Control the Heat. How skin temperature reflects perceptions of order and control. Alexander Gierholz
Abstract
The present experiment introduces skin temperature as psychophysiological measurement of the effect of perceived control. I demonstrate that a strengthening of control increases participant’s skin temperature, while a lack of control decreases their temperature. Furthermore, I tested if an order affirmation would help participants to restore their temperature to a pre-threat level. While the order affirmation failed to increase temperature, it did prevent the temperature from
decreasing any further. Skin temperature correlated with self-reported control and perceived randomness in life, but not with a perception of order in the world. The findings suggest that control is more strongly related to the predictability of one’s own life, than to a general perception of structure and order in the world.
Introduction
When the novelist Tom Clancy was asked for the difference between reality and fiction, he replied that “fiction has to make sense”. While I would not argue with Tom Clancy whether fiction has to make sense, psychological research has provided various examples of how it troubles us if reality does not seem to make sense. The aversive effects that result if our conceptions of ourselves and the world do not fit with an experience, have been famously demonstrated in the experiments that formed the foundation for the cognitive dissonance theory (CDT; Festinger, 1957). CDT has served as inspiration for decades of research about the effects of discrepancies between experience and cognition. This discrepancy is often described as a feeling of threat and experiments that involve so called existential/self-threats usually share the observation that people compensate a threat’s negative implications by affirmation of attitudes in adjacent belief systems (e.g. Burke, Martens, & Faucher, 2010; Jost et al., 2007; Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan, & Laurin, 2008; McGregor, 2006). Recently however there have been various conflicting findings between theories that assume specific motivations underlying different threats and more general threat defense mechanisms (see Jonas et al., 2014). In the present study I use skin temperature to provide a psychophysiological measure to assess reactions to threat as well as the effectiveness of threat defenses.
Conflicts between theories of threat defense.
Some of the theories that deal with threat compensation examine specific threats with corresponding compensatory defense mechanisms while other theories tend to generalize self-threats and focus on the shared aspects of threat-defense. A prominent examples of more
specific theories is for instance Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). TMT examines the effects of the dissonance that is caused when our instinctive strive for survival is confronted with the awareness of inevitable death. So called mortality salience (MS) and the accompanied existential terror can be buffered by an enhanced self-esteem, either on a personal level (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004; Schmeichel et al., 2009) or by perceiving oneself as a valuable member of a transcendental cultural entity (Greenberg et al., 1997). The greatest part of the literature on TMT provides examples of various kind of defensive affirmations, expressed in different contexts. MS for instance has, amongst other things, been demonstrated to increase materialism (Heine, Harihara, & Niiya, 2002), spending intentions (Fransen, Fennis, Pruyn, & Das, 2008) interest in social interactions (Hirschberger, Florian, & Mikulincer, 2003), relevance of long-term goals (Landau, Greenberg, Sullivan, Routledge, & Arndt, 2009) and stronger in-group identification (Greenberg et al., 1997).
A different and more recent line of specific threat research explores the threatening effect of lack of control. Theories focused on perceived control assume that humans are driven by a fundamental need for structure and order and that a lack of personal control over the world poses a threat of randomness and chaos (Kay et al., 2008; Kay, Whitson, Gaucher, & Galinsky, 2009; Rutjens, van Harreveld, van der Pligt, Kreemers, & Noordewier, 2013; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008) The Compensatory Control Model (CCM)
distinguishes between personal and external control and has demonstrated that these serve as intersubstitutable compensations to restore order. Different facets of this effect can be found in research where a threat of personal control increased people’s belief in conspiracy theories (Kay
et al., 2009), controlling gods (Kay et al., 2008) or current governments (Jost et al., 2004) or scientific theories of stepwise progress (Rutjens et al., 2013).
