Control Motivation and Social Cognition

Abstract

When and why do people seek to explain the actions of others? Theorists (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967) long have suggested that people make causal inferences in order to satisfy a need for effective control. That is, we engage in attributional analyses at least in part to make the social world understandable, predictable, and controllable. As we have seen throughout this volume, recent research provides some support for this control motivation—attributional activity hypothesis. Pittman and his colleagues (Pittman & D’Agostino, 1985; Pittman & Pittman, 1980), for example, have provided evidence indicating that control motivation aroused by temporary exposure to uncontrollable events results in increased attributional activity, an increased need for diagnostic information, and a more careful or deliberate processing of the available information (See Chapter 6 this volume).