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Abstract

In social dilemmas, individuals’ outcomes are not only contingent on their own, but also on other persons’ actions. Since other persons’ actions are often unpredictable, social dilemmas inherently involve some degree of uncertainty and, thus, imply a loss of control for each actor. This loss of control can be particularly aversive for individuals who harbor a latent fear of being exploited, such as people with a disposition to be “victim-sensitive”, leading to pre-emptively uncooperative behavior in social dilemmas. Recent theorizing and findings by Buchholz and colleagues (2023) suggest that a brief control affirmation manipulation can alleviate the negative correlation between victim sensitivity (VS) and cooperation. In the present research, we aim to replicate and expand on Buchholz et al.’s (2023) study. In two studies (n₁ = 336, n₂ = 385), participants played an online trust game with a fictitious partner. Affirming control did not reduce the negative effect of VS on behavioral trust in both studies. In addition, the manipulation did not work as intended and failed to generate a sense of control. We discuss our findings with regard to their implications for research on victim sensitivity and on compensatory control.

Keywords

victim sensitivity fear of exploitation trust compensatory control conceptual replication

In social dilemmas, individuals’ outcomes are contingent not only on their own, but also on other persons’ actions. Since the latter are often unpredictable, social dilemmas involve some degree of uncertainty and risk, thus leading to a loss of control for each actor (Burger, 1989; Fiske, 2003; Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015; Rothbaum et al., 1982). This loss should be particularly aversive for persons who harbor a latent fear of being exploited—people with a disposition to be “victim-sensitive” (Buchholz et al., 2023; Gollwitzer et al., 2013; Gollwitzer & Rothmund, 2009; Schmitt et al., 1995). Against this reasoning, one might argue that the fear of being exploited—that is, the (anxious) expectation that one’s individual payoff is reduced because others are acting selfish—is essentially nothing more than a threatened need for control; a need which is often thought to be biologically driven (e.g., Leotti et al., 2010). After all, threatening a sense of control, that is, reducing the probability that one’s individual choices lead to distinct outcomes, lies at the heart of each social dilemma (Gräbner et al., 2021). So, is victim-sensitive individuals’ fear of being exploited essentially a threat to their need for control? Can providing victim-sensitive individuals with a sense of control alleviate their fear of being exploited and, thus, make them more cooperative? This is what the present paper aims to find out.

Victim Sensitivity and the Fear of Being Exploited

A large and growing number of studies have shown that people high in victim sensitivity behave less cooperatively and more (pre-emptively) protective in social dilemma situations (Gollwitzer et al., 2009, 2012, 2013; Gollwitzer & Rothmund, 2009). Victim sensitivity is characterized by an asymmetric bias in processing trust cues (e.g., facial expressions or verbal statements), where neutral and negative cues are interpreted as less trustworthy than positive cues (the so-called “asymmetry hypothesis;” Gollwitzer et al., 2012, 2013). This bias reduces cooperation, as even slight negative cues can trigger defection (the so-called “defection hypothesis;” Gollwitzer et al., 2009, 2013). In sum, victim-sensitive individuals tend to underestimate others’ willingness to cooperate, which reduces their own willingness to cooperate substantially (Gollwitzer et al., 2012; for more details, see Gollwitzer et al., 2013).

In their “Sensitivity to Mean Intentions” (SeMI) model, Gollwitzer and Rothmund (2009; see also Gollwitzer et al., 2013) argue that victim-sensitive individuals are so particularly vigilant towards untrustworthiness cues because they have a strong need to trust others (see also Gollwitzer et al., 2015): They would prefer to live in a world without free-riders and egoists. At the same time, however, they expect others to be egoistic and uncooperative. This latent dissonance reinforces and stabilizes itself through behavioral and cognitive mechanisms (Gollwitzer et al., 2015). Now, based on the notion that trust and control have complementary functions or even share the same essence (for an overview, see Gräbner et al., 2021), one might argue that strategies which satisfy a “need for control” may also alleviate the fear of being exploited. One finding that speaks to this reasoning is that victim sensitivity has been shown to correlate with a heightened need for control (Schmitt et al., 1995). That being said, there are important conceptual differences between the need to trust and the need for control.

The Need to Trust and the Need for Control

Building on the reasoning that the need to trust and the need for control share the same essence, Buchholz et al. (2023) have argued that providing victim-sensitive people with a sense of control in social dilemma situations may alleviate their concerns about being exploited and, thus, increase their cooperativeness. They tested this idea in an empirical study (Buchholz et al., 2023; Study 2). Participants played one round of a trust game¹ (see Kuwabara, 2005), in which they were always assigned to the “sender” role: Each participant received lottery tickets, which they could transfer (ranging from 0 to 10) to their alleged partner (i.e., the “receiver”). The number of tickets transferred were tripled so that receivers would now have their own 10 tickets plus the tripled number of received tickets from the real participant. Receivers then had to decide whether or not to divide the entire amount of tickets equally between both players. Participants were also informed that the number of lottery tickets they had in the end would determine their chances of winning a 50 Euro book voucher. The number of tickets participants transferred to their partners (i.e., their trusting behavior) was the central dependent variable in that study. Victim sensitivity was measured after the experimental session with a ten-item scale developed and validated by Schmitt et al. (2005; see also Schmitt et al., 2010).

