Bruce Hood - The Self Illusion

Beliefs about self-control, from wherever they may derive, are powerful motivators of human behaviour. For example, consider ten-year-old children who were told that their performance on a test was either due to their natural intelligence or their ability to work hard. 54Both sets were then given a really difficult second task that was well beyond their capability, which no one could complete. However, in a third test, the children who thought their initial successes on the first task were due to their intelligence also gave up more easily because they attributed their failure on the second task to their limited natural ability, which made them less likely to persevere on the last task. In contrast, children who thought their performance was all down to hard work not only stuck longer on the third task, but also enjoyed it more. So it’s better to tell your kids that they are hard workers rather than simply smart.

The same can be said for free will. When we believe that we are the masters of our own destiny, we behave differently than those who deny the existence of free will and believe everything is determined. This has been studied experimentally using priming. Priming is a way of changing our mindset by manipulating the sorts of information we are made to focus on. (Again, this is a strong indicator that our self is influenced by what we are exposed to!) Half the adults were primed to think in a determinist way by reading stories that refuted the existence of free will such as, ‘Ultimately, we are biological computers – designed by evolution, built through genetics, and programmed by the environment.’ The remaining adults read free-will-endorsing statements such as, ‘I am able to override the genetic and environmental factors that sometimes influence my behaviour.’ Adults who were primed to reject free will were much more likely to cheat on an arithmetic exam and overpaid themselves with greater rewards than adults who read the free will endorsements. 55

To most of us, the absence of free will is tantamount to a determinism that sounds pretty much like fatalism – no matter what you do, you can’t change things. That’s a pretty demoralizing outlook on life that is bound to undermine any motivation to do anything. Maybe that’s why belief in free will predicts not only better job performance but also expected career success. 56Workers who believe in free will outperform their colleagues, and this is recognized and rewarded by their supervisors. So when we believe in free will, we enjoy life more.

The moral of the tale is that, even if free will doesn’t exist, then maybe it is best to ignore what the neuroscientists or philosophers say. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. The very act of believing means that you change the way you behave in ways that will benefit you. And the main reason this is true is that not only is it important for our self-motivation, but also for how others view us. We like people who are decisive because we believe they are positive and driven, and that makes most of us feel more comfortable than someone who can’t seem to reach a decision.

Finally, just because something doesn’t really exist doesn’t mean that believing that it does is pointless. Fantasy doesn’t really exist but the world would be a much more impoverished place without storytelling. Also, you cannot readily abandon the belief. As the one who has done the most to identify the Great Selfini, Wegner wrote, ‘If the illusion could be dispelled by explanation, I should be some kind of robot by now.’ You cannot escape the self illusion.

5

Why Our Choices Are Not Our Own

The point at which we feel that we are making a decision is often well after the fact, and yet it seems as if we were responsible in advance of making our choice. How we make decisions can also rely more on those around us than we realize, and we might not necessarily be the ones in charge. We may feel like we are making our own personal choices, but in many instances these are actually controlled by external influences of which we may not even be aware.

This is something advertisers have long known. Since the very first advertisements appeared in ancient Babylonia, vendors have realized that it pays to let people know the name of what you are selling. 1Our choices can be greatly influenced by what we are told, even though we may not be fully aware of this. In the twentieth century, it was thought that subtle marketing was the way forward to manipulate peoples’ choices. For example, in the 1950s cinema owners thought they could make the audience buy more drinks and popcorn by splicing single frames of pictures of products – too brief to be detected consciously – into the movie. The idea was that such subliminal images would register in the unconscious, leading the audience to think that they wanted to visit the foyer to purchase a soft drink; the advertisements could activate our minds below conscious awareness, making them even more potent. However, the scientific evidence for subliminal marketing is at best equivocal. 2Subtle messages do indeed shape our thoughts and behaviours, but when it comes to selling a soda drink, big, in-your-face advertising is best. This is why advertising sponsorship is so lucrative. Companies are prepared to spend large amounts of money just to get their brand in front of you because they know that people prefer a name they have heard, over one they have not. Given the choice between different brands, people reliably choose the one they recognize or that seems familiar. 3

Of course, not every decision comes down to a personal consumer choice, especially when we are asked about things of which we have no knowledge. Sometimes the decision can be so important that we seek out confirmation and support from others, especially those we perceive to be experts such as medical doctors. We may be offered a choice in treatments, but most of us prefer the doctor to tell us what to do because we think they know best. Yet in many instances of our day-to-day experience, we generally assume that, given a simple informed choice, we can apply some internal process of evaluation and then, like a judge, we make our pronouncement.

This is wrong because the processes that weigh our choices are unconscious. It may feel like you have reached your decision in the open courtroom of your mind but, in fact, most of the important stuff has been going on behind closed doors. You may be able consciously to consider choices as potential scenarios and then try to imagine what the choice would mean, but the information that is being supplied has already been processed, evaluated and weighed up well before you have had time to consider what you will do. It’s like when you say, ‘I’ve just had a great idea!’ It seems instantaneous but no light bulb suddenly went off in your head. It may have felt like a sudden enlightenment, but the boys in the backroom had been developing the idea all along and simply presented you with their analysis. Like Libet’s experiment, no single point in time marks the difference between knowing and not knowing when you are about to act. Even if you deliberate over an idea, turning it over in your conscious mind, you are simply delaying the final decision that has, to all intents and purposes, already been made.

None of this is new. We have known since the days of psychology’s early pioneers – von Helmholtz and more famously Freud – that there are unconscious processes controlling our thoughts and behaviours. 4What is new is the extent to which these processes are there to protect the self illusion – the narrative we create that we are the ones making the decisions. This stems from the need to maintain the appearance that we are in control, even when we are not. We are so concerned with maintaining the illusion of the sovereignty of self that we are prepared to argue that black is white just to prove that we are right.