Daniel Wegner - "Self is Magic"

Wegner suggests that consciousness and self-control is a type of magic -- it is remarkable that we can wish for something and then have it happen! "We are enchanted by the operation of our minds and bodies into believing that we are 'uncaused causes,' the origins of our own behavior."

Since we don't perceive the true physical causal links in our behavior -- neurons firing in our brain -- we have incomplete self-knowledge. Although it seems that we understand ourselves, this sense of understanding is an illusion. Wegner stresses that we are amazed by our own behavior, but this does not seem quite correct to me -- we often take ourselves completely for granted. His parallel with watching a magic trick seems strained. It is true that humans often resist attempts to "pull back the curtain" on our mental operations, however.

There are three key sources of the experience of conscious will -- consistency, priority, and exclusivity.

Consistency. Participants in an experiment were instructed to perform a voodoo curse on an experimental confederate, who later feigned a headache. The participants did believe that they had exerted some influence on the victim (even if the headache was only psychosomatic). But the feeling of responsibility was significantly strengthened among participants who were led to dislike the confederate before applying the curse. This consistency between desire and outcome led to a sense of conscious control (over something that in fact had not been caused at all).

Surely our interest in following sports is related to this effect. Why do people root for sports teams? Furthermore, many people would not want to watch a tape of a sporting event after its completion, even if they were unaware of the outcome. Somehow the unpredictability of a "live" game is more compelling than the unpredictability of a tape of the same game.

Consistency can be undermined by distractions that separate thought from action. This reduces the feeling of voluntariness for actions. Wegner suggests that this effect may underlie hypnosis.

Priority. "The matter of timing is crucial in the perception of willed action, so crucial that even happenstance events may be perceived as under one's control when they occur just after one has happened to think about them."

Exclusivity. "People see their thoughts as causing events to the degree that there are no other plausible candidate causes." If you are thinking of ordering a dish at a restaurant and someone at your table strikes first, you may be tempted to change your order. Milgram's famous torture studies can be interpreted to reveal that humans are quick to experience "agentic shift" -- to view themselves as instruments of others. The experience of conscious will is therefore very dependent on there not being other possible causes (in particular, other social agents).

Wegner moves on to discussing "Breaking the Spell." Lovers who explain why they feel love experience a diminishing feeling. At the same time, people feel that understanding and explaining evil is very close to condoning it. To retain our appreciation of evil, we need to resist understanding it. Furthemore, "explained" beliefs lose importance, but beliefs that are used to provide explanations gain in value (to the believer).

Wegner believes the illusion of self is so persistent and strong that it will not fade, not even after being explained. For example, in one experiment people were asked to judge the moral responsibility of a muderer. If the murderer had shot his victim under overwhelming duress, participants judged him less responsible, as expected. But if the murderer had wanted to do it, he was judged as more responsible, even if his want had not been the actual causal factor. (Red flags: Wegner's conclusion -- that moral responsibility is not a matter of simple causal logic -- is not as straightforward as it might seem.)

The next question is why the feeling is so persistent. Going back to biological foundations (natural selection), we ask: why would natural selection have designed minds that experience the self illusion? Why can't people just act -- why do they need to feel aware? Why do they need to feel in control?

Wegner suggests three possible avenues for the evolution of self-magic:

Social signalling. The experience of conscious will is a signal that the self is "authoring" an act; this in turn can be communicated to others. I am afraid that there seems too much taken for granted in Wegner's account, which really should start at the very beginning.

Social task allocation. Conscious will allows people to know their limitations. Once again, this account seems to presume too much.

Social control. Conscious will readies individuals to accept responsibility. The inner feeling of doing provides a conscience. This definitely hits on something fundamental but I need to spend more time thinking about it.

FURTHER READING:
Baumeister, R.F. (1997) Evil: Inside human cruelty and violence. W.H. Freeman.
Woolfolk, R.L. et al. (2006) . Identification, situational constraint, and social cognition: Studies in the attribution of moral responsibility. Cognition, 100, 283-301.