Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will.
- 1 January 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in American Psychologist
- Vol. 54 (7), 480-492
- https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.54.7.480
Abstract
The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one's thought as the cause of the act. Conscious will is thus experienced as a function of the priority, consistency, and exclusivity of the thought about the action. The thought must occur before the action, be consistent with the action, and not be accompanied! by other causes. An experiment illustrating the pale of priority found that people can arrive at the mistaken belief that they have intentionally caused an action that in fact they were forced to perform when they are simply led to think about the action just before its occurrence.Keywords
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Free Will in the Light of NeuropsychiatryPhilosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 1996
- Goal Achievement: The Role of IntentionsEuropean Review of Social Psychology, 1993
- Self-Attention and Behavior: A Review and Theoretical UpdatePublished by Elsevier ,1990
- Attention and the detection of signals.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1980
- Self-Perception TheoryPublished by Elsevier ,1972