Controllability in cognitive and interpersonal tasks: is control good for you?

Is control of a situation beneficial to the person involved? The present study, which tested the “goodness of fit” hypothesis, examined situation-specific coping (SSC) strategies and distress as a function of situational control over two stressful situations: (1) a cognitive task (anagrams), and (2) an interpersonal task, which involved examining a picture of two people interacting, and telling a story about it. Coping strategies used to confront the two situations, and psychological distress, were measured. For the cognitive task only, performance (number of anagrams solved) was assessed. Thus, the four independent variables were: objective or experimental control (high vs low); perceived control (high vs low); gender (college men vs college women); and task (cognitive vs interpersonal). The dependent variables were: coping strategy (task vs emotion); distress (state anxiety); and performance (anagrams solved). The results were similar to previous studies with anagram tasks [Endler, N. S., Speer, R. L., Johnson, J. M., & Flett, G. L. (in press a). Controllability, coping, efficacy, and distress. European Journal of Psychology; Endler, N. S., Speer, R. L., Johnson, J. M., & Flett, G. L. (in press b). Self-efficacy and control in relation to anxiety and cognitive performance. Current Psychology: Developmental • Learning • Personality • Social], and these results were extended from the anagram task to the interpersonal task. For both tasks, high perceived control participants reported less state anxiety than low perceived control participants; they were also lower on emotion-oriented SSC, and for the interpersonal task only, they scored higher on task-oriented SSC. Emotion-oriented SSC, higher in the low perceived control group, was significantly related to higher state anxiety for both tasks. Participants in the high perceived control condition solved more anagrams than participants in the low perceived control condition. In sum, control is generally good for a person, in terms of better performance, lower emotion-oriented SSC, and lower state anxiety.