Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1087–1093
DOI 10.3758/s13423-014-0584-7
BRIEF REPORT
Reducing the illusion of control when an action is followed
by an undesired outcome
Helena Matute & Fernando Blanco
Published online: 22 January 2014
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2014
Abstract The illusion of control is the belief that our behav-
ior produces an effect that is actually independent from it. This
illusion is often at the core of superstitious and pseudoscien-
tific thinking. Although recent research has proposed several
evidence-based strategies that can be used to reduce the illu-
sion, the majority of these experiments have involved positive
illusions—that is, those in which the potential outcomes are
desired (e.g., recovery from illness or earning points). By
contrast, many real-life superstitions and pseudosciences are
tied to negative illusions—that is, those in which the potential
consequences are undesired. Examples are walking under a
ladder, breaking a mirror, or sitting in row 13, all of which are
supposed to generate bad luck. Thus, the question is whether
the available evidence on how to reduce positive illusions
would also apply to situations in which the outcomes are
undesired. We conducted an experiment in which participants
were exposed to undesired outcomes that occurred indepen-
dently of their behavior. One strategy that has been shown to
reduce positive illusions consists of warning people that the
outcomes might have alternative causes, other than the partic-
ipants’ actions, and telling them that the best they can do to
find out whether an alternative cause is at work is to act on
only about 50 % of the trials. When we gave our participants
this information in an experiment in which the outcomes were
undesired, their illusion was enhanced rather than reduced,
contrary to what happens when the outcome is desired. This
suggests that the strategies that reduce positive illusions may
work in just the opposite way when the outcome is undesired.
H. Matute : F. Blanco
Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
H. Matute (*)
Departamento de Fundamentos y Métodos de la Psicología,
Universidad de Deusto, Apartado 1, 48080 Bilbao, Spain
e-mail: matute@deusto.es
Keywords Causal learning . Probability learning . Human
associative learning . Causal reasoning . Reinforcement
learning
Despite the tremendous efforts of governments and skeptical
organizations to reduce superstitions and pseudoscientific be-
liefs, these problems are still very common in Western socie-
ties. As an example, two in five Europeans hold superstitions
(European Commission, 2010), and three in four Americans
believe in the paranormal (Moore, 2005). This might seem a
trivial problem at first glance, but it implies that financial,
medical, or political decisions, at both the individual and
societal levels, are often based on ungrounded beliefs rather
than on reliable knowledge. In order to reduce the incidence of
superstitious and pseudoscientific thinking—and, in general,
all types of ungrounded beliefs—it will be important to un-
derstand how these irrational beliefs develop, in which cases
they are increased, and, particularly, which manipulations can
be used to reduce them. Given the aim of most Western
societies to become knowledge-based societies one day, in-
vestigating how this can be accomplished has become a
priority.
The illusion of control is a particular type of ungrounded
belief. It occurs when we believe that our behavior controls an
outcome that is actually uncontrollable. An example is the
belief that we can recover from a disease by means that are
actually useless, just because a certain pill that one is taking
coincides with spontaneous remission of the symptoms. An-
other example is the belief that we are controlling the outcome
of a lottery just because we selected the ticket ourselves and it
happened to be the lucky one. This is a robust experimental
finding, both in the laboratory (e.g., Alloy & Abramson, 1979;
Langer, 1975; Matute, 1996; Msetfi, Murphy, Simpson, &
Kornbrot, 2005) and on the Internet (e.g., Blanco, Matute, &
Vadillo, 2009; Matute, Vadillo, Vegas, & Blanco, 2007).
1088
It should be noted, however, that most experiments on the
illusion of control have only studied what could be called
generative-positive illusions. These are illusions in which the
action is thought to generate a desired outcome that is actually
out of the participant’s control (e.g., wearing a lucky charm is
assumed to generate fortune; a bogus treatment is thought to
generate recovery from illness). By positive illusions, we refer
not only to cases of positive reinforcement or reward, such as
the superstitions that might occur when our behavior is
followed by a lottery prize (e.g., Alloy & Abramson, 1979;
Langer, 1975; Skinner, 1948). Escape contingencies are also
generative-positive scenarios, in which desired outcomes
(e.g., the termination of a headache) can follow a given
behavior (e.g., taking an innocuous herb) and therefore can
reinforce this behavior and enhance our belief in its effective-
ness (e.g., Matute, 1995, 1996). In both cases, uncontrollable
desired outcomes are known to strengthen the behavior that,
by chance, has preceded them.