The uniqueness of TMT and CCM were questioned by recent findings which created some serious dissonance in the threat-compensation literature itself. A line of research by
Fritsche et al., (2013) provides arguments that death threat is merely a particular manifestation of perceived lack of control. Evidence is provided by studies in which death-threat and control-threat are disentangled in a scenario of a self-chosen death in form of euthanasia (Fritsche et al., 2013; Fritsche, Jonas, & Fankhänel, 2008). The results show that commonly observed defensive reactions towards MS are absent in such a scenario and consequently the results might lead to the conclusion that MS functions as subcategory of a lack of control threat. The emotional cause of typical defensive control compensations were explored in a study by Whitson, Galinsky and Kay (2015), and discovered that inducing uncertain emotions only, contextually unrelated to death or control, could cause compensatory control reactions too. Thus their findings support a more general approach as they claim that a lack of control and a general uncertainty about the world share the same threatening aspects and therefore both lead to a desire to re-establish the notion of an orderly world. Findings like this are in line with more general threat defense models like the meaning maintenance model (MMM; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006), which is based on the assumption that we share a sense-making motivation which is represented in an individual meaning framework. This meaning framework provides the foundation for an individual’s expectations and consequently, if a person experiences an occurrence that is in discrepancy with her expectation it threatens to this person’s meaning framework. One way to cope with the resulting unpleasantness is the affirmation of believe systems that can be related or entirely unrelated to the threat-content (Proulx, Inzlicht, & Harmon-Jones, 2012). The understanding of
self-threats as more general meaning violations is supported by a line of research in which defensive reactions, usually evoked by self-threats such as loss of control or MS, are caused by violations of content unrelated expectations; such as being presented with reverse-colored playing cards (Proulx & Major, 2013), exposed to surrealist art (Proulx & Heine, 2009; Randles, Heine, & Santos, 2013) or absurdist humor (Proulx, Heine, & Vohs, 2010). While the MMM is just one example of a broader approach, there are various theories trying to make sense of the conflicting observations (for an overview, see Jonas et al., 2014). While it might seem tempting to prefer a more parsimonious explanation, discard threat specificity and explain various threat reactions altogether in a more general concept, Shepherd, Kay, Landau, & Keefer, (2011) provided evidence in sharp conflict with such a notion and highlighted that the unique attributes of certain threats should cannot easily be denied. In their experiments, they presented
participants with control-, uncertainty or mortality threat manipulations and subsequently provided them with either order or identity compensations. The results showed a stronger preference for threat-related defense, hence a mortality threat reinforced caused an identity affirmation, while a control threat caused people to choose for tool that would support them to bring more structure to their life. As findings like these provide support for the notion that even though there seem to be similarities in threat responses, the unique threat characteristics are still relevant.
A psychophysiological threat measure.
Thus, while research has shown that the context of the compensatory affirmation is related to the threat (Shepherd et al., 2011) other research provides evidence that threat context might not play an important role (Proulx et al., 2012). As this controversy is still subject of
scientific discussion, it becomes important to explore the underlying mechanisms that cause defensive reactions. Some theories argue that threats cause the needs to obtain a certain harmony through reinforcing psychological resources that sustain a connection to the self and the world Other theories see no need for such complex models and describe threat defense as a purely palliative in nature (for an overview, see Jonas et al., 2014). However even in the case of the latter, it is likely that some defense mechanisms are more effective in certain situations and against certain kind of threats. The challenge is to find methods that allow comparing the effectiveness of different compensatory affirmations.
(Shepherd et al., 2011) compared the preferences for compensatory affirmations by comparing how different threats influence for instance the support for a political leader or anticipated engagement with a consumer product. While these sorts of approaches represent the first steps in comparing defense preferences, they remain problematic for evaluating
effectiveness. In the paradigm of CCM for instance, a person expresses stronger support for external control when her personal control is threatened (Kay et al., 2008). Thus we detect the presence of the threat through the defensive reaction, which likely functions as a solution to the dissonance that the threat causes. This approach limits the interpretation of the results in a manner which is represented in the following hypothetical experiment. Let us assume we would compare the effectiveness of various more or less content related defenses. We might for
instance find, that a threat causes people's support to increase more strongly in a content related affirmation (option A), compared to the increase in affirmation in a content unrelated affirmation (option B). This could be interpreted in two contrary ways. On the one hand, one could argue that the stronger effect size (stronger reaction) implies a stronger use of option A, as affirming support for option A serves as a better defense. On the other hand one could conclude that a
person reacts less strongly to option B, as a less strong reaction is necessary because option B provides a more effective defense and therefore the reaction does not have to be as strong as in option A. If affirmation B is more effective a weak increase could be already enough to resolve a person’s dissonance. We would not be able to conclude which interpretation is more plausible because we have no independent measure of the intensity of the actual threat and we only rely of the measure of a potential threat resolution,. To avoid problems like these, it is necessary to develop tools that can measure the intensity of the reaction caused by a threat. The first
approaches to use psychophysiological measures for this purpose have already been undertaken. Laurin et al., (2008) tried skin conductance, which is a useful measure of arousal, but failed to detect different responses to uncertainty threats. This is likely due to the limitation that, based on a measure of skin conductance we are unable to distinguish between valence, hence negative or positive arousal.
In order to extend on the existing research on psychophysiological reaction to uncertainty threats, the current study explored skin temperature, using an iButton sensor, a highly sensitive measurement tool, uncomplicated to use and low in cost. Skin temperature can serve as an indirect measure of ventricular contractility (VC) and directly measured, VC which has been demonstrated to react differently in response to challenge or threat (Blascovich, Mendes,
Tomaka, Salomon, & Seery, 2003; Frings, Hurst, Cleveland, Blascovich, & Abrams, 2012). The threat-challenge model (Tomaka, Blascovich, Kelsey, & Leitten, 1993) claims that task that require resources which are available are seen as challenges while a task that requires more resources than available is a threat. The positive arousal evicted by a challenge led to decreased VC while the anxiety caused by a threat led to increased VC. In terms of temperature this would mean that a threat would decrease skin temperature while an compensatory affirmation would
increase it. Based on this, we expected that a threat affects a person’s skin temperature and that we measure lower temperature for participant’s who face a lack of control threat. If lack of control is a threat to order, it would follow that perceptions of order were affected by the lack of control and that an affirmation of order would help to restore this notion of order, relieve the participant from the state of anxiety and therefore increase temperature. I used the opportunity of the experimental design to also add some measurements of emotions. As a recent study has shown that uncertain emotions cause compensatory control reactions (J. a Whitson et al., 2015), it is reasonable to assume the reverse, namely that a lack of control threat would cause uncertain emotions. If this can be confirmed, it would provide further evidence for the argument that a control threat shares characteristics of a general uncertainty treat.