The experimental design of this study consisted of two manipulations (“factors”): a “suspiciousness” factor and an “affirmation” factor: The “suspiciousness” manipulation was to induce a suspicious mindset in participants (see Gollwitzer et al., 2013), that is to manipulate whether or not the partner (“receiver”) was perceived to be untrustworthy (half of the participants received such untrustworthiness cues, the other half did not). The “affirmation” manipulation was implemented to test the idea that providing people with a sense of control may alleviate any fear of exploitation in victim-sensitive individuals (even though the partner was perceived as untrustworthy). Here, participants were assigned to one of three conditions: a control condition, a self-affirmation condition, and a control-affirmation condition. Participants in the control-affirmation condition were instructed to recall a recent episode in which they experienced a “sense of control over what had happened” (adapted from Kay et al., 2008). Participants in the self-affirmation condition were instructed to recall a recent episode in which they expressed a virtue or value that was personally relevant for them (taken from Monin et al., 2008). Participants in the no-affirmation (control) condition were asked to list all the things they do on a typical weekday. Buchholz et al. (2023) hypothesized that when a suspicious mindset has been activated, victim sensitivity should be negatively associated with trusting behavior in the control condition, but that this negative association should become less negative in the control-affirmation condition. Technically, they tested a suspiciousness × affirmation × victim sensitivity three-way interaction effect.

Indeed, Buchholz and colleagues (2023) found evidence for the hypothesized three-way interaction: while victim sensitivity was negatively associated with trusting behavior in the suspicious mindset condition when no affirmation occurred, this effect was significantly attenuated in the control affirmation condition, but not in the self-affirmation condition. These findings were taken as evidence for the notion that victim-sensitives’ pre-emptive defensiveness can be reduced by affirming or re-establishing a sense of control. If this was true, then there might be hope: even social dilemmas in which mutual trust is difficult to establish because at least one of the players harbors a latent fear of being exploited, can be solved if a sense of control is effectively re-established.

The Importance of Replicating These Findings

Even though the findings were relatively clear in that regard, Buchholz et al.'s (2023) study had some limitations. First, despite the relatively large overall sample size (i.e., n = 273), the number of participants in each experimental condition was low (i.e., 36 < n < 51), which led the authors to increase the significance level to α = 10% to reach sufficient power (i.e., 1‒β = .83) to find a small- to medium-size three-way interaction effect. In fact, the effect they found was even smaller than the one they pre-determined: The increase in R² for the three-way interaction was only 1.3%. Second, the primary dependent variable—trusting behavior in the trust game—was heavily negatively skewed: Almost half of the participants (44%) decided to transfer all of their lottery tickets, and only 3% decided to keep all of their tickets for themselves. Thus, Buchholz et al. (2023) transformed this variable in order to reduce the deviation from a normal distribution (the effect was smaller without this transformation). Third, the authors tested only one control compensation strategy. This strategy also depended mainly on participants’ ability to recall a situation in which they had a “sense of control over what had happened” (Kay et al., 2008). This may have been particularly difficult for those participants who were already in a “suspicious mindset” (Gollwitzer et al., 2013). In light of these limitations, we aimed to replicate their findings using the original and another control compensation strategy, with higher sample sizes in the conditions of interest, to reach sufficient power to detect the expected effect.

However, a noteworthy deviation from the original study is that we employ a hypothetical rather than a staged interaction to avoid deception. This change may affect participants’ behavior. Indeed, cooperation rates in social dilemmas are slightly higher in hypothetical settings (Jin et al., 2025). Yet, meta-analytic evidence shows that associations between prosocial behavior (e.g., in a trust game or a prisoner dilemma game) and personality traits remain overall similar in hypothetical games (Thielmann et al., 2020), with only Dark Triad traits such as Machiavellianism showing somewhat stronger negative associations with prosocial behavior. Overall, we therefore do not expect hypothetical scenarios to substantially bias the observed effects, though effect sizes should be interpreted conservatively.

Control Compensation Strategies

Control Compensation Theory (CCT) and its predecessors summarize different strategies to compensate for a loss of control (Burger, 1989; Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015; Rothbaum et al., 1982). These strategies are assumed to be interchangeable (Landau et al., 2015). Notably, the literature discusses that a sense of control can arise from directly influencing the environment, or so-called secondary strategies, that offer perceptions of controllability of an in fact uncontrollable environment, such as relying on external forces, seeking information like patterns that increase predictability or offer meaning (Burger, 1989; Rothbaum et al., 1982). The latest version of the CCT postulates four compensation strategies: Compensation via personal control is the belief “that one possesses the resources necessary to perform a behavior or set of behaviors required to produce certain outcomes.” (Landau et al., 2015, p. 2) The control affirmation used by Buchholz et al. (2023) falls into this category. Compensation via external systems is built on the perception that these systems provide resources and influence outcomes according to a person’s preference (Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015). Compensation via a specific epistemic structure is rooted in the perception of contingencies between a person’s behavior and an outcome within a specific context (Landau et al., 2015). Compensation via a non-specific epistemic structure leads to a sense of control by perceiving “simple, clear, and consistent interpretations of the world” in general and, therefore, outside of a concrete control threat (Landau et al., 2015, p. 4).

Two of these four strategies are particularly relevant for replicating and critically testing Buchholz et al.’s (2023) findings of control compensation on the trusting behavior of individuals who are high in victim sensitivity. First, using a personal control strategy (as these authors did) is a direct replication approach. Second, using a non-specific structure compensation is desirable as this strategy is more subtle and, thus, less prone to demand characteristics, and less dependent on participants’ past experience and memory retrieval abilities.