To our knowledge, however, very little laboratory evidence
exists on generative-negative illusions. These would be anal-
ogous to punishment conditions, because the action is thought
to generate undesired outcomes, though in this case the out-
comes are actually uncontrollable (e.g., walking under a lad-
der, breaking a mirror, or sitting in row 13 are supposed to
generate bad luck). The present research is concerned with this
type of illusion. For brevity, we will use the terms positive and
negative illusions through the article, although in all cases we
will be dealing with generative illusions—that is, those in
which the action is thought to generate the occurrence of the
outcome, which is desired in the case of positive illusions, and
undesired in the case of negative illusions.1
One of the variables that most strongly affects positive
illusions is p(O), the probability with which the desired out-
come occurs. Many experiments have shown that the higher
the p(O), the stronger the illusion (e.g., Alloy & Abramson,
1979; Blanco, Matute, & Vadillo, 2013; Matute, 1995; Msetfi
et al., 2005; Musca, Vadillo, Blanco, & Matute, 2010; Wright,
1962). It is not surprising, therefore, that pseudoscientific
remedies are generally used to treat diseases that involve a
high rate of spontaneous relief, such as back pain. The high
probability of the outcome (in this example, temporary relief)
makes it very difficult for governments and scientific organi-
zations to convince people that many pseudoscientific treat-
ments for back pain are useless. As a consequence, practi-
tioners of alternative medicine are known to provide 40 % of
primary care for back pain in the USA (White House
1
There are also preventive illusions. These would be analogous to avoid-
ance conditions, in which the action is thought to prevent the occurrence
of undesired events (e.g., knocking on wood prevents a disaster). We have
dealt with this other type of illusion elsewhere (Blanco & Matute, 2013).
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1087–1093
Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Policy, 2002). This is a serious public health problem.
Given that the probability of occurrence of an uncontrolla-
ble outcome lies, by definition, outside of the individual’s
control, a question of interest is which other variables could
be used to reduce the incidence and impact of illusions of
control when p(O) is high. One variable that has been shown
to be effective in the reduction of positive illusions is the
probability with which the potential cause occurs, p(C). In
principle, the potential cause could be either an action per-
formed by the person or an external event (e.g., the cause
could be either one’s taking a pill or reading about other
people taking it). We will use the term p(C) to refer to either
type of cause (see Yarritu, Matute, & Vadillo, 2013, for a
discussion of this point).
Importantly, people who believe that a certain action gen-
erates a desired event tend to perform this action with high
frequency (Matute, 1996). In some cases, such as when using
alternative medicines and miracle products, this behavior is
further motivated by the alleged absence of secondary effects
(see Blanco, Barberia, & Matute, 2014). Thus, p(C) typically
tends to be very high in all of these cases. Given the high-p(O)
conditions for which pseudoscientific products are typically
used (i.e., relief is frequent), this high p(C) will result in a high
number of accidental product–relief coincidences that will
reinforce the illusion of control. In line with this prediction,
participants who act more frequently to obtain desired out-
comes have been shown in the laboratory to exhibit stronger
positive illusions than do those who are less active (Blanco,
Matute, & Vadillo, 2011, 2012; Hannah & Beneteau, 2009;
Matute, 1996). In sum, a recurrent finding in experiments
studying the illusion of control is that positive illusions occur
when the desired outcome is frequent (such as remission of
back pain) and are strengthened when the participant acts with
a high probability. In consequence, reducing the probability of
the potential cause (in this case, the probability of following
the treatment) has been proposed as an effective means to
reduce positive illusions (Barberia, Blanco, Cubillas, &
Matute, 2013; Matute, Yarritu, & Vadillo, 2011).
Another strategy that recent research has shown effective in
reducing positive illusions of control consists of suggesting to
the experimental participants that an alternative cause might
produce the desired outcome. This strategy has sometimes
been used in isolation (e.g., Vadillo, Matute, & Blanco,
2013), but it has most often been used in combination with
the reduction-of-p(C) approach, and the combination of these
two strategies has been shown to be most effective. That is,
warning people that an alternative cause might account for the
occurrence of the outcome, and suggesting to them that the
best that they can do to find out whether their own behavior or
an alternative cause is producing the outcome is to reduce their
p(C) to a medium level (e.g., using the treatment in about 50 %
of the trials), has been shown to be highly effective in reducing
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1087–1093
positive illusions of control (Barberia et al., 2013; Blanco
et al., 2012; Matute, 1996).
