THE BATTLE AGAINST CHAOS:
PERCEIVED PERSONAL CONTROL AND
CONSUMERS’ SUSCEPTIBILITY TO ADVERTISING
THE BATTLE AGAINST CHAOS:
PERCEIVED PERSONAL CONTROL AND CONSUMERS’ SUSCEPTIBILITY TO ADVERTISING
Master thesis, MscBA, specialization Marketing Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Marketing
Words: 5012 March 15th, 2012 ROOS DE BILDT Studentnumber: 1563939 Oude Ebbingestraat 46 9712 HL Groningen Tel.: +31(0)6-22157277 E-mail: roosdebildt@live.nl Supervisor: Prof. Dr. B. M. Fennis
ABSTRACT
What happens when people lose their feeling of personal control? Previous research proposed this instigates individuals’ need for a controlled, structured world which makes them more susceptible to external control influences, especially influences that provide this sense of structure. By means of an experiment we tested whether this notion also holds for consumers and their susceptibility to the social influence form of advertising. While the level of personal control and the structure of the advertisements yielded no significant effects on the participants’ susceptibility to advertising, the results did indicate that lowering an individual’s perceived personal control increases their need for order, discomfort with ambiguity and need for cognitive closure. Hence, marketing has to investigate ways to address these needs in order to activate consumers’
susceptibility to its influence techniques.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ... 5
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 7
Perceived personal control... 7
Weakened personal control ... 7
Susceptibility to advertising ... 9
Need for structure ... 10
Conceptual framework ... 11
3. METHOD ... 12
Participants and design ... 12
Procedure ... 12
Independent variables ... 13
Perceived personal control ... 13
Advertising structure ... 14
Dependent variables ... 15
Susceptibility to advertising ... 15
Need for structure ... 15
Mood... 17
4. RESULTS ... 18
Mood ... 18
Cognitive responses ... 20
Affective and intentional responses ... 20
Need for structure ... 20
Implicit need for structure ... 20
Explicit need for structure and related constructs ... 20
5. DISCUSSION ... 23
Limitations and further research ... 25
REFERENCES ... 27
1. INTRODUCTION
‘Yes, we can.’ United States president Barack Obama’s campaign slogan effectively demonstrates the importance for people to have a sense of control in their lives. Individuals choose to believe they influence desired and undesired outcomes to be able to deal with the chaos of life (Skinner, Chapman & Blates, 1988; Kay, Gaucher, Napier, Callan & Laurin, 2008). So what happens when people lose this grip and their perceived personal control is threatened? Research under different denominators has shown a variety of reactions to the loss of perceived personal control, including obedience to authority (Milgram, 1974), development of superstitions (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), strengthened beliefs in a controlling God and increased support for the government (Kay et al., 2008). What these coping mechanisms have in common is that they share the same effect: an increased susceptibility to social influence (Fennis & Aarts, 2012). Recent research indicates this phenomenon to be general such that when people lose their grip on personal control, this causes an indiscriminate susceptibility to a range of diverse proximate external influence forms (Fennis & Aarts, 2012). Considering the ever-proximate social control form that we are inundated with every day, this
phenomenon could have significant effects for economy’s thriving influence technique: advertising. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate whether this seemingly general phenomenon extends to the yet untested area of consumer spheres: Does consumers’ perceived personal control influence their susceptibility to advertising?
gap in the literature concerning this question. To date, research only investigated the influence of interpersonal social influence techniques on people with lowered perceived personal control (Fennis & Aarts, 2012). That is, influence tactics that involve human-to-human contact. This study would be the first to investigate whether this relationship also holds for non-personal influence attempts to explore the generalizability of the
phenomenon. The outcomes of this study are thus important to discover new applications of perceived personal control to expand the research field.