Based on the reasoning outlined above, I formulated five hypotheses:
Hypothesis (1): People whose perception of control is strengthened perceive the world as more orderly and structured than people whose perception of control is threatened.
Hypothesis (2): Lack of control will increase a notion of uncertainty
Hypothesis (3): An order affirmation will increase people certain emotions / decrease uncertain emotions.
Hypothesis (4): Threatening people’s perception of control will decrease their skin temperature, while strengthening their perception of control will increase their skin temperature.
Hypothesis (5): An order affirmation will restore people’s skin temperature to a pre-threat state.
I measured three additional variables with the intention to control for potential
confounding factors. First a measure of personal need for structure was included at the beginning and the end of the study as it might influence how strongly participants would be affected by
lack of control and it has been shown to be affected by control threats (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). Secondly I included a measure of self-esteem, a typical mediator in threat defense
research (Jonas et al., 2014) and thirdly, a measure of participants tendency of level of construal, a measure that has been used to assess people’s level of abstraction (Vallacher & Wegner, 1989).
Methods Participants and Design.
Seventy three participants (Mage = 21.78, SD = 3.50) participated for course credits or a
monetary reward. Though for various reasons some participants had to be excluded from certain parts of the analysis (see Results). Participants were distributed over three conditions, using a block randomization. The three conditions were:
(1) a low control condition, followed that by an order affirmation. (2) a low control condition, without affirmation.
(3) a high control condition, without affirmation. (For a graphical overview of the conditions see Fig1.)
In this way the design included two main independent variables, low control vs. high control and subsequently, either a distal order affirmation or no affirmation. The main dependent variables were a set of three questions assessing participants’ perceptions of order in the world, a measurement of the temperature of the tip of their left index finger and an assessment of eight emotions that fall in the spectrum of either negative or positive in valence or certain or an uncertain appraisal. This design allowed me to compare the effects of high vs. low control on
participant’s skin temperature and perception of order in the world. As the experiment includes a condition with and without order affirmation, it additionally allows to test how this affirmation affects participants order perception, temperature and emotions. The experiment was conducted in Qualtrics (www.qualtrics.com) and all measures were conducted using 100-point slider scales.
Control Manipulation.
To manipulate perceptions of control, I used a recall task to induce either a feeling of low control or high control (Kay et al., 2008; Rutjens, van der Pligt, & van Harreveld, 2010). In the low control condition participants were asked to recall and describe an unpleasant situation which has occurred in the last month or years in which they lacked any control. Afterwards they were presented with a short text arguing that people cannot control their future and they were asked provide three reasons that support this notion. In contrast to that, participants in the high control condition were asked to recall an unpleasant situation in which they were fully under control and had to find arguments that support the notion that they are in control of their life and that the future is in their own hands. The manipulation was followed by a manipulation check which consisted of three items in which participants had to indicate how much control they had in the described situation, how unpleasant the situation was, and if they generally perceive themselves more as a director or as an actor in their life. Additional to the main dependent and independent measures, we included as potential covariates participants’ level of abstraction, their personal need for structure and their self-esteem.
Order Affirmation
After the recall task some participants were provided with a short text which supports the notion that the world is a place of order and structure. We used an order affirmation in which the order and structure of the world is illustrated through a description of the leaves of a tree (Kay, Laurin, Fitzsimons, & Landau, 2014). The text describes phenomena such as “each [species of tree] have their own intricate patterns of symmetry” and emphasizes that “nature seems to produce its beauty by obeying systematic laws”. Participants in the control condition received a text that was unrelated to structure and order and described the importance that trees have for our society.
Finger Temperature
Throughout the entire experiment participants’ skin-temperate was measured with an iButton temperature measuring device that had been attached to their left index finger. The iButton device allowed measuring temperature on a time interval of one second and an accuracy of 0.0625°C. The temperate and exact time of the measurement was recorded by the iButton. To map these data onto the questionnaire, the questionnaire included five time stamps which recorded the time during critical moments (see Fig. 1). The time was recorded just before participants were about to undergo the control manipulation, just after they completed control manipulation, just after they completed the order affirmation, and when they finished the questionnaire. Prior and after the questionnaire, we showed participants a video snippet of a nature documentary from British television. The video prior to the questionnaire (length 9:20 min) was included to allow participant’s temperature to normalize and provide sufficient time to assess their baseline temperature. For each participant we gauged temperature during the five
minutes prior the presentation of the control manipulation to calculate a baseline. The time between the completion of the control manipulation and the completion of the affirmation was used to evaluate the effect of the control manipulation on people’s temperature (T1), while the time between the completion of the affirmation and the end of the final video (length 4:05 min) was used to evaluate the effect of the affirmation (T2). All temperatures are reported in degree Celsius.