The Present Research

Two studies were conducted (1) to replicate the finding that when a suspicious mindset is activated, victim sensitivity is negatively associated with trust, (2) to test whether affirming a personal sense of control (as in Buchholz et al., 2023) can attenuate this effect, and (3) to test whether this finding can be generalized using a non-specific structure affirmation strategy. Both studies were pre-registered, including hypotheses, design, materials, sample determination and data exclusion, and the data analysis plan. All materials, the anonymized raw and processed data, data preparation, and analysis code, and supplementary online material (SOM), are available (https://osf.io/wfs85/).

Study 1

Study 1 was designed to replicate the finding that control compensation can attenuate the negative effect of victim sensitivity on trust in social dilemmas. Participants played an online trust game with a fictitious partner. All participants were confronted with cues of untrustworthiness of their interaction partner (see below). Thus, deviating from Buchholz et al. (2023), we did not manipulate suspiciousness, but rather held it constant.

To affirm a sense of control, we used a similar personal control-affirmation procedure as Buchholz et al. (2023), an established procedure in the control compensation literature (Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015). Participants in this condition were prompted to recall a past situation in which they personally had a sense of control. We also affirmed a sense of control with a non-specific structure affirmation (Kay et al., 2014). Participants in this condition were prompted to recall a situation where they could detect orderly and clear structures in nature (see Methods section for detailed descriptions of both affirmations). A third group of participants were asked to recall a neutral situation (control group). Therefore, Study 1 used a 3-level between-subjects design with victim sensitivity as a continuous moderator variable. We predicted and pre-registered that a negative effect of victim sensitivity on trusting behavior (Hypothesis 1) is attenuated when participants’ sense of control is restored by a personal control affirmation (Hypothesis 2a) or by a structure affirmation (Hypothesis 2b) compared to a no-affirmation condition. The pre-registration for this study can be found on OSF (https://osf.io/uz3nm/).

Methods

Participants

Participants, who had to be at least 18 years old and proficient in German, were recruited between May 12^th, 2022, and June 10^th, 2022, via social media, on the campus of a large German university, and via a study recruitment platform. For compensation, they took part in a raffle for four gift vouchers worth 25 Euro each. An a-priori power analysis using G*Power (Faul et al., 2007) for linear multiple regression with five predictors in total, three predictors to be tested (see the Section Main Analysis for details), and assuming a small to medium effect (i.e., f² = .03), exactly as Buchholz et al. (2023) did, resulted in a required sample size of 357 (1 ‒ β = .80, α = .05). We aimed to collect at least 400 participants to compensate for possible data exclusions.

In total, 682 participants started the study, and 437 completed it. Before data analysis, we excluded² the data of 101 participants according to the preregistered criteria: eleven participants indicated that we should not use their data, 85 failed a comprehension check question more than three times, and for five participants, both aspects applied. The sample used for data analysis consisted of N =336³ participants (71.7% female, 27.1% male, 1.2% diverse). Age ranged from 18 to 75 years (M = 30.7, SD = 12.0). Participants were mainly students or in training (60.7%), employed (32.1%), or unemployed (7.2%). Academic disciplines of participants currently studying or with a university degree included social sciences (40.2%), natural sciences (16.9%), humanities (15.9%), life sciences (14.2%), engineering sciences (6.1%), and others (6.7%).

Materials and Measures

Personality Traits

The study was conducted online using the platform SoSci Survey (Leiner, 2022). After obtaining informed consent, participants answered a set of personality trait measures⁴ on separate pages in randomized order and with items counterbalanced. We assessed Justice Sensitivity (Schmitt et al., 2010) with its four perspectives Victim Sensitivity (e.g., “I cannot easily bear it when others profit unilaterally from me”) using the 10-item scale (Schmitt et al., 2010; α = .87) as in Buchholz et al. (2023) and Observer Sensitivity (e.g., “I am upset when someone is undeservingly worse off than others; ” α = .73), Beneficiary Sensitivity (e.g., “I feel guilty when I am better off than others for no reason; ” α = .84) and Perpetrator Sensitivity (e.g., “I feel guilty when I enrich myself at the cost of others; ” α = .74) using the 2-item short scales (Baumert et al., 2014). They completed the 6-item General Trust Scale (Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994; e.g., “Most people are basically honest; ” α = .81) and the 12-item⁵ Personal Need for Structure (PNS) Scale (Machunsky & Meiser, 2006; Meiser & Machunsky, 2008; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; e.g., “It upsets me to go into a situation without knowing what I can expect from it; ” α = .85). Finally, using the 10-item short scale of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Rammstedt et al., 2013), we assessed Openness to Experience (e.g., “I see myself as someone who has an active imagination; ” α = .52), Conscientiousness (e.g., “I see myself as someone who does a thorough job; ” α = .51), Extraversion (e.g., “I see myself as someone who is outgoing, sociable; ” α = .86), Agreeableness (e.g., “I see myself as someone who is generally trusting; ” α = .21), and Neuroticism (e.g., “I see myself as someone who gets nervous easily; ” α = .69). The response scales on all measures ranged between 1 (“not at all”; BFI: “totally disagree”) to 6 (“absolutely”; BFI: “totally agree”). In contrast to Buchholz et al. (2023), we additionally assessed participants’ PNS and BFI. For the complete list of items see SOM, Study Materials Study 1, Section B.

