The influence of goals on sense of control

• The goal accompanied by performance feedback impaired sense of control.
• The goal without clear achievement status did not influence sense of control.
• Goal-based expectation influenced sense of control.
• Goal-directed action selection did not influence sense of control.

We examined the influence of goals on sense of control relative to that experienced when taking action randomly. In the experimental task, participants controlled the direction of a moving dot by pressing the left and right keys at will without a specific goal (the control condition), directed the moving dot to a destination as often as possible (the strong goal condition), or kept the moving dot in the central area of the screen (the weak goal condition) for as long as possible. The results showed that the strong goal impaired the sense of control, but the weak goal did not exert an influence. We concluded that the goal-based expectation influenced sense of control, but the goal-directed action selection did not. Furthermore, we proposed a modified comparator model of the sense of control, offering a promising approach to integration of the predictive and postdictive processes involved in the sense of control.