Emotions
To assess participant’s level of (un)certainty and positive or negative affect, they were asked to rate eight different emotions on strongly they feel them in that moment. I used the following eight emotions which have previously been used by (Whitson et al., 2015) to induce positive or negatively valued (un)certainty: happiness and contentment (certain, positive), anger and disgust (certain, negative), surprise and hope (uncertain, positive) and fear and worry (uncertain, negative).
Fig1. Timeline of the experimental design
Fig. 1. Overview of the time sampling. The vertical lines represent the critical time points in which the time in the
survey was recorded. The braces on the top illustrate the time periods that were analyzed in regard to skin
temperature. *The average duration was: T1 (1 min 36 sec); T2 (6 min 3 sec).
Potential Covariates and Exploratory Analysis
In additional to the main dependent and independent measures, we assessed participants’ level of abstraction with the Behavior Identification Form (BIF; α = .79, r = .82; Vallacher & Wegner, 1989), their Personal Need for Structure (PNS scale; α = .77; r = .84; Thompson, Naccarato & Parker 1989) and participants self-esteem (SE) with the single-item self-esteem scale (Hendin, & Trzesniewski, 2001).
Procedure
After participants were welcomed in the lab I asked them about their perceived body temperature. In case they were cycling through the cold or just smoked a cigarette outside, I added a five to ten minutes waiting period before I attached the iButton temperature measure to their left index finger and asked them to sign an informed consent.
The first part of the experiment consisted of the BIF, the PNS and the SE surveys. After these had been answered participants watched the first video and subsequently underwent the control manipulation. After completion, they answered the questions of the manipulation check, indicated how they felt at this certain moment on the eight emotions and were presented with questions about perceived order and structure in the world. This was followed by the affirmation (either order affirmation or no affirmation) and again an assessment of their emotions, their perceived order and structure, the PNS and SE. To provide some time to measure how
participants skin temperature would change after the affirmation, we finally presented them with another video at the end.
Results
For clarity reasons the result section is split and the first part will focus on the results of the questionnaire (hypothesis 1 – 3), while the second part evaluates the results of the hypothesis regarding skin temperature (4 and 5). Before testing the hypotheses I controlled whether our participants understood the instructions and correctly followed the procedure. This revealed that one participant in the low control condition failed to describe a situation outside of his control and the participant was therefore removed from all analysis (n = 72).
Manipulation Checks
After one participant was removed for not following the instructions, I compared the answers of the remaining participants. As condition one and two were exactly identical to that point I used a planned contrast ANOVA to combine them and compare their results to condition three. Participants were asked to assess how much control they experienced in the described situation and the planned comparison confirmed that participants in the low control conditions reported lower levels of control than participants in the high control condition (low control: M = 11.05, SD = 15.07, high control: M = 76.68, SD = 17.44; t(69) = 16.89, p < .001. To be sure that there are no additional differences I also looked at a multiple comparison, which confirmed that condition 1 did not differ from condition 2 (p = .49) but the difference to condition three was true for condition 1 (p <.001) as well as condition 2 (p <.001).
Comparing the self-assessed unpleasantness of the recalled situation indicated that participant’s in the low control condition reported that the situations they reported were more unpleasant than the participants in the high control condition (low control: M = 89.43, SD =
17.31, high control: M = 80.92, SD = 17.70; t(69) = 2.13, p < .05). However the analysis also confirmed that all participants described an unpleasant experience as the data were highly skewed with all answers in the spectrum of high unpleasantness z = 9.50, p < .001 (cond1(24) M = 90.75, SD = 11.32, cond2(23) M = 89.35, SD = 21.53, cond3(25) M = 80.92, SD = 17.70). A post-hoc analysis showed that neither did condition 1 and 2 differ in unpleasantness (p = .78) nor did the conditions 1 or condition 2 by itself reach a significant difference to condition 3
(respectively p = .05; p = .10) .
Finally the comparison for the difference in the third question, if participants perceive themselves as director of their lives, revealed that participants in the low control condition reported that they saw themselves less a directors of their lives. (low control: M = 51.14, SD = 26.82, high control: M = 64.60, SD = 20.72; t(69) = 2.16, p < .05). Similarly to the results of the previous question, condition 1 did not differ to condition 2 (p = .88) but by themselves, both failed to reach a significant difference to condition 3 (respectively p = .08; p = .06; for an overview see Table1).
