Abstract: Illusion of control is defined as a judgment bias that individuals overestimate control over environment or events results when uncontrollable conditions or where actual control was possible. Illusion of control refers to gambling, lottery, health care, mental health, investment and other fields. The research approaches of illusion of control include indirect measure, self-report and laboratory tasks. Then we summarize two formation mechanisms of illusion of control: control heuristic theory and regulatory focus theory. The influential factors on illusion of control contain personality, motive, power, feedback, relevance between event and individual, instruction and so on.. Finally, some issuses should be research further, such as multiple variables and interaction research on illusion of control, cross-culture research and regulation stratege and so on.

Key words: illusion of control, perceived control, control heuristic, regulatory focus