Thus, previous research has shown that this combined
strategy is effective at reducing positive illusions. However,
and contrary to what has been the norm in the laboratory, real-
life illusions and superstitions are often negative rather than
positive illusions (see Wiseman & Watt, 2004). Thus, it is
unclear whether the strategies that have been developed so far
will be effective in these cases. Indeed, cultural studies have
shown that superstitions are often negative; that is, many of
them are based on the idea that certain behaviors will be
followed by undesired outcomes (e.g., Aeschleman, Rosen,
& Williams, 2003; Blum & Blum, 1974). The prevalence of
negative illusions in real life is also reflected in the fact that the
most widely used scale to measure superstitious beliefs,
Tobacyk’s (Tobacyk, 1988; Tobacyk & Milford, 1983) Para-
normal Belief Scale, includes only items on negative illusions,
similar to the examples of breaking a mirror or walking under
a ladder mentioned above (see Wiseman & Watt, 2004, for a
discussion). Likewise (and once again, contrary to what has
occurred in the laboratory), the majority of the studies that
have been conducted in applied, real-life settings have focused
on negative rather than positive illusions. These applied stud-
ies have often shown an association between (negative) su-
perstitious beliefs and low psychological adjustment
(Wiseman & Watt, 2004). This result can be regarded as the
opposite of what is generally observed within the experimen-
tal literature on positive illusions, which are sometimes found
to be adaptive (e.g., Alloy & Clements, 1992; Blanco et al.,
2009; McKay & Dennett, 2009; Taylor & Brown, 1988).
Indeed, Wiseman and Watt looked at both positive and nega-
tive illusions in what has probably been the largest applied
study to date, a massive newspaper survey. They used positive
items such as crossing one’s fingers and carrying a lucky
charm, in addition to the standard negative items generally
used in applied research on superstitions. They found interac-
tions between superstition type (positive vs. negative) and
neuroticism, and between superstition type and life satisfac-
tion, with negative superstitions being more strongly associ-
ated with higher neuroticism and lower life satisfaction than
are positive superstitions.
Thus, an important question is whether the strategies that
have already been shown to reduce positive illusions could
also be used to reduce negative illusions. Unfortunately, little
experimental work has been conducted on how negative illu-
sions could be reduced. In principle, this might imply that
strategies that have already proven successful at reducing
positive illusions in the laboratory, such as highlighting the
existence of alternative causes while reducing the probability
of the potential cause, might even work in the opposite way in
the case of negative illusions. In positive-illusion experiments
in which the occurrence of a desired event could be attributed
either to the participant’s own behavior or to an alternative
1089
cause, the availability of an alternative cause reduced the
illusion that the participants’ behavior was controlling the
outcome. However, in the case of negative illusions, it is not
clear that the availability of an alternative cause would reduce
the illusion. When people keep being exposed to uncontrolla-
ble undesired events, the existence of an alternative cause
might allow them to attribute the occurrence of these bad
events to the external cause rather than to their own behavior.
This might increase the belief that, on those occasions on
which the bad events do not occur, their own behavior was
responsible. If this is true, the strategies that have been found
effective at reducing positive illusions might need to be used
differently in the case of negative illusions.
The present experiment was designed to test this view. We
hypothesized that knowing that the undesired outcomes might
be occurring independently of one’s behavior (i.e., due to an
alternative cause) could strengthen the development and
maintenance of the illusion of control. In that case, an en-
hancement, rather than a reduction, of the illusion should be
expected when the standard combined strategy is used.
Method
Participants and apparatus
Twenty undergraduate students from Deusto University
volunteered to take part in the experiment. They were ran-
domly assigned to each of two groups, resulting in ten partic-
ipants per group. All participants performed the experiment on
personal computers in individual cabins. The session took
about 30 min, including debriefing.