Table 1
Manipulation Check (Means (SD))
Measure Levels of Control Unpleasantness Director of my life
Cond. 1 (low control) 12.66 (15.31) 90.75 (11.32) 51.67 (28.81) Cond.2 (low control) 9.45 (15.30) 89.23 (21.53) 50.5 (24.93)
Cond. 3 (high control) 76.68* (17.44) 80.92 (17.70) 64.6 (20.72) *Mean differs significantly (α = .05).
Control Manipulation
Order perceptions.
After participant’s perception of control was either increased or decreased they indicated on three questions how much order they perceive in the world. To test hypothesis (1) that more control leads to higher perceptions of order and structure than little control, ANOVA’s were conducted to compare the effect of the control manipulation on each of the three questions.
The world as orderly place.
The analysis of question one supported hypothesis (1), as those whose control was threatened reported lower agreement to the statement “the world is an orderly place” compared to those participants whose perception of control was increased. To come to this conclusion I first conducted an omnibus ANOVA which indicated a difference between the conditions, F(2, 69) = 3.41, p = .05. Afterwards the specific differences were explored using a planned
comparison that compared condition 1 and 2 (low control) with condition 3 (high control). This analysis indicated that participants in the low control conditions perceived the world less orderly than participants in the high control condition (low control: M = 2.17, SD = 19.06; high control: M = 39.32., SD = 23.79, t(69) = 2.39, p < .05). While the planned comparison confirmed the hypothesis I also conducted an exploratory post hoc analysis which revealed that only the average of condition 1 turned out significantly lower at than the average of condition 3 (p < .05; for means and SD see Table 2).
Events in life are coincidental.
There is strong evidence for an effect of a manipulation of perception of control on the perception of one’s life events. The omnibus ANOVA confirmed a difference between the three conditions F(2, 69) = 6.88, p < .005 and a planned comparison confirmed our hypothesis and revealed that participants in the low control condition expressed more agreement with the statement “Events in their life are to the biggest part coincidental” (M = 55.1, SD = 22.17) than participants in the high control condition. (M = 36.3, SD = 18.8; t(69) = 3.60, p < .001). Also here I decided to conduct an exploratory post hoc analysis and compared all groups with each other. This confirmed that there is no difference between condition 1 and 2 on the question (p = .40) and that the condition 1 as well as condition 2 indicated significantly higher agreement than conditions 3 (p < .005 and p < .05; for means and SD see Table 2).
Life is ruled by randomness.
The third statement “Our life is ruled by randomness” fails to show a difference between the groups according to the omnibus ANOVA F(2,62) = 1.79, p = .18). Because an exploratory analysis showed a strong correlation between this question and question two (‘events of my life are to the biggest part coincidental’) r = .62, I also conducted a comparison with both questions merged. In this case the omnibus test confirmed a different result among the conditions F(2, 69) = 5.09, p < .05 and the planned comparison (low vs. high control) turned out highly significant t(69) = 3.11, p < .005).
Table 2
Control Manipulation (Means (SD))
Measure World as orderly
Place
Events in my life are coincidental
Life is ruled by randomness
Cond. 1 (low control) 24.12 (18.13) 57.71 (20.47) 58.14 (20.82) Cond.2 (low control) 30.22 (18.97) 52.52 (23.99) 53.23 (24.09)
Cond. 3 (high control) 39.32*1(23.79) 36.28 (18.81)* 45.04 (20.38)
*Mean differs significantly; *1Mean differs significantly to condition 1 (α = .05);
Emotions.
To evaluate hypothesis (2), that a lack of control will increase a notion of uncertainty I compared certain, uncertain, positive and negative emotions between the three conditions The hypothesis could not be confirmed as the omnibus ANOVA showed no difference between the conditions for positive emotions F(2.69) = .145, p = .87, no difference for negative emotions F(2.69) = 1.54, p = .22, no difference for uncertain emotions F(2.69) = .391, p = .68 but a marginally significant difference on certain emotions F(2.69) = 2.91 , p = .06. A closer look at the multiple comparisons showed that the only difference is between that condition 2 (low control) and condition 3 and the effect goes in the direction that condition actually reports stronger certain emotions than condition 3 (M2 = 43.6, SD = 10.31 vs. M3 = 37.47, SD = 8.98; p <
.05). Splitting the category certain emotions up in its four components makes clear that the difference is due to the fact that the difference is due to the emotion disgust, which is the only
emotion that differs between the conditions F(2,69) = 5.46, p < .01. The reported disgust in condition 2 differs to condition 3 (p < .005) as well as to condition 1 (p < .005).
Structure Affirmation
After the control manipulation, participants underwent either an order affirmation
(condition 1) or no affirmation (condition 2). Condition 2 served as control condition and could be compared to condition 1 to estimate the effect of the order affirmation. The most relevant conditions for the hypothesis were the low control conditions (Condition 1 and 2). Nevertheless for reasons of completeness, condition 3 was included in the analysis.
Manipulation Checks.