The following chapter elaborates on the research question by means of the
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Perceived personal control
Personal control signifies the self as the actor exercising control (Skinner, 1996). This control is defined by the perceived ability to have power on the relationship between the trinity of control components: agents, means and ends (Bandura, 1977; Gurin & Brim, 1984). The extent to which an individual beliefs he has personal control is determined by the perceived contingency between “the self as agent, the self’s actions or behaviors as means, and the effected change in the social or physical environment as the outcome” (Skinner, 1996, p. 558; see also Glass & Carver, 1980). Consequently, people experience personal control when they believe they are able to control their own actions, their actions affect the desired outcome or when they perceive a contingency between the self and the change in the environment. This involves subjective individual perceptions about how much control is available and can thus be distinguished from the actual, objective control in a situation (Skinner, 1996). The subjective control cognitions people hold seem to have a far from one-to-one relationship with the actual objective control conditions but they have significantly more effect on their behavior and mental functioning (Averill, 1973; Burger, 1989). Hence, perceived personal control is an essential human mechanism that strongly influences our reactions to outside influences in multiple situations (Averill, 1973; Burger, 1989; Lefcourt, 1973; White, 1959).
Weakened personal control
confusing world (Kay et al., 2008; Kay, Gaucher, McGregor & Nash, 2010). The
conviction of personal control provides a strong, direct defense mechanism against these psychological threats (Kay et al., 2010). Consequently, people show a strong drive to maintain positive perceptions of personal control, even in overly random situations (Langer, 1975; Presson & Benassi, 1996; White, 1959). Thinking otherwise has even shown to induce feelings of stress and anxiety as having a sense of control is assumed to be a fundamental benefit to individuals’ psychological functioning and well-being (Antonovsky, 1979; Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Lefcourt, 1973; Rothbaum, Weisz & Snyder, 1982; White, 1959).
When perceived personal control is impaired therefore, this spurs psychological and behavioral coping reactions. A world famous example of this is the experiment of Stanley Milgram (1963) in which participants relinquished their beliefs in personal control to obey to authority figures persuading them to administer lethal shocks to ostensible fellow participants. This ‘agentic shift’ in which people shift the control to an external authority also shows in other reactions to induced personal control (Milgram, 1974). For example Kay et al. (2008), found that lowering individuals’ perception of personal control in an experimental setting led to increased support to more indirect controlling agents such as a stronger belief in a controlling God and a powerful government.
view of the world as a controlled place, people “rely on external sources of control to provide a comforting sense that things are under control, even if not by their own means” (Kay et al., 2010: 38). Hence, when their perceived personal control is deficient, people depend on external influences to facilitate their basic need of psychological well-being (Kay et al., 2010; Lefcourt, 1973; White, 1959).
Recent findings indicate that the compensatory control mechanism does not limit itself to the influence of either abstract or concrete authority figures (Fennis & Aarts, 2012). In a series of three experiments, Fennis and Aarts (2012) tested their notion that lowering people’s perceived self-control makes them susceptible to a range of social influences: bystander inertia, obedience to authority and compliance with behavioral requests. They found that lowering participants’ feelings of personal control increased their susceptibility to all three forms of social influence, indiscriminate of the area in which the personal control was challenged and the method used to affect it. This indicates that the coping mechanism of compensatory control extends to a general and domain unspecific tendency to respond to a perceived absence of personal control with relinquishing control toward any (abstract or concrete) “type of external agent that happens to be proximate to the individual at that time” (Fennis & Aarts, 2012; 19).
Susceptibility to advertising
Fennis and Aarts (2012) indicate that compensatory control has an unqualified and significant impact on individuals’ behavior in a diverse range of social influence settings, it is assumed that lowering perceived personal control influences consumers’
susceptibility to the impersonal social influence form of advertising in a similar way. Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H1: Lowering consumers’ perceived personal control increases their susceptibility to advertising.
Need for structure
H1
H2
unconditional but depends on the extent to which advertising satisfies an underlying motive: the desire for structure.
Hence, consumers who are threatened in their feeling of personal control are expected to have an increased need for structure which makes them more susceptible to advertising that averts the anxiety-provoking feeling of a chaotic world. For example advertisements that contain visible boundaries or ads for premium brands in favor of unknown brands (Cutright, 2012). More specifically, we predict the effect of lowered perceived personal control on susceptibility to advertising to be moderated by the sense of structure the ad provides to its audience, such that the susceptibility effects will be stronger for structured rather than unstructured advertisements:
H2: Lowering consumers’ perceived personal control increases their susceptibility to structured rather than unstructured advertising.
