Consumers Believe They Will Have More Control over the Future Than They Did over the Past

Elanor F. Williams and Robyn A. LeBoeuf

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2026, vol. 11, issue 3, 280 - 291

Abstract: Consumers repeatedly fail to bring about desired outcomes, yet they also fail to learn from their own and others’ mistakes. One potential cause for this failure to learn is that people believe that they will have more control over the future than they had over the past. Across many real-life and hypothetical situations, participants expressed the belief that, despite the uncertainty inherent in the future, future outcomes will be more under their control than were identical past outcomes, including even negative outcomes. The difference does not arise solely due to a broad sense of optimism, but instead is related to the fact that people generally are more aware of and thus more likely to take into account the constraints on their past behavior than potential constraints on their future behavior.

Date: 2026
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