) < 1 1

Proportion of Correct Responses

A four-way mixed analysis of variance (control vs baseline, encoding vs retrieval, fact vs inference, and high vs low in the content structure, with repeated measures on the last two variables) of the mean propo~io~ of correct responses for true inference and true explicit judgments revealed a main effect such that control-deprived subjects were more ac-


curate than baseline subjects, F(1,92) = 8.27,~ < .OOl, on both inference and explicit judgments and on items high and low in the content structure. This main effect was qualified by a significant interaction between control deprivation and the encoding-retrieval variable, F(1, 92) = 4.65, p < .05 (see Table 2). In the encoding condition, control-deprived subjects made more accurate judgments than did baseline subjects on both fact and inference items, F(1, 92) = 12.66, p < .OOl, but in the retrieval condition control-deprived and baseline subjects did not differ, F(1, 92) < 1. This pattern of results clearly suggests that control deprivation changes the way information is processed initially, rather than changing the nature of retrieval processes.

None of the other terms involving the control-deprivation variable approached significance. The analysis did indicate that explicit judgments were more accurate than inference judgments overall, F(1, 92) = 42.97, p < .OOl, particularly when these judgments involved unimportant information, interaction F(1, 92) = 11.05, p < .OOl.

The proportion of correct responses for false judgments did not differ among experimental conditions.

Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 clearly favor the encoding hypothesis; control-deprived subjects performed better than baseline subjects only when the control manipulation preceded text study. This enhanced performance was present for both facts and inferences, as would be expected if subjects were processing the materials more carefully and deeply. These results also suggest that the failure to find any effects of control deprivation on recognition of facts in Experiment 1 probably was due to a ceiling effect.

Experiment 2 controlled for both the total time in the experiment and the retention interval between the text study and the verification task. It did not, however, control for the time interval between the control manipulation and the final task. In Experiment 3, we tested the initial- processing hypothesis in a way that held constant the interval between the control deprivation and the test task.

TABLE 2 MEAN PROPORTION OF CORRECT RESPONSES,

EXPERIMENT 2

Group Encoding Retrieval

Control deprivation .81 .74 Baseline .63 .72


EXPERIMENT 3

The data collected thus far shows that a control-deprivation experience causes subjects to process new information carefully and deeply in a manner that involves some effort expenditure (D’Agostino & Pittman, 1982), resulting in the performance improvements demonstrated in Ex- periments 1 and 2. However, as we argued in the introduction to this paper, this reaction to control deprivation is expected only when the relative salience of the benefits of trying to acquire a detailed and accurate understanding in the service of gaining control outweighs the further costs to self-esteem that a failure of such effortful attempts might incur. If aspects of the situation instead lead the person to fear yet another failure to understand and control, the primary reactin to control deprivation may be to protect the self from possible diagnostic failure. If this concern is primary, then we would expect the person to employ tactics such as effort withdrawal (Frankel & Snyder, 1978) to blunt the otherwise self-threatening effects of another failure to understand and control. The predominance of control-ensuring vs self-protective concerns should determine whether performance improvements or effort withdrawal an performance decrements will ensue.

This line of reasoning implies that the dependent measure tasks use in the first two experiments (and in the previous studies assessing attributional activity) were not seen as potential threats to self-esteem, and therefore subjects processed the available information in a manner designed to enhance control. In the Pittman and Pittman (1980) paradigm the attribution questions called for anonymous opinions that would not be evaluated. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects may have expected to be able to perform well on the fairly simple tasks they were given (overall, they did do well on them). In Experiment 3, we tested the latter assumption by introducing a description of the text-processing task used in Experiment 2 that portrayed the task as highly diagnostic of ability. This description was taken from the work of Frankel and Snyder $1978) and has been shown to elicit self-protective concerns and to lead to effort withdrawal and subsequent poor performance. We varied, however, whether this description of the final task was given before or after text study (but in both cases it was given before the final recognition task). If the above analysis and the encoding hypothesis are both correct, then subjects should show impaired performance only when the moderate- difficulty description was given before text processing, when e encoding could be withdrawn. If, on the other hand, the retrie pothesis is correct, then the moderate-difficulty instructions should lea to effort withdrawal and poor performance in both the before- and the after-text conditions.


Method

Subjects and Design The text and the comprehension test were the same as in Experiment 2. The subjects

were 96 Gettysburg College undergraduates randomly assigned to one of the four (control deprivation x before-after) experimental groups.

Procedure Control-deprived and baseline conditions were created as in the first two experiments.

Following the control manipulation, all subjects were given the text to read and study. Before- and after-text conditions. In the before-text condition, subjects were told that

the comprehension task was moderately difficult but that under similar circumstances other Gettysburg students like themselves had performed moderately well, with a few performing very well and a few performing very poorly. They were told that based on this evidence they would probably do fairly well. These instructions were based on those used by Frankel and Snyder (1978) in their moderate-difficulty condition.* Following text study, subjects in the before-text condition were given the comprehension test as described in Experiment 2. In the after-text condition, information about task difficulty was not given until subjects had completed text study. Thus the before- and after-text conditions differed only in terms of when the moderate-difficulty instructions were given.

Results

As in Experiment 2, the primary dependent measures were study time and proportion of correct responses. Separate analyses again were performed for true and false judgments.