Conceptual framework
3. METHOD
Participants and design
A total of 123 students (73 female, 50 male; Mage = 23.0 years, SD = 2.35) were recruited in the cafeteria of the University of Groningen and via an online survey
distributed by e-mail. They participated voluntarily in a 3 (high personal control vs. low personal control vs. baseline) x 2 (structured advertising vs. non-structured advertising) between subjects factorial design.
Procedure
We asked the participants to complete an anonymous survey consisting of a variety of combined studies relating to their personal experiences and impressions. The participants were randomly allocated to one of the six experimental conditions by
clicking on a link to the survey in the e-mail or by receiving one of the different versions of the paper questionnaire.
The first page of the survey comprised our manipulation of personal control that was meant to induce either a low, high or neutral state of perceived personal control. Following this manipulation, participants were asked to look at an advertisement on the next page. For half of them, this advertisement had an appearance that provided a sense of structure while for the other half, the advertising design was unstructured. We
a word-stem task completion task to assess the implicit need for structure the advertising design had brought about. The seventh page measured the affective and intentional responses to the ad using a prevalidated ad-persuasiveness and resistance scale.
Following the evaluation of the advertisement, the participants’ explicit need for structure was determined by the four page Need For Closure Scale (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). To exclude the possibility that participants’ mood influenced the results of the study, we finished the survey with a PANAS-questionnaire (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). On the fourteenth and last page, the participants were asked to fill in their demographics and were thanked for their participation. We debriefed the respondents by providing the possibility to leave their e-mail address to be informed about the results of the study. Filling in the questionnaire took them approximately 15 minutes.
Independent variables
Perceived personal control. The level of perceived personal control was manipulated using a procedure of Whitson and Galinsky (2008) as adapted by Fennis and Aarts (2012). In this task, we influenced participants’ agent-ends contingencies by having them answer three questions that primed their thoughts and feelings of a situation in which they had either high or low personal control. In the low perceived personal control condition these questions were: “Please briefly describe a situation out of your own life in which you lacked personal control, i.e., where your actions were not successful in bringing about the consequences you expected”, “Please briefly describe how you behaved in this situation in which you lacked personal control”, and “Please briefly describe the
(Fennis & Aarts, 2012). For the high perceived personal control condition, these
questions were reversed: “Please briefly describe a situation out of your life in which you experienced personal control, i.e., where your actions were successful in bringing about the consequences you expected”, “Please briefly describe how you behaved in this situation in which you experienced personal control”, and “Please briefly describe the emotions that you experienced in this situation in which you experienced personal control”. For the baseline task, participants were asked three control unrelated questions modified from the example of Cutright (2012): “Please briefly describe a movie or television show you saw in the past few months”, “Please briefly describe your thoughts about this movie or television show”, and “Please briefly describe the emotions that you experienced watching this movie or television show”. Previous studies have shown this manipulation produces reliable differences in perceived personal control (Cutright, 2012; Fennis & Aarts, 2012; Kay et al., 2008; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).
Advertising structure. To manipulate the sense of structure an ad brings, a recent advertisement of the well-known toothpaste brand ‘Zendium’ was adapted (see
appendix). Following the example of Cutright (2012), we induced perceived structure by visually bounding the advertisement by means of a dark-colored border while the
unstructured advertisement was not framed by a border. Moreover, the photos in the middle were placed straight while they were placed skew in the unstructured
Dependent variables
Susceptibility to advertising. Following the example of Knowles and Linn (2004), susceptibility to advertising was measured as the persuasion of the audience in terms of their cognitive, affective and intentional responses. To assess participants’ cognitive persuasion responses, we adopted a validated thought-listing technique from Quick and Stephenson (2007) and Sagarin et al. (2002). The participants were given 1,5 minutes to list the thoughts they had while viewing the advertisement. After the participants had listed their thoughts, they were asked to return to the list and mark each thought as either positive (+), negative (-) or neutral (n). The cognitive response to the advertisement was calculated as the number of positive thoughts minus the number of negative thoughts (Sagarin et al., 2002).