The order affirmation was intended to strengthen people’s notion that the world is well structured and follows predictable laws and patterns. The same questions which were used to assess people’s perception of order and structure were used to evaluate if the order affirmation had its intended effect.
The world as orderly place.
A repeated measures ANOVA revealed a main effect F(1, 69) = 19.21, p < .001, as well as a significant interaction of the three conditions F(2, 69) = 6.77, p < .01. To explore the nature of the interaction I conducted a simple effects analysis which led to the conclusion that only in condition 1, in which participants received an order affirmation, there was evidence for an
increase in the perception of the world as an orderly place (from M = 24.12, SD = 18.13 to M = 48.29, SD = 25.14; F(1, 69) = 30.50, p < .001). There is no evidence that the order affirmation affected if participants perceive their life as coincidental F(1,69) = 2.94, p = .09, nor did it affect if they perceive their life to be ruled by randomness F(1,69) = 1.04, p = .31.
Table 3
Control Manipulation (Means (SD))
Measure World as orderly
Place Events in my life are coincidental Life is ruled by randomness Cond. 1 T1 (low control) T2 (order affirmation) 24.12 (18.13) 48.29 (24.90)*t1 57.43 (20.57) 56.95 (24.35) 58.14 (20.82) 54.90 (23.08) Cond.2 T1 (low control) T2 (no affirmation) 30.22 (18.97) 35.65 (25.14) 53.68 (23.88) 58.63 (26.09) 53.23 (24.09) 50.82 (23.21) Cond. 3 T1 (high control) T2 (no affirmation) 39.32 (23.79) 42.96 (22.35) 36.28 (18.81)* 37.92 (20.88) 45.04 (20.38) 43.24 (17.78)
*Mean differs significantly to all other conditions (BS factor) *1Mean differs significantly to condition 1 (BS factor); *t1Mean differs significantly to measurement at T1 (WS factor); (α = .05).
Emotions.
To evaluate hypothesis (3) that the order affirmation will increase certain and decrease uncertain emotions, a repeated measures ANOVA was used to evaluate if participant’s emotions were affected. I compared emotions measured on T1 with emotions measured on T2 (see Fig. 2). It turned out that there was a general effect for uncertain emotions F(2,62) = 7.85, p < .001 while this effects indicates a general trend for uncertain emotions to decline among all conditions in a pairwise comparison only condition 2 reports a decline that reaches significance F(1,69) = 4.47, p < .05. An interaction effect for negative emotions F(2,69) = 4.37, p < .05 made it apparent that negative emotions decreased for both low control conditions and regardless of the presence or absence of an order affirmation (cond. 1, p < .001 ; cond. 2, , p < .001). Besides that there were no changes over time for certain emotions F(2,69) = .523, p = .472 or positive emotions F(2,69) = 2.45, p = .122. Hence hypothesis (3) was not confirmed but if control was previously
threatened negative emotions decreased for condition 1 as well as condition two, hence independently of the presence of an order affirmation (for an overview see table 4).
Table 4
Control Manipulation (Means (SD))
Measure Uncertain Emotions Certain Emotions Positive Emotions Negative Emotions Cond. 1 T1 T2 41.67 (12.90) 38.38 (12.20) 40.0 (6.70) 38.5 (7.78) 56.26 (14.00) 60.10 (15.55) 25.43 (15.99) 16.77 (13.86)*t1 Cond.2 T1 T2 39.07 (18.40) 34.76 (19.48)*t1 43.56 (10.31) 42.22 (9.95) 54.18 (15.68) 57.22 (13.75) 28.45 (21.15) 19.77 (14.86)*t1 Cond. 3 T1 T2 37.95 (13.61) 35.89 (12.81) 37.47 (8.98)*2 38.69 (8.89) 55.45 (9.83) 54.98 (11.31) 19.97 (13.29) 19.6 (14.46)
*2Mean differs significantly to condition 2 (α = .05); *t1Mean differs significantly to measurement at T1 (WS factor); (α = .05).
Skin Temperature
Due to technical difficulties I failed to measure the skin temperature of five participants. One participant was removed as she verbally reported increased anxiety due to the realization
that she had forgotten an appointment which overlapped with the experiment. Additionally four participants were removed as their temperature baseline qualified as extreme outliers in their respective condition. Extreme outliers were defined as cases that exceeded a deviation of three times the interquartile range from the mean. This resulted in a sample of size n = 62.
Control Manipulation
As described earlier and illustrated in Fig.1, participants underwent three conditions and their temperature was measured and averaged. This resulted in three temperature measures, a baseline measure, T1 measure (after the control manipulation and T2 (after the order
affirmation). An ANOVA confirmed that there were no differences in baseline temperature between conditions F(2, 59) = 0.70, p = .50 (cond1(17): M1 = 32.42°C, SD = 3.33; cond2(21):
M2 = 31.16°C, SD = 4.70; cond3(24): M3 = 31.00°C, SD = 3.86).