Procedure and design
This experiment used the Flashes task, a computerized
program that has previously been used in experiments
investigating positive illusions of control (e.g., Blanco
et al., 2009, 2012; Matute et al., 2007; Vadillo et al.,
2013). Participants were told that the computer screen
was not working properly and that some blue-and-white
flashes would appear from time to time. When they ap-
peared, the flashes always had a duration of 1 s. The
participants’ task was to fix the screen so that it would
stay black for as much time as possible. The participants
were instructed that whenever the screen was black, a new
trial would start, and this was a signal of their opportunity
to use the spacebar on their keyboard to make the screen
stay black. Importantly, they were told that, if they
succeeded, the screen would stay black for an additional
5-s period, and that if they failed, the flashes would
reappear almost immediately (after a delay of 1 s).
1090
Therefore, the occurrence of flashes was given aversive
(undesired) value through the instructions.2
All participants were exposed to a randomized sequence of
50 flashes that occurred independently of their behavior. The
sequence was preprogrammed so that 75 % of the black-
screen intervals between flashes lasted for just 1 s, and the
remaining 25 % lasted for 5 s. Thus, given that participants
had been instructed that their goal was to maintain the black
screen for as much time as possible and that, if they failed, the
flashes would reappear after 1 s, this meant that 75 % of the
trials involved punishment of their attempts to maintain the
black screen.3
Half of our volunteers (control group) were not given any
additional instructions. On the basis of previous research, we
assumed that, while trying to maintain the black screen, they
would press the spacebar on most trials. We also predicted that
they would develop a weak illusion of control (recall that the
undesired outcome would occur often, and thus would follow
most of their actions, so they would have little room to believe
that they had any control). By contrast, the other group (ex-
perimental group) was also warned that the spacebar might
malfunction (i.e., they were given a potential alternative cause
of the failures to keep the screen black), so that in order to
prevent the flashes, they should first test whether they actually
2
It could be argued that we should have used stimuli of stronger aversive
value. According to our experience, however, it is difficult, if not impos-
sible, to find stimuli that can both be accepted by ethics committees for
use with humans and at the same time be sufficiently intense as to
maintain their aversiveness beyond the very first trials of the experiment.
According to a long tradition in the human learning literature, neutral
stimuli can be given motivational value through instructions, and this has
been effective in reproducing many of the learning and behavioral phe-
nomena that are commonly observed under conditions of stronger bio-
logical significance (both with humans and other animals; see, e.g.,
Shanks, Holyoak, & Medin, 1996). In addition, previous research has
shown that neutral outcomes (e.g., a beep) are as effective as more intense
ones (e.g., escape from moderately aversive noise) for generating positive
illusions of control (Matute, 1996). This suggests that neutral and mod-
erately aversive events should also be subject to negative illusions,
particularly if they are given aversive value through the instructions.
3 result of the control group makes sense, given that participants
It could be argued that negative illusions (e.g., that breaking a mirror
brings bad luck) can be reinterpreted as positive illusions in which the
desired outcome occurs rarely [i.e., breaking a mirror brings little good
luck, or in other words, brings a low p(O) of good luck], or even as
preventive relationships (e.g., breaking a mirror prevents the occurrence
of good luck). However, and although these interpretations might all be
theoretically plausible, we believe that in practice it is important to
maintain the negativity and undesirability that is intrinsic to the everyday
view of negative illusions. Performing an action that generates very little
good luck (or even an action that prevents good luck) is not the same as
performing an action that generates bad luck. In principle, the action will
be much more intensely suppressed if the participant believes that it
produces an undesired outcome. Thus, we believe that focusing on the
everyday description of negative illusions as those in which the behavior
is thought to generate undesired outcomes should be preferred. In addi-
tion, this allows for a direct comparison and application of the present
research to the many cases of negative illusions that are reported in real
life, outside of the laboratory (e.g., Wiseman & Watt, 2004).
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1087–1093
had any control. To this end, it was suggested that pressing the
spacebar on about 50 % of the trials would be a good strategy
to learn whether the spacebar was working properly, and thus
whether they had any control over the flashes. Therefore, this
group was exposed to the combination of the two strategies
that, as mentioned above, is effective at reducing positive
illusions.
Once participants had been exposed to all 50 flashes, they
were asked the following question: “To what extent have you
been able to control the onset of the flashes?” Participants
answered by entering a numeric value between 0 and 100,
with 0 being no control and 100 being perfect control over the
flash onset. This subjective judgment of control was our
dependent variable.