The affective and intentional responses towards the advertisement were assessed by employing the ad-persuasiveness scale of Campbell (1995) as adapted by Sagarin et al. (2002). This scale consists of four items measuring perceptions of the brand on a 7-point semantic differential scale (bad-good, pleasant-unpleasant, low quality-high quality, likeable-dislikeable), three items measuring the evaluation of the advertisement (pleasant-unpleasant, bad-good, awful-nice) and one item asking about the likelihood of future use (“If you were to use this type of product in the future, how likely are you to choose this
brand?”, extremely unlikely–extremely likely) (α = .80, N = 8). The mean score served as
Need for structure. To measure the need for structure the manipulated advertisements raised, a word-stem completion task was used to detect the participants’ implicit needs (Greenberg, Koole & Pyszczynski, 2004). The participants were given a set of 15 word stems they had to complete with the first word coming into their minds. Ten of the stems could be completed with either structure-related or neutral words. For example “Str…” could be completed as “Structured” or “Straw” and “Ne…” could be finished as “Neat” or “Neck”. The remaining five incomplete words served as filler items (see the appendix for the full overview). The number of structure related words the participants completed was calculated as a measure of their need for structure.
In addition to this implicit need for structure measure, we surveyed the
Mood. To check whether the manipulations of personal control and the advertisements caused any unintended effects on the participants’ mood states, we administered the Positive And Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clarke, & Tellegen, 1988). This schedule consists of 10 words that describe positive emotions (α = 0.88) and 10
words that include negative emotions (α = 0.82) (see appendix). For each of these items
the participants had to indicate on 5-point Likert scale to what extent they were experiencing them at that present moment (very slightly or not at all – a little –
4. RESULTS Mood
Performing an ANOVA on the positive and negative items of the PANAS scale showed that the personal control manipulation, the manipulation of the advertisement and the interaction between these variables did not influence the mood states of the
participants (all p’s > .05). Therefore, mood states did not interfere with the susceptibility and need for structure effects.
Susceptibility to advertising
To test the hypothesis that lowering people’s perceived personal control increases their susceptibility to advertising, particularly when this advertising provides a sense of structure, we performed a 3 (low vs. high vs. baseline personal control) x 2 (structured advertisement vs. unstructured advertisement) ANOVA on our measures of
susceptibility.
Cognitive responses. Pertaining to the participants’ cognitive responses, the interaction effect was not significant (F(2, 117) = 1.22, p = .30, η² = .02) nor did the analysis yield a significant main effect for personal control (F(2, 117) = .27, p = .77, η² = .00). However, the mean scores did point towards the hypothesized direction: participants with low perceived personal control showed to be more susceptible to the structured advertisement (M = -.24, SD = 1.48) than to the unstructured advertisement (M = -.85, SD = 1.87) while the high personal control condition showed a reversed pattern for the structured
1.75). The baseline condition followed the trend of the low personal control outcomes having higher susceptibility scores for the structured ad (M = -.19, SD = 2.50) as opposed to the unstructured version (M = -.25, SD = 2.43).
Overall it was notable that the thought-listing task yielded rather negative reactions (M = -.38, SD = 1.99). Examples of repetitive responses were: ‘If the slogan states brushing your teeth every day doesn’t help, how will this toothpaste help you?’, ‘It is not very logical that the people in the pictures are broadly smiling while they are bothered by tooth complaints’ and ‘This new word mondweerstand is not clear and not very convincible either’.
Affective and intentional responses. The ad-persuasiveness scale was notably correlated to the results of the thought-listing task (r(123) = .60, p < .01). Similar to the cognitive responses, the affective and intentional persuasion responses failed to produce a
significant interaction effect (F(2, 117) = 1.65, p = .20, η² = .03) nor was the main effect for personal control significant (F(2, 117) = .13, p = .88, η² = .00). Hence, no proof was found to support the hypotheses. Yet, the mean scores corresponded to the predicted direction once more. Participants with low perceived personal control were more
ad-persuasiveness scores when the participants were administered the structured (M = 3.58, SD = .80) rather than the unstructured advertisement (M = 3.44, SD = .73).
