A fascinating recent paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, was sent to me by Dr. Josh(ua) Schrier after my presentation (Living Without (Most) Conscious Thought: What Happened And How Functioning Is Affected) @ Haverford College last Friday, where Josh is a faculty member.
The paper "People believe they have more free will than others" outlines some careful experiments carried out that demonstrate that we believe we have more free will than anyone else.
Four experiments identify a tendency for people to believe that their own lives are more guided by the ideas of free will than are the lives of their peers. These tenets involve the a priori unpredictability of personal action, the presence of multiple possible paths in a person's future, and the causal power of one's personal desires and intentions in guiding one's actions.
In the first experiment, participants viewed their own pasts and futures as less predictable than those of their peers.
In the second and third experiments, participants thought there were more possible paths (whether good or bad) in their own futures than their peers’ futures.
In the fourth experiment, participants viewed their own future behavior, compared with that of their peers, as uniquely driven by intentions and desires (rather than personality, random features of the situation, or history).
Our realization that others have little/no free will is the real understanding. Our believing that only we, out of all humankind, have total free will is the real illusion.
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