Study Time

Study times are presented in Table 3. Analyses of variance revealed a significant interaction: study time was less in the before condition than in the after condition, but only for control-deprived subjects, F(l) 92) = 4.28, p < .05 (see Table 3). The form of this interaction was consistent with the prediction of effort withdrawal during text study by control- deprived subjects who received the moderate task-difficulty description before text study. Additional analyses indicated that the difference between the before and the after conditions for control-deprived subjects was reliable, F(1, 92) = 4.44, p < .05, while subjects in the baseline conditions did not differ, F < 1.

* Two separate groups of subjects were given the basic text-processing task description used in Experiments 2 and 3; one of these groups was also given the moderate-difficulty instructions and the other group was not. When asked how difficult they expected the task to be, subjects given the moderate-difficulty instructions expected the task to be significantly more difficult, F(1, 39) = 5.08, p < .0.5. On the 31-point scale, with endpoints labeled “extremely easy” (0) and “extremely difficult” (30), subjects shifted from the “easy” (mean = 13.2 for no instruction subjects) to the “difficult” (mean = 17.0 for the moderate difficulty instruction subjects) side of the scale midpoint. Subjects’ initial impressions were in line with our assumption that, without the moderate difficulty instructions, the task is considered to be relatively easy.


TABLE 3 MEAN TEXT STUDY TIME IN MINUTES, EXPERIMENT 3

Moderate difficulty instructions

Group Before text study After text study

Control deprived Baseline

3.59 4.41 4.01 3.75

Proportion of Correct Responses

A four-way mixed analysis of variance of the mean proportion of correct responses for true inference and true explicit judgments revealed an interaction of the predicted form between the control-deprivation and before-after variables, F(1, 92) = 6.85, p < .Ol, such that performance was poorer in the before condition than in the after condition for control- deprived subjects but not for baseline subjects (see Table 4). Tests for simple effects indicated that the difference between the before and the after conditions for control-deprived subjects was significant, F(1, 92) = 7.33, p < .Ol, while there was no difference between the before an the after conditions for baseline subjects, F( 1, 92) < 1. It was also foun that in the before condition control-deprived subjects te worse than baseline subjects, F(1, 92) = 3.26, p < condition control-deprived subjects, as in Experiment 1 and the encodin condition of Experiment 2, performed better than baseline subjects, F( , 92) = 3.59, p < .07.3

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The results of Experiment 3 again indicated that control deprivatio affects information processing at encoding. The moderate-difficulty description of the task did impair the final performance of control-deprive subjects, but only when the description was given before text study. This result and those of Experiment 2 point to initial-processing en-

3 Additional findings were that control-deprived subjects showed poorer performance on important information (.67) than on unimportant information (.77) whereas for baseline subjects the reverse was true (important = .78 and unimportant = .66), F(1, 92) = 10.85, p < .Ol. The poor performance for control-deprived subjects on important information was due primarily to near-chance performance in the before condition. Performance on explicit judgments (.84) was higher than on inference judgments (.59), F(1, 92) = 45.96, p < .OOl, but this difference was qualified by the significant Inference-Explicit X Im- portant-unimportant x Before-After interaction, F(1, 92) = 7.89, p < .Ol. This higher- order interaction was due almost entirely to the fact that the difference between inference and explicit judgments was markedly reduced for important information in the before condition. Performance on false judgments averaged 70% correct and there were no differences among experimental conditions.


TABLE 4 MEAN PROPORTION OF CORRECT RESPONSES, EXPERIMENT 3

Moderate difficulty instructions

Before text After text study study

No difficulty information (from the encoding condition

of Experiment 2)

Control deprived .64 20 31 Baseline .75 .69 .63

Note. The data from the encoding condition of Experiment 2 are displayed in column three for comparison purposes.

hancement rather than differential retrieval as the mediator of the improved performance of control-deprived subjects seen in these three experiments.

The results from Experiment 3 also support our contention that subjects may not show enhanced information processing if concerns about further loss of control become salient. When the possibility of a diagnostic failure was made salient before the text was presented, subjects withdrew effort and performed poorly on the verification task. This finding provides grounds for reconciling the enhanced performance we have shown following control deprivation and the decreases in performance following such manipulations found in the learned helplessness literature. These data also point to the self and self-esteem protection as key elements in determining the nature of subsequent information-processing strategies. Liu and Steele (1986), using the procedures and materials from the Pitt- man and Pittman (1980) study, have shown that an opportunity to engage in self-affirmation on a value dimension important to self, but unrelated either to the initial control-deprivation experience or to the final judgment task, eliminates the difference in attributions normally found between control-deprived and baseline subjects. This result suggests a central role for self-esteem concern in determining reactions to an experience with failure to exert control.

The data from these three experiments are quite consistent with our theoretical position on the effects of control deprivation. An experience with failure to control one’s outcomes is a danger signal that produces an increased desire to construe subsequent situations accurately. Toward this end subjects engage in effortful information acquisition (D’Agostino & Pittman, 1982; Swann, Stephenson, & Pittman, 1981); and new information is processed carefully and deeply (a style that could be char- acterized as more systematic, bottom up, or data driven). These information acquisition and processing changes should put the person in a good position to understand and control events in subsequent settings.

Finally, we return to the findings reviewed in the first paragraph of


this paper. Why do unexpected or highly negative features in the stimulus information, and situational contingencies such as personal involvement, expectation of future interaction, and outcome dependence, trigger additional information processing? These phenomena can ail be explained with the underlying motivational framework we have proposed; the aspects of stimuli or situational contingencies that raise concerns about understanding and control are the ones that will lead to the kinds of information-processing changes described in this paper.

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