Need for structure
Implicit need for structure. A full factorial ANOVA on the implicit need for structure measure showed a significant interaction effect between the level of personal control and the structure of the advertisement (F(2, 117) = 3.83, p = .02, η² = .06). The simple effects revealed that, opposing our expectations, participants in the low perceived control
condition showed a higher implicit need for structure after seeing the structured advertisement (M = 1.10, SD = .89) than the participants encountered with the
unstructured advertisement (M = .55, SD = .61) (F(1, 117) = 4.24, p = .04). Moreover, the structured ad raised a significantly higher need for structure for the low perceived control condition (M = 1.10, SD = .89) than for the high perceived control condition (M = .38, SD = .59) and the baseline condition (M = .57, SD = 1.25) (F(2, 117) = 4.00, p = .02). See figure 2 for a depiction of the mean scores per experimental group.
FIGURE 2
Implicit Need for Structure Scores per Experimental Condition
Concerning the sub constructs of the need for closure scale, this main effect was also to be found in the need for order facet (F(2,117) = 3.84, p = .02, η² = .06).
Corresponding our projections, participants’ need for order was the highest for the low perceived control condition (M = 3.88, SD = .70), the lowest for the high perceived control condition (M = 3.49, SD = .59) and in between for the baseline condition of personal control (M = 3.56, SD = .71).
ambiguity (M = 4.05, SD = .60) than high perceived personal control (M = 3.73, SD = .55), this time the baseline control condition showed the lowest mean score (M = 3.68, SD = .66).
Even more, the simple effects analysis revealed that exposure to the unstructured advertisement did not yield significantly diverging discomfort with ambiguity scores for the perceived control conditions (F(2,117) = 2.45, p = .09) whereas the personal control groups did vary significantly for the structured advertisement condition (F(2,117) = 5.90, p < .00). As can be seen in figure 3, the mean discomfort with ambiguity scores is the lowest for the baseline condition (M = 3.50, SD = .61), followed by the high perceived personal control condition (M = 3.86, SD = .56) and the low personal control group.
FIGURE 3
5. DISCUSSION
The aim of this research was to investigate whether consumers’ perception of personal control instigates their susceptibility to advertising. It was assumed that lowering a person’s level of perceived personal control would increase their need for structure and thereby make him more susceptible to external control influences,
especially influences that provide this sense of structure. We tested this notion by means of an experiment in which both the level of perceived personal control and the structure of the advertisement were manipulated. While the manipulations did not have a
significant effect on the participants’ susceptibility to the advertisements, they did affect the participants’ need for structure. More specifically, the results indicate that lowering an individual’s perceived personal control not only increases their need for order, but also their discomfort with ambiguity and need for cognitive closure. This finding contributes an important extension to Cutright’s (2012) theory that lowering perceived self-control increases people’s aspiration for structure and order.
enough to actuate the compensatory control mechanism in case of advertising as content aspects also seem to play an important role. For example, need for cognitive closure and certainty could be rendered by advertising texts that provide (closed) conclusions (see Kardes, 1988 and Sawyer & Howard, 1991) or state propositions rather than ask questions to the reader (see Ahluwalia, Burnkrant, Mick & Brucks, 2004). Further research is needed to investigate how textual and content elements can respond to the needs evoked by lowered perceived personal control.
Furthermore, the manipulation of the advertisements also had an influence on the participants’ need for structure. While only significant for the implicit need for structure and discomfort with ambiguity measures, we observed the unexpected pattern of the structured rather than the unstructured advertisement causing an increase in discomfort with ambiguity, need for cognitive closure and need for structure. This opposite
appearance could be due to the potential increase in ambiguity the structured manipulation instigated. Multiple authors have concluded that a fit in content and executive aspects is essential for credible and effective advertising (Leonidou & Leonidou, 2009; Wells, Burnett & Moriarty, 2003). Therefore, it is possible that the mismatch of a visibly structured advertisement with ambiguous content elements
Limitations and further research
Due to time-constraints, the experiment was performed in the non-laboratory setting of a university cafeteria by means of paper surveys. Thence, the manipulation of personal control was limited to the priming questions of Whitson and Galinsky (2008). While proven to be a valid manipulation, it requires quite a sense of imagination from the participants. Repeating the experiment in a research lab could provide more realistic ways to manipulate the level of perceived personal control, for example by means of the computerized cursor-task from David et al. (2007) or the noise-control manipulation of Cutright (2012).