Trust Game

Next, participants read the instructions of a trust game with an imagined, thus hypothetical, partner called “Person B.” Apart from being hypothetical, the structure of the trust game was the same as in Buchholz et al. (2023; i.e., Kuwabara, 2005). Both players’ initial endowment was 10 Euro of game money. In a first step, Person A (i.e., the real participant) could transfer any integer between 0 and 10 to Person B, who would then receive three times the transferred amount. Then, without knowing the transferred amount, “Person B” would make a decision with two options: either to split the entire (game) money equally between both players, or to keep the tripled transferred amount (plus their own initial endowment) for themselves. The amount of money the participant transferred to Person B was the dependent variable (“trusting behavior”). Following the instructions, the participants answered a comprehension check question about the task (see Study Materials Study 1, Section C); if participants gave wrong answers to this question three times in a row, their data were not included in the present analysis (see above). In the original study, Buchholz et al. (2023) did not report any comprehension checks of the game instructions, nor did they exclude participants on this basis.

Next, participants were asked to introduce themselves briefly to Person B by sending them a short message. Afterward, Person B introduced herself by writing: “Hello, I’m [Heike/Sarah], and I’m studying business administration. It is great that I have the chance to win something here. I always try to get the best out of such games for me!” The message was supposed to trigger a suspicious mindset, similar to the “suspiciousness condition” in Buchholz et al. (2023). Unlike these authors, we did not implement a non-suspiciousness (control) condition. Since we refrained from using pictures to trigger a suspicious mindset, we added the sentence “I always try to get the best out of such games for me!” to aim for a comparable level of suspiciousness.

Affirmation Manipulation

Before participants started the trust game, they were asked to work on a seemingly unrelated “imagination task,” which was used to manipulate affirmation. In the personal control affirmation condition, participants were asked to read a text asking for something positive they had control over (“Have you recently thought of something positive that happened to you in the last few months and for which you were responsible? That is, a situation over which you yourself had control and could influence the outcome? Which of your own decisions and own actions led to something positive happening to you? Now think of such a situation and a specific example”). In the structure affirmation condition, participants were asked to focus on the orderly patterns found in green leaves (“Have you ever examined a tree with its many leaves more closely? The growth of the leaves of trees is one of the many examples of the orderly structures that nature has created. Each species of tree grows its leaves in a well-defined pattern, with a system of regularities determining the connections between the leaves in terms of position, size, and timing of growth. Now think of such structures and a specific example”, based on Kay et al., 2014). In the no-affirmation condition, participants were asked about the practical significance of trees for society (“Have you ever thought about trees and their importance in our world? For human civilization, trees are an important part of landscaping and agriculture, both for their aesthetic appeal and for the harvest of fruit trees. Wood from trees is a building material and in many developing countries also a primary source of energy. Now think of such a purpose and a specific example”, based on Kay et al., 2014). In contrast to Buchholz et al. (2023), in Study 1 we structurally aligned the no-affirmation condition more closely with the affirmation conditions and chose a commonly used comparison condition from the literature (Kay et al., 2014). Participants were asked to write a short text of at least 100 characters for at least 2 and a maximum of 6 minutes into a text field about their impressions, associations, and the key message of the situation.

Afterwards, participants were asked to rate how difficult this task⁶ was on three items (“I could imagine the described situation well.”; “I found it easy to write the text.”; “I had difficulties recognizing the core statement of the described situation”, reversed) with response scales ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“absolutely”).

Trusting Behavior and Further Measures

Next, participants played the trust game and chose an amount of money to transfer to “Person B” on a slider. Subsequently, they were asked to rate the (un)predictability of Person B with one item (“I experience the behavior of person B as unpredictable”), B’s expected action with two items (e.g., “I think person B will keep the money for themselves”), the perceived sense of control within the interaction with five items (based on Greenaway et al., 2015; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978; e.g., “I was in control of the interaction”), and a general evaluation of the role of randomness (Kay et al., 2008; e.g., “The things that occur in my life are mostly a matter of chance”) on 6-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“absolutely”) (see Study Materials Study 1, Section G).⁷

Then, all participants were informed that “Person B” had decided to split the total game money equally, and they learned how much (game) money they had earned in total. Finally, we assessed demographics (age, gender, work status, and academic discipline), asked whether we should use participants’ data for our analysis (“use-me” item) and what they thought the study was about. A full debriefing followed.

Results and Discussion

Descriptive Statistics

Means, standard deviations, and correlations between trusting behavior and personality traits⁸ are displayed in Table 1. Looking at our central dependent variable, 81 participants (24.1%) transferred all of their game money, while 40 (11.9%) kept all of it for themselves. The median money transfer was 5. Victim sensitivity was negatively correlated with trusting behavior and positively correlated with personal need for structure. The average perceived difficulty of the imagination task did not significantly differ between conditions (all p’s > .07, see Supplementary Online Material, Section A). The majority of the participants introduced themselves to their partner (49.7%) or used the pre-programmed “hello-button” (47.0%). The remaining participants decided not to greet their partner. Descriptive statistics for all other measured variables and additional analyses are reported in the Supplementary Online Material, Section B.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Between Measured Variables (Study 1)

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3
1. Trusting behavior	5.65	3.28
2. Victim sensitivity	4.21	0.85	−.18**
3. General trust	4.33	0.74	.12*	−.10
4. Need for structure	4.07	0.78	−.17**	.39**	−.10

*p < .05. **p < .01. N = 336.

Main Analyses

We conducted a multiple linear regression analysis with trusting behavior as the dependent variable to test the main hypotheses and contrast-coded the affirmation conditions as follows: Contrast 1 contrasted the personal control affirmation condition with the no-affirmation control condition (personal control affirmation: 1, structure affirmation: 0, no-affirmation: −1) and Contrast 2 contrasted the structure affirmation condition with the no-affirmation control condition (personal control affirmation: 0, structure affirmation: 1, no-affirmation: −1).⁹ Victim sensitivity (VS) as the continuous predictor (standardized), both contrasts, and their interaction terms (i.e., VS × Contrast 1, VS × Contrast 2) were entered as predictors. The estimated regression coefficients, the 95% confidence intervals, standard errors, t- and p-values are reported in Table 2. The model explains 4.7% of the variance in trusting behavior, F (5, 300) = 3.29, p = .007. The focal predictors in this model are the effect of victim sensitivity and the interaction terms of victim sensitivity with the two contrasts.

