Control deprivation and styles of thinking.pdfVIP

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2011 American Psychological Association 2012, Vol. 102, No. 3, 460–478 0022-3514/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0026316 Control Deprivation and Styles of Thinking Xinyue Zhou, Lingnan He, and Qing Yang Junpeng Lao Sun Yat-Sen University Sun Yat-Sen University and University of Glasgow Roy F. Baumeister Florida State University Westerners habitually think in analytical ways, whereas East Asians tend to favor holistic styles of thinking. We replicated this difference but showed that it disappeared after control deprivation (Exper- iment 1). Brief experiences of control deprivation, which stimulate increased desire for control, caused Chinese participants to shift toward Western-style analytical thinking in multiple ways (Experiments 2–5). Western Caucasian participants also increased their use of analytical thinking after control deprivation (Experiment 6). Manipulations that required Chinese participants to think in Western, analytical ways caused their sense of personal control to increase (Experiments 7–9). Prolonged experiences of control deprivation, which past work suggested foster an attitude more akin to learned