Moreover, the manipulation of the advertisement gives scope for improvement as well. As noted above, the visual adaptation of the chosen advertisement and the fit with its content aspects might not have been optimal for this study. Experimenting with a different advertisement using textual and content aspects to create a sense of structure might yield deviating outcomes. Therefore, replicating the research using alternate measures for manipulating both the participants’ perceived personal control and the structure of the advertisement may well provide more fruitful results.
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APPENDIX: QUESTIONNAIRE
1. Low perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort een situatie uit je eigen leven waarin je geen persoonlijke controle had. Dat wil zeggen, waar je acties niet succesvol waren in het tot stand brengen van de gevolgen die je had verwacht.
High perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort een situatie uit je eigen leven waarin je persoonlijke controle had. Dat wil zeggen, waar je acties succesvol waren in het tot stand brengen van de gevolgen die je had verwacht.
Baseline condition: Beschrijf kort een film of tv-show die je de afgelopen maand hebt gezien.
2. Low perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort hoe je je gedroeg in deze situatie waarin je geen persoonlijke controle had.
High perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort hoe je je gedroeg in deze situatie waarin je persoonlijke controle had.
Baseline condition: Beschrijf kort welke gedachtes je had over deze film of tv-show.
3. Low perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort welke emoties je ervoer in deze situatie waarin je geen persoonlijke controle had.
High perceived personal control condition: Beschrijf kort welke emoties je ervoer in deze situatie waarin je persoonlijke controle had.
Hieronder staat een aantal woordstammen. Dit zijn de beginletters van woorden die je op verschillende manieren kunt afmaken. Maak de volgende woordstammen af met het eerste woord dat je te binnen schiet. Je mag alle typen woorden gebruiken: zelfstandige naamwoorden, werkwoorden, bijvoeglijke naamwoorden etc.
Target stems:
Str… uctuur/ structureel etc. Or… de/ orderlijk etc. Ne… tjes/ netheid etc. Re… gels/ regelmaat etc. Si… impel/ simpelheid etc. Sy… stematisch/ systeem etc. Ro… mmel/rotzooi
Cha… os/chaotisch Zo… otje/zooi Wa…rrig/wanorde
Filler stems:
Tra… m/trampoline etc. Ki… nd/ kip etc.
Nu volgen een aantal vragen over je indruk van de advertentie die je zojuist hebt bekeken. Geef aan wat je vond van het merk uit de advertentie:
Slecht 1 2 3 4 5 6 Goed
Aangenaam 1 2 3 4 5 6 Onaangenaam
Lage kwaliteit 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hoge kwaliteit
Aantrekkelijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 Niet aantrekkelijk
Geef aan wat je van de advertentie vond:
Aangenaam 1 2 3 4 5 6 Onaangenaam
Slecht 1 2 3 4 5 6 Goed
Verschrikkelijk 1 2 3 4 5 6 Leuk
Als je in de toekomst tandpasta zou kopen, hoe waarschijnlijk is het dat je kiest voor Zendium?
Hieronder vind je een lijst met stellingen over je persoonlijkheid. Duid bij elke stelling aan in hoeverre je het ermee eens bent. Lees elke stelling en omcirkel daarnaast je antwoord. Zeer mee oneens Zeer mee eens 1. Ik vind dat duidelijke regels en regelmaat op het werk
van essentieel belang zijn om succes te hebben.
1 2 3 4 5 6
2. Zelfs als ik iets al besloten heb, wil ik altijd nog graag een andere mening in overweging nemen.
1 2 3 4 5 6
3. Ik houd niet van onzekere situaties. 1 2 3 4 5 6
4. Ik heb een hekel aan vragen die op veel verschillende manieren beantwoord kunnen worden.
1 2 3 4 5 6
5. Ik heb graag vrienden die onvoorspelbaar zijn. 1 2 3 4 5 6
6. Ik vind dat een goed geordend en regelmatig leven bij mijn aard past.
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7. Wanneer ik uit eten ga, ga ik graag naar gelegenheden waar ik al eerder geweest ben, zodat ik weet wat ik kan verwachten.
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8. Ik voel me onprettig als ik niet begrijp waarom een gebeurtenis in mijn leven heeft plaatsgevonden.
