Taking Too Many Chances with Chance

Taking Too Many Chances with ChanceAuthor(s): Bernard WeinerSource: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1998), pp. 113-115Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1449104 .

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COMMENTARIES

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Taking Too Many Chances With Chance

Bernard Weiner Department of Psychology

University of California, Los Angeles

Krantz contends that (human) nature abhors luck or chance explanations. For the ordinary person, chance annuls control; the absence of control has been docu- mented to have negative psychological consequences. The rejection of fate is particularly evident when experiences are negative, such as not overcoming an illness. In a similar manner, chance interpretations for the sci- entist are an anathema because prediction and understanding, and the opportunity to control life events, are negated. I think Krantz is being more than descriptive, and suspect that he is also being prescriptive, intimating that we should be more open to incorporating chance or fate into our life narratives and more certainly we should accept randomness into the science of psychology. These are provocative and appealing thoughts. I doubt, however, that I agree with any of them. In this article I restrict my remarks to lay beliefs, leaving the scientific explanation issue to those better equipped to deal with this very complex issue.

Are Chance Explanations More Acceptable for Positive Than for

Negative Life Events and, If So, Why?

Krantz proposes that we readily accept luck as an explanation for winning at the lottery, but not that luck played a role in failing to recover from an illness. Based in part on these observations, he concludes that luck is

a more acceptable causal account of positive than of negative life occurrences.

This interpretation clearly confounds the type and the structure of events with the experiential result. We need to examine the other cells of a complete table (i.e., negative outcomes at the lottery and positive recovery from illness) to reach any causal conclusions. Do people who lose at the lottery make ascriptions to just "not lucky?" I think so. And do individuals who recuperate from sickness perceive proper diet, exercise, good doc- tors, medical compliance, and the like as appropriate explanations? I think so. That is, I do not believe there is any evidence or even logic to the assertion that luck is more acceptable as an explanation of positive than of negative outcomes. The only conclusion I feel comfort- able in reaching is that when there is a chance structure, as in the lottery or a coin toss, then outcomes tend to be ascribed to luck, chance, or randomness (although there are gamblers' fallacies), whereas when behaviors have an influence on an end result, then there is an ascription to a variety of nonchance factors.

In contrast to the Krantz hypothesis of more luck attributions for success than for failure, and also in contrast to my proposal that causal beliefs do not differ as a function of outcome, from an attributional perspec- tive luck or chance ascriptions are anticipated to be more in evidence after failure than following success. This is because external ascriptions maintain self-esteem in the face of failure, whereas internal attributions

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for success enhance personal esteem. This so-called hedonic bias (e.g., "I failed because of bad luck; I succeeded because I am smart") has some support in the experimental attribution literature (although not as much as textbooks would have us believe).

There is one scenario in which the Krantz assertion would be upheld. If in "real life," chance-determined tasks were more likely to eventuate in positive states whereas nonchance situations were more likely to result in nonattainment of a goal, then there would be more luck attributions following success than failure. But this story (e.g., we are more likely to win at a coin toss than to recover from an illness) would be difficult to docu- ment and I doubt its veracity.

Krantz offers two reasons why chance is acceptable for positive but not for negative life events. For positive experiences, he suggests that chance explanations are "interesting." For example, it makes an exciting story when an encounter with a woman on an airplane alters one's entire life course. That indeed is intuitively true. But is this less interesting than following one' s true love to the top of the Himalayas in order to receive "I will marry you" as an answer? I must admit that I find the latter more alluring. In addition, a chance encounter or occurrence that provides an initial opportunity is un- likely to be perceived as the cause of the life change he narrates (or, at least is only one among various causes), for this sequence requires difficult choices, instrumen- tal actions, and so on.

The other half of his contention, that failure is not explained with chance because this cancels the perception of control, is more difficult to evaluate. There is a great deal of evidence that perception of control over the cause of a stressful event aids in coping. But Krantz's scenario examines causal beliefs after the experience (illness) ended in a negative manner. Contrary to his assertion, it could be contended that an ascription to bad luck implies that this bad event will not happen again, which has many positive consequences despite the lack of control (this is elaborated in the next section of this article). In addition, given the situational specificity of causal perceptions, I find it hard to believe that explain- ing an event as due to chance generalizes to other facets of life and makes life less bearable because of the perceived absence of control. Finally, I am unconvinced that a "need for control" so biases beliefs about the understanding of events and is that positive a viewpoint, given that the outcome is specified.

On Chance and Luck Explanations

My disagreements with Krantz implicitly included some of my own views, as an attribution theorist, on

luck and chance explanations. I briefly elaborate on these, although this section has some redundancy with what was written earlier.

The meaning or connotation of chance can be under- stood from an analysis of the underlying characteristics or properties of all causal beliefs. I have argued that there are three properties of causes: locus (inside or outside of the individual), stability (enduring or tran- sient), and controllability (subject or not subject to volitional alteration). Chance is perceived by most individuals as an external, unstable, and uncontrollable cause. The latter property is the focus of the Krantz article, but is not necessarily the most impactful of the causal dimensions. Locus of causality has implications for self-esteem. As intimated earlier, chance explanations negate self-related emotions. One cannot feel pride when success is due to chance, nor guilt and shame given this explanation for failure. The proposal of Krantz that a successful prior life event is more likely to be ascribed to luck than a negative life experience just does not fit within an adaptive style of emotional regulation.

In addition, chance is unstable-it comes and goes. Thus, for example, if one perceives that recovery from an illness was because of chance, then there is uncer- tainty that there will be recovery again given another illness (or, given an attribution of illness to chance, it is in doubt whether one will become ill again). Chance, as Krantz notes, is antithetical to precise prediction (at least, for an individual event). For many nonchance factors, however, causality is perceived as stable or enduring, making predictability less uncertain. For example, if I recover from an illness because of a healthy lifestyle, I am likely to anticipate not developing or recovering from the next illness for this same rea- son-my lifestyle will remain unchanged. Given this logic, I again was suspicious of the Krantz assertion that positive outcomes will be more ascribed to chance than negative outcomes. Furthermore, stability beliefs (just as locus) could play just as important a role in personal functioning as perceptions of controllability.

Finally, chance cannot be volitionally altered by an individual. Failure due to chance thus does generate a "there is nothing I can do about it" belief, and this attitude is best avoided in many instances. But that does not necessarily imply that nonattainment of a life goal is adaptively explained with nonchance factors. If goal nonattainment was considered due to personal and con- trollable causes (e.g., "I did not get the job because I was insufficiently prepared for the interview"), then guilt and lowered self-esteem are likely to ensue. That is, perceptions of causal controllability are not without cost. There is no escape from this self-responsibility dilemma.

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On the Distinction Between Chance and Luck

We quite often think of chance and luck as inter- changeable concepts. However, they do appear to differ in the lay language. Individuals might describe them- selves or others as lucky. Hence, on some occasions or for some persons luck may be perceived as a trait. Traits are stable properties or characteristics of persons. Rather than an external cause (as is chance), luck then may be considered internal to the individual. And in- stead of being construed as temporary or unstable (as is chance), luck is then stable. Given a traitlike conception of luck, it indeed has positive consequences for both

affects and expectancies to ascribe a positive life event as due to luck, even in the absence of control. More generally, chance, luck, and randomness are not identi- cal causal beliefs, and it would be of interest and value to trace their disparate usages.

Notes

I wrote this article while supported by Grant DBS-9211982 from the National Science Foundation.

Bernard Weiner, Department of Psychology, Uni- versity of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: [email protected]

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Taking Too Many Chances with Chance