Imagine you are just done with two of your finals.
The first final is your favorite subject
You are interested in the content you learned and had been confident how much you know. For the first final, you well-prepared yourself by taking good notes in class, starting your review process one week before the exam date, and getting a good nights of sleep before the exam (with a cartoon hard-working person).
The second final is your least favorite subject
You are forced to take the class to fillful graduation requirements. You were never interested in the topic, so sometimes you skipped some of the lectures. For the second final, you tried to cram only at the night the before the exam, and pulled an all-nighter
How do you feel about each of the finals? How do you think you did on those two finals?
Previous studies (Feldman, 1999; Forsyth & McMillan, 1981; Luchow et al., 1985) showed that when students felt they had control over the test, they performed better on the test.
In a more recent study, Dr. Wood and her colleagues from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (2015) investigated the neural mechanism that regulates the emotional response to predictable and controllable threats through a yoked Pavlovian fear conditioning study with an fMRI scan.
When you are about to take the exam:
In the first scenario, your previous notes and review process make you feel that you have a good grasp on the kinds of questions that may show up on the exam (you are like the group being presented with UCS preceded by CS in the study!)
In the second scenario, due to your regular disregard towards the class and lack of sleep the night before, you feel that you are not quite sure what will be on the exam and how to solve those questions (you are like the group being presented by UCS alone in the study!)
So, what’s happening in your brain when you think you have control over something?
Dr. Wood and her colleagues (2015) found the fMRI signal response within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsomedial PFC, ventromedial PFC, and posterior cingulate was diminished during predictable compared to unpredictable threat (i.e., UCS). In addition, threat-related activity within the ventromedial PFC and bilateral hippocampus was diminished only to threats that were both predictable and controllable.
Brain Circuits Involved in the Sense of Control
Why is the sense of control important?
When under stress, lack of control can induce learned helplessness (Seligman & Maier, 1967). In animal and human models, a number of studies employing painful stimuli found that providing control, or inducing perceived control, reduces the experienced intensity of the painful stimulus (Seligman & Maier, 2016). Students’ perceived control over their academic performance mediates their ability to distinguish emotions and their level of stress, anxiety, and depression (Zapata & Onwuegbuzie, 2022). Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) in the high perceived control condition (voluntary choice) failed to boost their reward responsivity, but not the patients in the low perceived control condition (passive recipient) (Chang et al., 2020).
References
Chang Y, Wang Y, Mei S, Yi W, Zheng Y (2020) Blunted neural effects of perceived control on reward feedback in major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders 276: 112-118.
Feldman GS (1999). Self-efficacy and outcome expectancies in successful student development: A multi-ethnic study of the college transition.
Forsyth DR, McMillan JH (1981) Attributions, affect, and expectations: A test of weiner’s three-dimensional model. Journal of Educational Psychology 73: 93-403.
Luchow JP, Crowl TK, Kahn JP (1985) Learned helplessness: Perceived effects of ability and effort on academic performance among EH and LD/EH children. Journal of Learning Disabilities 18: 470-474.
Maier SF, Seligman ME (2016) Learned Helplessness at Fifty: Insights From Neuroscience. Psychological Review 123: 349–367.
Seligman ME, Maier SF (1967) Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology 74: 1–9.
Pant U, Frishkopf M, Park T, Norris CM, Papathanassoglou E (2022) A Neurobiological Framework for the Therapeutic Potential of Music and Sound Interventions for Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Critical Illness Survivors. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19: 3113.
Wood KH, Wheelock MD, Shumen JR, Bowen KH, Ver Hoef LW, Knight DC (2015) Controllability modulates the neural response to predictable but not unpredictable threat in humans. NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) 119: 371–381.
Zapata SM, Onwuegbuzie AJ (2022) Emotion differentiation and negative emotional states: The mediating role of perceived academic control and the moderated effect of intrinsic motivation. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological: 1-17.