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9. Ik erger me wanneer iemand het oneens is met wat alle andere leden van een groep vinden.
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10. Ik heb er een hekel aan om mijn plannen op het laatste moment te veranderen.
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11. Ik houd er niet van om in een situatie terecht te komen waarvan ik niet weet wat ik ervan kan verwachten.
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12. Als ik ga winkelen, heb ik moeite om te beslissen wat ik precies wil hebben.
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13. Wanneer ik geconfronteerd word met een probleem, zie ik de allerbeste oplossing gewoonlijk erg snel.
Zeer mee oneens Zeer mee eens 14. Als ik in verwarring ben over een belangrijk punt, ben
ik erg van streek.
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15. Ik heb de neiging belangrijke beslissingen tot het laatste moment uit te stellen.
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16. Gewoonlijk neem ik belangrijke beslissingen snel en met overtuiging.
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17. Ik zou mezelf als besluiteloos omschrijven. 1 2 3 4 5 6
18. Ik vind het leuk om mijn plannen op het laatste moment te veranderen.
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19. Ik geniet van de onzekerheid die het met zich meebrengt om in een situatie terecht te komen
waarvan ik niet weet wat er kan gebeuren.
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20. Mijn persoonlijke omgeving is gewoonlijk rommelig en weinig geordend.
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21. Bij de meeste conflicten tussen mensen zie ik gemakkelijk in wie er gelijk heeft, en wie niet.
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22. Ik ben geneigd te worstelen met de meeste beslissingen.
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23. Ik geloof dat ordelijkheid en organisatie behoren tot de belangrijkste eigenschappen van een goede student.
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24. Wanneer ik nadenk over conflictsituaties, dan kan ik me meestal wel voorstellen dat beide partijen gelijk zouden kunnen hebben.
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25. Ik houd er niet van om met mensen om te gaan die onverwacht uit de hoek kunnen komen.
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26. Ik ga het liefst om met vertrouwde vrienden, omdat ik weet wat ik van hen kan verwachten.
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27. Ik geloof dat ik het beste leer tijdens een cursus waarin duidelijk omschreven doelen en eisen ontbreken
1 .
Zeer mee oneens Zeer mee eens 28. Als ik over een probleem nadenk, dan overweeg ik
zoveel mogelijk verschillende meningen over het onderwerp.
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29. Ik wil graag te allen tijde weten wat mensen denken. 1 2 3 4 5 6
30. Ik houd er niet van als een uitspraak van een persoon op veel verschillende manieren uitgelegd kan worden.
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31. Het is ergerlijk om te moeten luisteren naar iemand die maar niet lijkt te kunnen beslissen.
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32. Ik denk dat het tot stand brengen van een consequente regelmaat me in staat stelt meer van het leven te
genieten.
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33. Ik geniet van een duidelijke en gestructureerde manier van leven.
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34. Ik ga het liefst om met mensen wier meningen sterk 1 van de mijne verschillen.
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35. Ik vind het prettig als alles op z'n plaats staat. 1 2 3 4 5 6
36. Ik voel me onprettig wanneer iemands mening of bedoeling me niet duidelijk is.
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37. Als ik probeer een probleem op te lossen, dan zie ik vaak zó veel mogelijke oplossingen dat ik ervan in de war raak.
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38. Ik zie altijd veel mogelijke oplossingen voor de problemen die ik tegenkom.
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39. Ik hoor liever slecht nieuws, dan dat ik in onzekerheid blijf verkeren.
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40. Gewoonlijk overweeg ik niet veel verschillende 1 meningen voordat ik mijn eigen opinie vorm.
Zeer mee oneens Zeer mee eens 41. Ik heb een hekel aan onvoorspelbare situaties. 1 2 3 4 5 6
42. Ik heb een hekel aan de routinematige aspecten van mijn studie/werk.
Hieronder vind je een aantal woorden die verschillende gevoelens en emoties beschrijven. Duid bij elk woord aan in welke mate je je nu (dus op dit moment) zo voelt. Lees elk woord en omcirkel daarnaast je antwoord. Maak hierbij gebruik van de volgende schaal:
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Heel weinig of helemaal
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