Table 2.

Regression Model Predicting Trusting Behavior From the Two Contrasts, Victim Sensitivity, and the Respective Interaction Terms (Study 1)

Variable	B	SE	t	p	CI₉₅
Constant	5.67	0.18	32.16	<.001	[5.32, 6.02]
Victim sensitivity (VS)	−0.59	0.18	−3.31	.001	[−0.93, −0.24]
Contrast 1: Personal control affirmation vs no-affirmation	0.34	0.25	1.36	.174	[−0.15, 0.84]
Contrast 2: Structure affirmation vs no-affirmation	−0.14	0.25	−0.58	.563	[−0.64, 0.35]
VS × contrast 1	−0.43	0.25	−1.74	.083	[−0.91, 0.06]
VS × contrast 2	0.12	0.26	0.48	.635	[−0.38, 0.62]

Note. N = 336. Victim sensitivity was standardized. Trusting behavior ranged from 0–10.

As indicated by a significant regression weight, victim sensitivity was negatively associated with trusting behavior across conditions, B = −0.59, p = .001. However, contrary to our expectations, neither personal control affirmation, B = −0.43, p = .083, nor structure affirmation, B = 0.12, p = .635, attenuated the negative association between victim sensitivity and trusting behavior. The predicted values from the regression model displayed in Table 2 are visualized in Figure 1 (left panel).

Figure 1.

Predicted Values of Trusting Behavior as a Function of Victim Sensitivity by Experimental Conditions in Both Studies.

Simple slope analysis further indicates that victim sensitivity was negatively associated with trusting behavior only in the personal control affirmation condition, B = −1.01, p = .001, but neither in the structure affirmation condition, B = −0.46, p = .148, nor in the no-affirmation control condition, B = −0.28, p = .356. Even if the interaction terms had been significant, the interaction pattern would be inconsistent with our theoretical predictions: We had expected a negative association between victim sensitivity and trusting behavior in the no-affirmation control condition (Hypothesis 1), and an attenuation of this negative association in the other two conditions (Hypotheses 2a and 2b).

To inspect these results in more detail, we tested whether the affirmation conditions worked as intended. To do so, we regressed perceived control in the situation on the two contrasts as defined above, victim sensitivity, and the interaction of the two. The results are reported in the Supplementary Online Materials, Section C. These analyses suggest that the affirmation conditions did not work as intended because neither effect in this regression model was significant (all p’s > .259). However, victim sensitivity was negatively related to perceived control in the situation, B = −0.27, p < .001. Since Buchholz et al. (2023) did not report a comparable manipulation check, it cannot be determined whether their manipulation was more successful than ours.

Taken together, the central effect reported in Buchholz et al. (2023) could not be replicated here. But before jumping to the conclusion that the control affirmation effect reported by Buchholz et al. (2023) may have been a false positive finding, it should be noted that the present replication attempt is not without limitations. First, as just mentioned, the control affirmation manipulation did not work as intended. One reason for this could be that the no-affirmation control condition, which served as a neutral baseline, may have triggered some control perception as well: Although this condition has been used as a baseline condition in an earlier study (Kay et al., 2014), the description of the usage of wood for construction and electricity supply and the prompt to think about such a purpose might imply perceptions of order and control in the world. Second, the cues to trigger a state of suspiciousness might have been too strong. By making the interaction partner communicate their self-interest so blatantly and explicitly (“I always try to get the best out of such games for me!”), participants may have perceived very little control in this situation. This could have closed the gap for our control affirmation to work. Thus, to find out whether the original effect of control compensation on trust in victim sensitivity can be replicated, another study should (1) use a more neutral no-affirmation condition and (2) make the interaction with the partner more ambiguous.

Study 2

Study 2 was designed to replicate Study 1 and to address the limitations mentioned above: As the no-affirmation condition might have affirmed some sense of control in Study 1, we re-designed this condition so that it provides no sense of control as a baseline condition. Therefore, we adjusted this condition to align more closely with the original no-affirmation condition used in the published literature (Buchholz et al., 2023). Second, to make the conditions as comparable as possible regarding their content and structure, we adapted the wording in the two affirmation conditions (see also Landau et al., 2015). Third, we reformulated the text which is supposed to trigger a suspicious mindset in participants so that it becomes more ambiguous with regard to the other person’s potential behavior in the trust game. Again, we used a 3-level between-subjects design (personal control affirmation, structure affirmation, no affirmation) with victim sensitivity as a continuous moderator variable (standardized). Our hypotheses remained unchanged: We predicted and pre-registered a negative association between victim sensitivity and trusting behavior (Hypothesis 1), which should be attenuated by affirming personal control (Hypothesis 2a) and/or by affirming structure control (Hypothesis 2b). The pre-registration for this study can be found on OSF (https://osf.io/6xfhy/).

Methods

Participants

Participants for this online study were recruited between May 17^th, 2023, and June 11^th, 2023, via university mailing lists of a large German university, social media platforms, and the university’s recruitment platform. Participants had to be at least 18 years old, proficient in German, and must not have participated in the first study. As compensation for participation, two gift vouchers worth 50 Euro each were raffled among all participants or course credits for students. An a-priori power analysis for linear multiple regression with five predictors in total, three predictors to be tested (see the Section Main Analysis for details), and assuming a small to medium effect just as Buchholz et al. (2023) did (i.e., f² = .03), resulted in a required sample size of 357 (1‒β = .80, α = .05). We aimed for 400 participants to account for dropouts.