Results
First, we made sure that the instructions worked as planned to
induce a lower p(C) in the experimental group. As in the
previous studies, the p(C) of each participant was computed
as the number of trials on which the participant pressed the
spacebar, divided by 50, the total number of trials. A t test
showed that the mean probability of pressing the spacebar was
significantly lower in the experimental group (M = .44, SEM =
.092) than in the control group (M = .77, SEM = .081), t(18) =
2.70, p < .05, d = 1.21, which indicates that the instructions
worked as intended.
The judgments of control were significantly higher than 0
in both groups, both ts(9) > 3.26, ps < .05. Given that a
judgment of 0 would be the appropriate rating for the present
situation, in which the occurrences of the outcome were
preprogrammed and independent of the participants’ behav-
ior, this result indicated that both groups showed significant
illusions of control. As expected, however, the judgments of
control were significantly lower in the control group (M =
23.30, SEM = 5.83) than in the experimental group (M =
48.80, SEM = 10.14), t(18) = 2.18, p < .05, d = 0.96. The
were acting to maintain the black screen, while the undesired
flashes kept coming back after a very short delay (1 s) on 75 %
of the trials. Thus, the illusion of being able to control the
flashes could not be high in the control group. However,
producing fewer responses and being able to attribute the
occurrence of those frequent flashes to an alternative cause
in the experimental group seemed to favor the belief that
whenever the flashes did not appear or took longer to reap-
pear, this was due to the participant’s behavior being effective.
Therefore, contrary to what happens when desired outcomes
occur frequently, when undesired outcomes occur frequently,
the availability of an alternative cause to which the undesired
outcomes can be attributed enhances the illusion, rather than
reduce it.
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1087–1093
Discussion
As expected, the results observed in this research replicated
those observed with positive illusions (e.g., Blanco et al.,
2011, 2012; Hannah & Beneteau, 2009; Matute, 1996), except
that they were in the opposite direction. In experiments ex-
ploring positive illusions, the illusion became weaker when
p(C) was lower and when an alternative cause was available to
which the outcome could be attributed (Barberia et al., 2013;
Blanco et al., 2012; Hannah & Beneteau, 2009; Matute, 1996;
Vadillo et al., 2013). What the present research shows is that,
in cases in which uncontrollable undesired outcomes occur
frequently, if people act frequently, as they do by default, their
behavior often seems to be punished, so they conclude that
their degree of control is weak. However, if we instruct them
from the beginning to reduce their p(C) and provide them with
an alternative cause for the occurrence of those frequent
undesired outcomes, then they probably feel that their behav-
ior is no longer (or at least is not as frequently) punished.
Thus, participants may confirm their belief that, on the few
occasions on which those undesired events do not occur, this
is due to their having control over them (e.g., “I did not pick
number 13, so this is why I was lucky”). Therefore, the
illusion that their behavior is appropriate becomes stronger
when they reduce their p(C) and attribute the occurrence of
undesired outcomes to external causes than when they act
frequently and receive frequent punishment. In sum, if one
aims to prevent illusions of control in cases in which the
outcomes following the action are undesired, it might be better
to ask participants to increase, rather than reduce, the frequen-
cy of their behavior (see note 3 for a discussion of the simi-
larities and differences between positive and negative
illusions).
Contrary to the general assumption that negative illusions
are weak and almost nonexistent (e.g., Alloy & Abramson,
1979), our results have shown that negative illusions can be
intense, too (in line with Aeschleman et al., 2003; Bloom,
Venard, Harden, & Seetharaman, 2007), but are developed
and maintained in exactly the opposite way as positive illu-
sions. In a classic experiment, Alloy and Abramson (1979,
Exp. 3) concluded that negative illusions were much weaker
than positive illusions. However, a close inspection of that
experiment suggests that their claim might have been unwar-
ranted. In their experiment, participants tried to control the
onset of a light in order to obtain coins as a reward. One group
won coins on 50 % of the trials (win group), whereas the other
group lost coins on 50 % of the trials (lose group). Thus, the
frequency of the “earned-coin” outcome was 50 % in the win
group and 0 % in the lose group, and the frequency of the
“lost-coin” outcome was 50 % in the lose group and 0 % in the
win group. Thus, the problem is that p(O) was confounded
with outcome valence in their experiment. Participants in the
two groups were exposed to neither the same p(O) nor the
1091
same response–outcome contingencies. If participants focused
on the coins, as they probably did, those in the win group had
a high reinforcement rate. By contrast, participants in the lose
group had 50 % of their responses punished and none of their
actions rewarded. Whenever they thought that they had found
a way to control the light, they possibly repeated that response,
and they lost one more coin. Importantly, participants in the
lose group were exposed to exactly the opposite contingencies
to those that are known to increase the illusion of control. That
is, rather than a high frequency of the desired outcome, they
were under a zero-reinforcement schedule.
