The Effects Of Prolonged Control Deprivation On Scientific Beiliefs And Its Mechanism

Perceived control is one of human’s mainly mental necessities. Compensatory control theory has suggested that the reason why perceived control is so important is that it has meet individuals’needs for order. It further points out that when people feel a lack of personal control, they tend to engage in various compensatory processes aimed at maintaining perceived order and these processes were called as compensatory control. Furthermore, it can be reflected in various fields, including visual perception, religious belief, economical comsuption, political behavior. Recent years, adhering to the thoughts of compensatory control theory, some researchers have devoted to exploring the relationship between control deprivation and scientific view which found that control deprivation would render people to holding stronger belief in science and consider that scientific developments will bring order to us. On the other hand, combining with the learned helplessness, some researches further distinguish control deprivation into two kinds, including brief and prolonged control deprivation. More surprising is that the study has revealed their converse effects on subsequent outcome such as the desire for control and thinking style. However, almost antecedents on compensatory control are control deprivation in general, without further dividing. As a result, it occurs us that whether the original study is the psychological and behavioral response of brief control deprivation or that it represents the outcome of prolonged control deprivation. There is no doubt that it needs more studies to reveal its essence in addition, according the idea of compensatory control theory, although it consistantlty emphasized that need for structure is the mainly psychological mechanism, there is no direct evidence. Hence, our study devoted to explore the effects of prolonged deprivation on scientific beliefs and simultaneously examine the mediating effect of need for structure.Study1strive to explore that whether prolonged control deprivation will cause scientific belief to decrease. The experiment had39participants and adopted two factor mixed design. The result suggested that on the evaluation of scientific issues, control deprivation participants scored higher than control group, while in terms of humane issues, the difference of two group’s score is not significant.The aim of study2is to examine the mediating effects of the need for structure which found that pronged control deprivation caused the lower need for structure, subsequently weaker belief in science.In conclusion, the study draw conclusions that differentiating from the results of conpensatory control, prolonged control deprivation will cause scientific belief decrease. And need for structure plays the role of mediation.