To test the hypothesis (4) and evaluate the effect of the control manipulation I conducted repeated measures ANOVA which showed no main effect. The predicted interaction effect however emerged (F(1, 60) = 9,41, p < .01) and confirmed the hypothesis that the temperature decreased for participants in the low control condition (from MB = 31.72°C, SD = 4.13; to M 1=
31.16°C, SD = 3.98; F (1,60) = 5.39, p < .05), while it increased for participants in the high control condition (from MB = 31.00°C , SD = 3.86; to M1 = 31.63°C, SD = 3.22; F(1,60) = 4.30,
p < .05). While this part of the analysis clearly confirmed the hypothesis (4), an exploratory analysis however showed that the significant decrease in temperature disappears if the two low control conditions are split up. While the interaction effect remains F(1, 60) = 4,68, p < .05 condition 1 fails to reach significance F(2,59) = 1.72, p = .20 and condition 2 reaches marginal significance F(2,59) = 3.68, p = .06. The significant temperature increase in condition 3 remains
stable F(2,59) = 4.24, p < .05 (for means and SD see Table 4). To gain some further inside in the relationship between perceived control, perceived order and skin temperature, I also evaluated the correlations between the self- reported control (“How much control did you have over the described situation”) and the three questions that were used to test perception of order and randomness in the world, the perceived order in the world (“The world is an orderly place”, “Events in their life are to the biggest part coincidental”, AND (“our life is ruled by
randomness”) and their skin temperature change from T1 to baseline (T1 temperature subtracted from baseline). The analysis confirmed a correlation between the self-reported control and the skin-temperature (r = .255, p <.01) and between the evaluation that events in my life are mainly coincidental (r = -.278, p < .05). There is no correlation between unpleasantness of the described situation (p = .67), the assessment of the world as orderly place (p = .37) and question 3 (our lives are ruled by randomness p = .99). This is the case despite of the strong correlation between question 2 and question 3 (r = .621, p < .001).
Order Affirmation
Testing hypothesis (5) and comparing if the order affirmation affected participants skin temperature differently in the three conditions did not provide evidence to support the
hypothesis. The repeated measures ANOVA which compared the temperature change that occurred between T1 and T2 failed to show the expected interaction F(2,57) = .839, p = .44 and a look at the simple effects per condition also did not provide any evidence that the order
affirmation helped to restore skin temperature. Even though there was no interaction effect, the data revealed that the temperature of participants in condition 1, where participants received the order affirming text, did not decrease (from MT1 = 31.95 °C ,SD = 3.27; to MT2 = 31.85 °C, SD =
3.40; F(1,59) = 1.26, p = .47), while it did decrease for participants in condition 2, where no affirmation was given (from MT1 = 30.53 °C, SD = 4.45; MT2 = 30.21 °C, SD = 4.49; F(1,59) =
7.23, p < .01).
It is noteworthy that for participants in the third condition (high control + no affirmation) the temperature initially increased but then quickly decreased again and returned close to
baseline level (from MT1 = 31.63 °C, SD = 3.22, to MT2 = 31.30 °C, SD = 2.67; F(1,59) = 30.11,
p < .05) . For an overview see Table 5 and Figure 2.
Table 5
Control Manipulation (Means (SD))
Measure Baseline
Temperature
T1 T2
Cond. 1 (low control) 32.42 °C (3.33) 31.95 °C (3.27) 31.85 °C (3.40) Cond.2 (low control) 31.16 °C (4.70) 30.53 °C (4.45)* 30.21°C (4.49)*
Cond. 3 (high control) 31.00 °C (3.86) 31.63°C (3.22)* 31.30 °C (3.44)*
Figure 2
Skin temperature change per condition
Error bars = +/- 1 SE
Covariates.
Construal level, self-esteem and personal need for structure have been added as potential covariates for all major analysis, but in no case did they alter the results significantly. Therefore they have been dismissed as covariates.
Discussion
The current research explored if skin temperature could be used to as tool to measure the effect of lack of control threat and the effectiveness of an order affirmation as defense. Even though the hypotheses were only partly confirmed, there is evidence that skin temperature as indirect
measure of VC has potential to become a useful measurement tool in threat compensation research. Additionally, the analysis of skin temperature in combination with questions about the perception of order and structure revealed some unexpected results which are discussed in the end of the paragraph and provide ideas for further research into the specific nature of the desire for order and structure.
