# Illusion of control when gambling 8th June, 2020 . Funder: ERC ## Study/experiment information ### Research question: This project aims to investigate how and under what circumstances emotion and outcome processing modulate executive control and impulsive action. For this, in the current experiment we try to replicate the findings of Verbruggen et al. (2017) with a different task to further investigate losses and errors as negative emotional events and their outcomes. In this experiment we further explored post-loss speeding. We used a simple gambling (betting) task, in which participants had to guess whether the drawn card was higher or lower than six by pressing the up or the down arrow key. Additionally, we manipulated the participants feeling of control by introducing two conditions. In both conditions, participants saw a video in which the card deck is shuffled. In the computer condition, this video was 2500 ms long and the participants were told that the computer will stop the shuffle. In the participant condition, the participants could stop the shuffle themselves by pressing the space bar. If they did not press the space bar after 5000 ms, the trial continued. We assumed that stopping the shuffle themselves would give participants a feeling of control and therefore, participants would feel more responsible for their action. According to Frijda (2010) this would lead to more frustration and therefore more post-loss speeding than in the computer condition.