Editing Illusion of control (section)

===Observed behavior in games===
Ellen Langer's research demonstrated that people were more likely to behave as if they could exercise control in a chance situation where "skill cues" were present.<ref name="langer1975">{{cite journal| vauthors = Langer EJ |year=1975 |title= The Illusion of Control |journal=[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]]|volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=311–328 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.32.2.311|s2cid=30043741 }}</ref><ref name="headstails">{{cite journal | vauthors = Langer EJ, Roth J |year=1975 |title= Heads I win, tails it's chance: The illusion of control as a function of the sequence of outcomes in a purely chance task |journal=[[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]] |volume=32 |issue=6 |pages=951–955 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.32.6.951}}</ref> By skill cues, Langer meant properties of the situation more normally associated with the exercise of skill, in particular the exercise of choice, competition, familiarity with the stimulus and involvement in decisions. One simple form of this effect is found in [[casino]]s: when rolling [[dice]] in a [[craps]] game people tend to throw harder when they need high numbers and softer for low numbers.<ref name="plous171" /><ref>{{Cite journal | vauthors = Henslin JM |year=1967 |title=Craps and magic |journal=American Journal of Sociology |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=316–330 |doi=10.1086/224479|s2cid=143467043 }}</ref>

In another experiment, subjects had to predict the outcome of thirty coin tosses. The feedback was rigged so that each subject was right exactly half the time, but the groups differed in where their "hits" occurred. Some were told that their early guesses were accurate. Others were told that their successes were distributed evenly through the thirty trials. Afterwards, they were surveyed about their performance. Subjects with early "hits" overestimated their total successes and had higher expectations of how they would perform on future guessing games.<ref name="plous171" /><ref name="headstails" /> This result resembles the ''[[Confirmation bias#Preference for early information|irrational primacy effect]]'' in which people give greater weight to information that occurs earlier in a series.<ref name="plous171" /> Forty percent of the subjects believed their performance on this chance task would improve with practice, and twenty-five percent said that distraction would impair their performance.<ref name="plous171" /><ref name="headstails" />

Another of Langer's experiments replicated by other researchers involves a lottery. Subjects are either given tickets at random or allowed to choose their own. They can then trade their tickets for others with a higher chance of paying out. Subjects who had chosen their own ticket were more reluctant to part with it. Tickets bearing familiar symbols were less likely to be exchanged than others with unfamiliar symbols. Although these lotteries were random, subjects behaved as though their choice of ticket affected the outcome.<ref name="langer1975" /><ref>{{harvnb|Thompson|2004|p=115}}</ref>  Participants who chose their own numbers were less likely to trade their ticket even for one in a game with better odds.<ref name="Social behavior" />