Our results are consistent with a study by Rudski, Lischner,
and Albert (1999). Their participants earned or lost points
randomly, on 75 %, 50 %, or 25 % of trials (depending on
the condition). The illusion of control was higher under con-
ditions of maximal (75 %) gain or minimal (25 %) loss.
Moreover, a study conducted by Aeschleman et al. (2003)
presented similar results. In Aeschleman et al.’s study, the
participants’ goal was to produce and maintain the word
GOOD on the computer screen, or to prevent and remove
the word BAD. The results showed that the strongest illusion
took place with the lower percentage of the word BAD (see
also Bloom et al., 2007, for related evidence).
The studies of Rudski et al. (1999) and Aeschleman et al.
(2003) refer to the opposite effect that the p(O) has when the
outcome is undesired, as compared to when it is desired. To
the best of our knowledge, however, the effect of manipulat-
ing the existence of alternative causes and p(C) had not yet
been investigated with regard to negative illusions. This is
important, since the combination of a medium p(C) and a
warning about alternative causes has been suggested as an
evidence-based strategy to reduce the illusion of control. Our
results show that in the case of negative illusions, this strategy
should be used in just the opposite way as with positive
illusions. That is, insisting on the existence of alternative
causes and on the need to act on about 50 % of the trials
increases negative illusions, rather than reducing them.
Although the p(C) effect detected in our experiment can be
framed straightforwardly in terms of operant conditioning
(i.e., adventitious punishment of actions), the effect of the
second component of the combined treatment to decrease
the illusion (i.e., the availability of alternative causes) could
also be discussed in light of inferential theories of causal
learning. Most of these theories emphasize the crucial role of
structure and counterfactuals in normative causal reasoning
(see, e.g., Sloman, 2013). To answer a question framed in
causal terms, the participants must evaluate the target cause’s
power to produce the outcome when it is isolated from a
background where other alternative causes may be present
(Cheng, 1997). In the experimental group, we suggested to
participants that they reduce p(C) while their attention was
explicitly drawn to alternative causes (i.e., the possible mal-
function of the spacebar). According to theories based on
1092
inferences that make use of causal structures, these two factors
might have facilitated the attribution of the frequent undesired
outcomes to the alternative cause, therefore increasing the
causal power attributed to the target cause. Because p(C)
was low in this group, participants were exposed to many
trials in which they did not act but the undesired outcome still
took place. The counterfactual reasoning would imply asking
themselves what would have happened if they had pressed the
spacebar on those trials. The availability of a potential alter-
native cause for the flash (i.e., the spacebar malfunctioning)
could lead to the conclusion that we already sketched out
above, which is that their behavior was an effective cause,
responsible for those few trials on which the aversive outcome
was not present—hence, the strong illusion of control that we
observed in this group. In any case, our experiment was not
designed to test theories of structure-based causal inference.
Thus, we cannot reach any conclusion concerning the relative
ability of these theories to account for the general finding that
we have reported and that we believe to be important: that
reducing p(C) while suggesting that other causes might be
operating in the background strengthens, rather than weakens,
the negative illusion of control. This should be taken into
account in analyses of real-life conditions in which uncontrol-
lable undesired outcomes occur at a high rate.
Author note Support for this research was provided by Grant No.
PSI2011-26965 from the Dirección General de Investigación Científica
y Técnica of the Spanish government, and by Grant No. IT363-10 from
the Departamento de Educación, Universidades, e Investigación of the
Basque government. We thank Itxaso Barberia, Oskar Pineño, Miguel A.
Vadillo, Sonia Vegas, and Ion Yarritu for illuminating discussions.
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