Illusion of control by proxy: placing one's fate in the hands of another.

In the present set of studies, we investigated how perceptions of other people's luck are used in an attempt to maximize one's own outcomes. Specifically, it was hypothesized that people will defer to a lucky other in games of chance to maximize winning potential, i.e. the illusion of control by proxy. In Experiment 1, participants were told that they would receive a scratch-and-win lottery ticket as a gratuity for participating. As hypothesized, participants were more likely to allow a confederate to either pick their lottery ticket if they perceived the confederate to be personally lucky than if such perceptions where not facilitated. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants interacted with a confederate over the Internet. As predicted, participants were more likely to allow a gambling partner (a confederate) to spin a roulette wheel (Experiment 2), and bet more money on the outcome of the spin (Experiment 3) if they were made to believe their partner was lucky. The expanded reach of the illusion of control phenomena is discussed.