In total, 645 participants started the study and 432 ended it. Applying the preregistered criteria prior to data analysis, we excluded the data of 47 participants, of which four indicated that we should not use their data, 34 failed the comprehension check question more than three times, six took more than 60 minutes to complete the study, and three to which at least two of these criteria applied. The final sample consisted of N = 385 participants (68.8% female, 27.0% male, 4.2% diverse). Ages ranged between 18 and 80 years (M = 28.74, SD = 12.79). Most participants were students or in training (65.7%), employed (27.8%), or unemployed (6.5%). Students’ academic disciplines included social sciences (47.7%), natural sciences (19.0%), humanities (11.5%), life sciences (8.1%), engineering sciences (7.2%), and others (6.5%).

Materials and Measures

Personality Traits

The study was conducted online using the platform SoSci Survey (Leiner, 2022). After obtaining informed consent, participants completed a battery of personality traits and an additional questionnaire in counterbalanced order, all using 6-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“absolutely”). We assessed Justice Sensitivity (Baumert et al., 2014; Schmitt et al., 2010) (Victim Sensitivity: α = .86, Observer Sensitivity: α = .76, Beneficiary Sensitivity: α = .80, Perpetrator Sensitivity: α = .82), General Trust (Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994; α = .80), and Personal Need for Structure (Meiser & Machunsky, 2008; Neuberg & Newsom, 1993; α = .85) as in Study 1. We also measured self-report variables that were not relevant for the present project (see Supplementary Online Materials, Section D for details).

Trusting Behavior

Next, participants were familiarized with the instructions of the same trust game used in Study 1 (Buchholz et al., 2023; based on Kuwabara, 2005) and an adjusted comprehension check question about the game rules (see Study Materials Study 2, Section B). Again, participants had three attempts to answer the question correctly.

Suspiciousness

Next, participants were asked to imagine an interaction with the fictitious Player B in the same fashion as in Study 1. First, they could introduce themselves by writing a short message and then were introduced to the second player to trigger a suspicious mindset by receiving the message: “Hello, I’m [Sophie/Kevin]¹⁰, and I’m studying business administration. It is great that there is a chance to win something here. I always try to get the best out of such games!”

Affirmation Manipulation

The three affirmation conditions differed slightly from Study 1 in order to account for the limitations discussed above:¹¹ In the personal control affirmation condition, participants were asked to “describe a situation in which you felt that you have the skills and resources to fulfil your goals”. In the structure affirmation condition, participants were asked to “describe a situation in which you experienced a simple, clear, and consistent structure in the world”. In the no-affirmation control condition, participants were asked to “describe a situation in which you bought a small number of beverages.” Thus, compared to Study 1, the texts used here were shorter, more in accordance with the definition of personal and structure control (Landau et al., 2015), and the no-affirmation condition was more closely aligned with the one used by Buchholz et al. (2023). Following the task, participants were again asked to rate how difficult the task was on three 6-point Likert-type items (“I could remember the chosen situation well.”; “I found it easy to write the text.”; “I found it difficult to find a suitable situation”, reversed) ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“absolutely”).

Further Measures

As in Study 1, participants played the trust game next by choosing an amount of money to transfer. Afterward, participants answered eight additional questions on 6-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 6 (“absolutely”): Three questions asked about the general perception of personal agency (“I am in control of my life”), three questions about general perceptions of structure and randomness (“Everything happens for a reason”), one question about the perceived liking of the other player (“[Sophie/Kevin] is likable”) and one question about the attitude towards persons studying business administration (“I have a negative attitude towards people who study business management”; see also Study Materials Study 2, Section E).

Finally, all participants were informed that Person B had decided to split the total game money equally and were informed about the “money” they had earned in total. Again, as in Study 1, we assessed demographics and asked whether we should use their data. They could then register for a raffle to win a voucher and for information about the study results and were fully debriefed.

Results and Discussion

Descriptive Results

Means, standard deviations, and correlations between all measured variables are reported in Table 3. Victim sensitivity was negatively correlated with trusting behavior. Victim sensitivity was also correlated with personal need for structure. Looking at our central dependent variable, trusting behavior, 109 participants (28.3%) transferred all of their (game) money to their partner, while only 19 (4.9%) kept it all for themselves. The median money transfer was 5. The perceived difficulty of the imagination task differed between conditions, when inspecting the contrasts of the same model as in Study 1 on the three items: In the structure affirmation condition compared to the no-affirmation control condition, participants found the prompt less easy to remember, B = −0.26, p = .004, the text less easy to write, B = −0.25, p = .028, and more difficult to find a suitable situation, B = 0.69, p < .001. In the personal control condition compared to the no-affirmation control condition, participants found the prompt less easy to write, B = −0.24, p = .036, and they found it more difficult to find a suitable situation, B = 0.50, p < .001. The majority of participants introduced themselves to the second player (53.2%) or used the pre-programmed “hello-button” (42.3%). The remaining participants decided not to greet their partner. The complete analyses and further analyses are reported in the Supplementary Online Material, Sections E and F.

Table 3.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Between Measured Variables (Study 2)

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3
1. Trusting behavior	6.15	3.09
2. Victim sensitivity	4.21	0.84	−.19**
3. General trust	4.28	0.74	.15**	−.12*
4. Need for structure	3.99	0.40	.05	.31**	−.04

*p < .05. **p < .01. N = 385.