The main hypotheses, that skin temperature would decrease due to a lack of control and subsequently increase after order affirmation, were only partially supported. In general a lack of control did decrease participant’s skin temperature while a strengthening of control perception led to heightened temperature. However, it is interesting to look at the effect in detail. It is the underlying assumption of the interpretation of much previous research that the need for order forms a sub goal of a need for structure; hence a threat of control would form a threat to the notion of structure. The data confirms this, as participants whose control was threatened rated the world in general as less orderly and tend to agree that events in their own live happened more by accident. Skin temperature however only seems to correlate with perceived control and with the latter question that refers to participants own life, instead to the question that refers to the world in general. This becomes relevant for the evaluation of the (lack of) effect of the order
affirmation. Contrary to predictions, the order affirmation did not increase the temperature. The data revealed that the order affirmation, which is provided to restore the notion of order, did
affect the rating of the world as orderly place, but had no effect on how strongly participants were convinced that events in their life happened accidental. If a person’s skin temperature is mainly determined by a personal conception of randomness in their own life and not by the perception order in the world in general, then it logically follows that an affirmation that only affects general order, failed to restore a person’s temperature. This leads to 2 possible
explanations: (1) Skin temperature is a psychophysiological reaction that only reacts to a certain aspect and not to the full spectrum of factors that the threat involves. (2) The effects of a control threat are mainly driven by the personal aspect of a feeling of randomness and the general order affirmation failed to provide an effective compensation. My preference tends to the second explanation as I perceive it as more likely and also more easily falsifiable.
The order affirmation used in the experiment addressed the structure in the world by describing orderly patterns in nature and as result it did increase participant’s perception of order in the world. However it seems as if the affirmation of an orderly world failed to spill over into evaluations of randomness in participant’s own lives. As the same affirmation has been reported to strengthen people’s motivation to pursue goals and engage in long term planning (Kay et al., 2014), it follows that a belief in a structured world makes the world seem more predictable and make it more realistic that one can pursue and achieve one goals. However to actually achieve the goals still requires personal control. The present results state that if the world is perceived as an orderly might only be relevant for a person if the order and structure is also reflected in the reality of her own life. While there is evidence that people prefer concepts and theories that provide more order and structure over concepts that provide less structure (Rutjens et al., 2010, 2013)), it might be that it nevertheless does not provide actual relief from the aversive effect of the threat. A person might be searching for order and structure in the world as an orderly and
structured world is more predictable and therefore prerequisite to be controlled, however an orderly world does not automatically provide a person with control. Like a losing chess player might feel unable to obtain any control over the outcome of game that itself entirely lacks of randomness, it is imaginable that a person can feel out of control in a perfectly structured and orderly world.
In addition to skin temperature and order perceptions I also assessed people’s emotions. While a recent study found that uncertain emotions cause defensive control compensations (J. a Whitson et al., 2015), the present study found no indication that a control threat also caused uncertain emotions. This is no evidence against conclusions that control, as well as uncertainty, represent both part of a need for structure, but it provides evidence that they are not only
conceptually independent, but also independent in affect. While the present study aimed to test a tool that could be used in experiments testing threat specificity, I interpret the absence of an uncertain affect as indication for the unique attributes of a lack of control threat.
Limitations.
It has to be mentioned that while I state that the results confirmed the hypothesis that the lack of control threat decreased skin temperature, a comparison of all conditions showed no significant decrease in condition 1. As to this point in time, condition 1 and 2 were absolutely identical making it reasonable to combine them to evaluate an effect of lack of control. It is unfortunate that a loss of participants in condition 1 seriously weakened the power to find an effect in this condition (n = 17), but this becomes mainly problematic in the analysis of the effects of the order affirmation. The conclusion, that the order affirmation caused the
the decrease has stopped, as it did not decrease initially in this particular condition. It is impossible to conclude if the temperature did not decline due to a lack in power to find the effect, or if the order affirmation caused the temperature to stabilize.
The reader might wonder why the results are very different for the two questions that test personal perceptions of randomness (“To a great extend my events in my life are accidental”) and (“Our life is ruled by randomness”). It is indeed surprising for the questions show a strong positive relationship (r = .621, p < .001). While the questions were intended to test the same concept a difference emerged which resulted from the translation from English into Dutch. While the original questions used by (Kay et al., 2008) was “things that occur in my life are mostly a matter of chance” the Dutch version used “Onze levens worden geregeerd door willekeur” which translates more broadly into “Our lives are ruled by randomness”. Thus the first questions shows a clear emphasize on “My life” while the second question asks more general about “Our lives”. It is possible that the fact that the lack of control only affected the first question, as it could be that participants more easily adjust believes about their own lives than about life in general.
Perspective for Future research.
While it seems well documented that a person in lack of control desires a notion of structure and order (Rutjens et al., 2013) the present research shows that this order affirmation might still fail to provide actual relief from the threat. I am aware that it has been demonstrated that in some situations people might prefer a pure order affirmation over an order affirmation that includes an external control agent (Rutjens et al., 2010) but I believe that it is necessary to have a closer look at the limitations of order affirmation. While it is the current assumption that the need for control is a sub goal of the need for order, a very different perspective could be that
the need for order is the sub goal, as it forms a prerequisite to fulfill the need of control. As the present study has proven, skin temperature can be used tool to detect the threatening effects of lack of control as it causes a decrease in temperature. While I failed to find an increase in temperature based on an order affirmation, there is some evidence that the affirmation might have stopped a further decrease in temperature. However further studies with more statistical power should be used it to focus on exploring the palliative effects order affirmations on control threats.
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