In 1999, Dan Wegner and I wrote a paper detailing the circumstances when one is most likely to experience the sensation that one's conscious will initiated an action. In a nutshell, this sensation is likely to occur when a thought associated with that act precedes it (priority), is consistent with it (consistency), and no other causes appear to be present (exclusivity). We showed that by mimicking these circumstances, one may be led to experience will even when the act in question was performed by someone else (Wegner & Wheatley, 1999).
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After several years I am returning to these questions in order to examine why certain kinds of action sequences feel willful while others do not.
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
 Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will.
American Psychologist, 54, 480-492.
Daniel Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2002) |