Main Analyses

The analysis model was exactly the same as in Study 1. The results from the multiple regression in which trusting behavior was predicted by the two contrasts, victim sensitivity, and the respective interaction terms are reported in Table 4. The model explains 3.7% of the variance in trusting behavior, F (5, 379) = 2.91, p = .014. Again, victim sensitivity was negatively associated with trusting behavior across conditions, B = −0.56, p < .001. However, contrary to our expectations, neither personal control affirmation, B = −0.08, p = .728, nor structure affirmation, B = 0.15, p = .502, attenuated the negative association between victim sensitivity and trusting behavior. The predicted values from the regression model displayed in Table 4 are visualized in Figure 1 (right panel).

Table 4.

Regression Model Predicting Trusting Behavior From the Two Contrasts, Victim Sensitivity, and the Respective Interaction Terms (Study 2)

Variable	B	SE	t	p	CI₉₅
Constant	6.15	0.16	39.37	<.001	[5.84, 6.46]
Victim sensitivity (VS)	−0.56	0.16	−3.58	<.001	[−0.87, −0.25]
Contrast 1: Personal control affirmation vs no-affirmation	−0.08	0.22	−0.35	.729	[−0.51, 0.36]
Contrast 2: Structure affirmation vs no-affirmation	0.17	0.22	0.77	.439	[−0.26, 0.60]
VS × contrast 1	−0.08	0.22	−0.35	.728	[−0.51, 0.35]
VS × contrast 2	0.15	0.23	0.67	.502	[−0.29, 0.59]

Note. N = 385. Victim sensitivity was standardized. Trusting behavior ranged from 0–10.

Simple slope analyses showed that victim sensitivity was negatively related to trusting behavior in the personal control affirmation condition, B = −0.64, p = .017, and in the no-affirmation control condition, B = −0.63, p = .018, but not in the structure affirmation condition, B = −0.41, p = .146. To inspect these results in more detail, we tested whether the affirmation conditions worked as intended. To do so, we regressed the general perceptions of control and structure on the two contrasts as defined above, victim sensitivity, and the interaction of the two. The results are reported in the Supplementary Online Materials, Section G. These analyses suggest that the affirmation conditions did not work as intended because neither effect in this regression model was significant (all p’s > .130). However, victim sensitivity was not related to perceived control and structure as well (all p’s > .728).

To sum up, we were again unable to replicate the findings reported by Buchholz et al. (2023), even though we attempted to resolve some critical issues from the first study by using a more neutral no-affirmation condition, and made the situation more ambiguous and hence not negative, and operationalized the compensation conditions more strictly according to the definition of the control compensation literature.

General Discussion

In two studies, we attempted to replicate the finding that providing victim-sensitive individuals with a personal (or structural) sense of control may attenuate the negative effect of victim sensitivity—a latent disposition to fear and avoid exploitation by others—on people’s willingness to trust a partner in a standardized trust game (Buchholz et al., 2023). However, unlike Buchholz et al. (2023), we were unable to find such an effect. We did find that victim sensitivity is negatively associated with trusting behavior (across all conditions) when cues of untrustworthiness are present, which is fully in line with previous findings (Buchholz et al., 2023; Gollwitzer et al., 2013; Gollwitzer & Rothmund, 2009). But the experimental manipulations we used to provide participants with a sense of control did not moderate this effect. The pattern of the interaction between our experimental manipulation and victim sensitivity on trusting behavior (see Figure 1) was not in line with our theoretical predictions. It should be noted that, in contrast to Buchholz et al. (2023), our study was more highly powered and used a more rigid design, which was also more consistent with the control affirmation literature (Kay et al., 2008; Landau et al., 2015). Despite these efforts, our results speak against the assumption that a loss of control can be restored that easily.

These results allow for several potential conclusions: First, the original finding might have been a false-positive result: even though victim sensitivity was correlated with need for structure in both studies, providing victim-sensitive individuals with a sense of control may not be sufficient to increase their willingness to cooperate. So, either the control affirmation procedure we (and Buchholz et al.) used was too weak to restore a threatened need for control or restoring a need for control does not effectively reduce victim-sensitives’ fear of being exploited (which, in turn, would suggest that the fear of being exploited cannot be reduced to a threatened need for control).

A second interpretation is that our study was unable to replicate Buchholz et al.’s (2023) findings not because the effect does not exist, but rather because of its methodological shortcomings. In line with this interpretation, it is important to recall that our control affirmation manipulations did not work as intended—neither in Study 1 nor in Study 2. That being said, we also do not know whether the manipulation worked as intended in Buchholz et al.’s (2023) original study, because they never used a manipulation check. Therefore, no direct comparison can be made. Nevertheless, recent studies have also shown that the latent fear of being exploited by others cannot easily be alleviated by small-scale interventions such as prompts, additional information, or mindset manipulations (Köhler & Gollwitzer, 2024). Our findings corroborate that victim sensitivity and the fear of being “duped” that comes with it is a hard nut to crack.

Potentially, more elaborate strategies may work better in that regard. For example, examining control processes in natural groups via pre-post comparisons around naturally occurring events (Kay et al., 2010) or before and after joining groups characterized by a higher (vs. lower) sense of control (see Kay & Gibbs, 2022), and drawing on recent control-theoretic perspectives that emphasize the group as a source of control (Fritsche, 2022) would be valuable in that regard. In addition, exploring the effects of varying durations or frequencies of buffering strategies might answer when, how, and why control affirmation strategies (or other interventions) might work.

Even though the studies reported here have strengths (e.g., regarding statistical power), they also have limitations. First, unlike Buchholz et al. (2023), we made the fact that there was no other player with whom participants played the trust game explicit. This was done in order to avoid deception. We still tried to make the interaction situation as immersive as possible. Thus said, when the participants had the chance to introduce themselves to their interaction partner, the majority wrote a short message (Study 1: 49.7%; Study 2: 53.2%) or used the pre-programmed “hello-button” (Study 1: 47.0%; Study 2: 42.3%). The remaining participants decided not to greet their interaction partner. Yet, the fact that participants knew from the start that there was no other player may have affected their trusting behavior and/or the extent to which they took the situation seriously.

Second, the number of people failing the comprehension questions was higher in Study 1 than in Study 2. Careless responding rates vary widely in online studies (Brühlmann et al., 2020; Koppel et al., 2025; Meade & Craig, 2012). However, the failure rates in our studies were lower than recently reported for trust games (Koppel et al., 2025). At the same time, careless responding and reliance on comprehension checks highlight the broader challenge of ensuring data quality, particularly in online research, which needs continued methodological refinement (Douglas et al., 2023; see Rodd, 2024, for suggestions). Complementary laboratory studies, which afford greater experimental control and participant engagement, may help to assess when and under what conditions estimates from online and laboratory studies converge or diverge (see, e.g., Prissé & Jorrat, 2022).

In addition, the trust games were not incentivized. Future studies should incentivize the game to make it more realistic and tangible. However, meta-analytic findings suggest that the association between personality traits and prosocial behavior in economic games (such as the trust game) remains, by and large, unaffected by whether the game is fully incentivized or hypothetical (Thielmann et al., 2020)—with the exception of Dark Triad traits, such as Machiavellianism. A recent meta-analysis found that cooperation rates in social dilemmas are slightly higher in hypothetical compared to incentivized settings (Jin et al., 2025). Thus, if the hypothetical nature of the task had any influence at all, effects are likely to be inflated rather than attenuated, making it unlikely that the absence of control affirmation effects is due to the hypothetical design.

Finally, the material used was slightly different from the original study materials: We did not use a picture to activate a state of suspiciousness in individuals who are high in victim sensitivity. However, this was probably unnecessary as highly victim-sensitive individuals behaved more uncooperatively than less victim-sensitive individuals.

Additionally, the control manipulation in the second study differed from the original study (and from the respective prompt in Study 1): here, we did not refer to a positive control experience but only a personal control experience in general. We did that in order to rule out that an observed effect may have only been the result of a positive memory trace. We also adjusted the manipulation to make it more consistent with what the control affirmation literature suggests (Landau et al., 2015). These variations from the original finding may explain why we were unable to replicate the effect reported by Buchholz et al. (2023). However, it is difficult to think of plausible theoretical arguments why exactly our adjustments may have made the original findings harder to replicate. Therefore, the safest interpretation at this point would be that the effect obtained by Buchholz et al. (2023) may have been an effect that does not generalize to other situations. One should, therefore, remain skeptical about small-scale control interventions such as those used in this (and the present) study.

Conclusion

So, is victim-sensitive individuals’ fear of being exploited essentially a threat to their need for control? Can providing victim-sensitive individuals with a sense of control alleviate their fear of being exploited and, thus, make them more cooperative? The best answer we can give on the basis of our two studies is: Probably not, but we cannot be sure. What has become clear is that it is quite difficult to restore a sense of control via an online mini-intervention. And even though we used a larger sample and a more rigid design, we did not find any evidence for the notion that any of our experimental manipulations effectively reduced the negative correlation between victim sensitivity and trusting behavior.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al., 2023)

Supplemental Material for Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al., 2023) by Stephan Nuding, Christopher Williams and Mario Gollwitzer in Personality Science.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al., 2023)

Footnotes

Author’s Note

Dr. Sointu Leikas was the handling editor.

Acknowledgements

We thank Michaela Lapcíková and Christina Dietz for their great help preparing the supplementary online material.

ORCID iDs

Stephan Nuding

Christopher Williams

Mario Gollwitzer

Ethical Considerations

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institution and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work presented here was conducted without external funding.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Mario Gollwitzer is a member of the journal’s editorial board.

Data Availability Statement

All materials, the anonymized raw and processed data, data preparation, and analysis code, pre-registrations, and supplementary online material (SOM), are available ().

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online. Depending on the article type, these materials may include a Transparency Checklist, a Transparent Peer Review File, and optional materials provided by the authors.

Notes

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Supplementary Material

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Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al.,2023)

Abstract

Keywords

Victim Sensitivity and the Fear of Being Exploited

The Need to Trust and the Need for Control

The Importance of Replicating These Findings

Control Compensation Strategies

The Present Research

Study 1

Methods

Participants

Materials and Measures

Personality Traits

Trust Game

Affirmation Manipulation

Trusting Behavior and Further Measures

Results and Discussion

Descriptive Statistics

Main Analyses

Study 2

Methods

Participants

Materials and Measures

Personality Traits

Trusting Behavior

Suspiciousness

Affirmation Manipulation

Further Measures

Results and Discussion

Descriptive Results

Main Analyses

General Discussion

Conclusion

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al., 2023)

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Can You Take Back Control? A Conceptual Replication Attempt of Balancing a Lack of Trust of Victim Sensitivity Through Compensatory Control (Buchholz et al., 2023)

Footnotes

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

ORCID iDs

Ethical Considerations

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Data Availability Statement

Supplemental Material

Notes

References

Supplementary Material