If Free Will Does Exist How Often Do We Employ it in Our Daily Lives

In my post of 7/31/10 I discussed a somewhat widely-publicized study published in 2008 in Nature Neuroscience, in which researchers using brain scanners could predict people's very simple decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of what their decision was. 

The concern raised at that time was whether some totalitarian government might start arresting people based on a determination of what they were going to do at some time in the future, like the precrime unit in the movie Minority Report.

This study still comes up in philosophical discussions of a different issue - whether people even really have free will at all, or if we are more like pre-programmed robots.

The decision studied in the experiment — whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand —may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise interesting questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist who was at the Max Planck Institute. Haynes updated a classic experiment by Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Hayne's study showed a much large time gap between a decision and the experience of making it.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. In fact, their decision seems to have been made before they were aware of having made a choice.

So does this mean the feeling and belief we have that we have free will is just an illusion?

Well possibly, but probably not. For one thing, as mentioned, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of much more complicated and/or emotionally meaningful decisions. Also, the predictions were not 100% accurate. Might free will enter at the last moment, allowing a person to override a subconscious decision?

But there is a much bigger problem with drawing conclusions about free will from this type of experiment. We usually do not employ free will in the sense of making conscious choices when we engage in the vast majority of our usual daily activities. If individuals had to weigh the pro's and con's of their every move as they negotiated their lives, or if they had to stop and think about how to behave before doing the most routine activities, so much time would be spent on that that they would be nearly paralyzed. 

Most of our "decisions" are based on environmental cues which are processed subconsicously and which then trigger habitual behavior without requiring any thought on our parts at all. 

Through our life experiences, we all build mental models of our environment called schemas which then, when cued by environmental triggers, automatically kick in. Cues elicit a certain well-rehearsed repertoire of responses.

To understand this, think of your daily drive to work. Most drivers, while negotiating a familiar route, have at one time or another come to the realization that they had not been paying the least attention to what they had been doing for several minutes. Nonetheless, they arrived at their destination, with almost no recollection of any of the landmarks that they had passed.

Surely, we have the option to choose to make a turn that would take us away from our intended destination, but, under most circumstances, why would we waste our time even considering something like that?

A lot of predictable situations like this are handled on "automatic pilot." Gregory Bateson observed that ordinary situations and "constant truths" are assimilated and stored in deep brain structures, while conscious deliberation is reserved for changeable, novel, and unpredictable situations.

This does not mean, however, that rigid behavior cannot be overcome by conscious deliberation. In neurologically intact individuals, the more evolutionarily-advanced part of the human brain, the cerebral cortex, can override even the most reflexive of gross motor behavior.

So perhaps the brain processes described in this study are the ones that determine whether or not an individual goes on automatic pilot, or has to stop and think about potential unanticipated consequences. React in the usual habitual way, or re-assess? When it comes to pushing an inert button in a lab, the consequences for the subject are pretty predictable: there will not be any.

Unless the subject were purposely trying to foul up the experimenter's protocol, which would be a strange thing to want to do in an experiment with no social consequences to the subject, why would they extend brain energy in making a choice? They would not. They would just "go with their gut."

Therefore, from the data in this study alone, it is not possible to know which interpretation is correct: the experimenter's, or the one I just suggested.

Maybe you don't have free will, maybe you do. As I said in the earlier post, I am pretty sure I do.

I will share my jargon equifinality and multifinality

Here's a quick post for those of you with a fondness for cool words. It's sort of relevant to writing. I mean, if you want to avoid one-dimensional, predictable characters, this could be one way to think about their development.

OK, honestly, this post comes from the realm of DUH, but I hope the concepts are still fun to think about. They were fun to draw pictures of. #nerd

Equifinality: the same outcome can result from multiple predictors, stressors, pathogens, or developmental paths.

In other words, there's not one obvious path  or set of experiences that will lead to whoever your character is. In fact, for characters, usually the twisty, less-traveled roads are more interesting to readers.

Multifinality: One factor can lead to any of several outcomes, depending on the person and the context.

In other words, early experience doesn't lock a character in to a particular outcome, life choice, career path, ambition, passion, etc. Be creative. Flexible. Don't go for the obvious or easy.

And ... all my energy has been spent writing psych evals this week, so this is all I've got for you today. Can you apply these concepts to your characters? If you have characters from similar backgrounds, how do you craft their development along different paths? What kinds of things do you consider? And if you have characters who arrive at the same place in life, how do you vary the paths they took to get there?

Or, if you don't want to think about that, can you at least agree with me that the words are delightful?

Today is Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog day! Please go visit Lydia, who is posting on the question: How would you personify your muse? Here's the link to Laura's answer from last week.

Will Grayson Will Grayson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson came out about a year ago. Co-written by John Green and David Levithan, it's about two boys with the same name who meet in a very unlikely place and end up being linked through their association with a very unusual person.

OK, there's more to it than that.

If you are interested in a study of authentic teen voice, then read this book. It also happens to be hilarious, squirm-inducing, and utterly cutting while simulteneously being incredibly sweet.

My favorite character  is the second Will, whose chapters (written by David Levithan, I believe) are written in entirely in lowercase. This Will is gay, isolated, and depressed. One Goodreads reviewer kindly described him as "such an a$$hole teenager," especially during the first few chapters. I think that pretty much nails it, which is why it's so cool that this character is entirely sympathetic.

I liked both Wills, but lowercase Will just grabbed me by the heart. As I read his chapters, I was really struck by how accurately the author portrayed lowercase Will's depression.

Depression in teens doesn't really look like depression in adults. Depressed teenagers are more irritable and hostile than depressed adults. Lowercase Will certainly is (though he goes through a couple life-changing events that soften him up a bit), and that was one of the things that made him authentic. It's so obvious he's miserable. But not come-comfort-me miserable. He's back-the-eff-up-and-leave-me-the-hell-alone miserable.

Unlike depressed adults, who tend to withdraw from nearly everyone in their lives, adolescents, including lowercase Will, are withdrawn from most people--but not all. For good or ill, there are certain relationships Lowercase Will closely clings to, even lives for.

These are the primary manifestations of his depression, and one of the by-products appears to be the life he lives online, which is also common in depressed teens. He is only half-present in his daily life, and seems to save nearly all his emotional energy for an online relationship. When this happens in real life, it often leads to even greater isolation from in-person peers.

LGBT adolescents are at higher risk for depression, suicide attempts, and completed suicides than their heterosexual counterparts. And gay and bisexual adolescent males? Ouch. They are extremely vulnerable--one study indicated that 28% had attempted suicide, compared to 4% of heterosexual adolescent males and 20% of lesbian/bisexual females. HOWEVER--the link between sexuality and suicide is MEDIATED by (this means the effect of sexuality essentially gets filtered through-->) things like depression, family factors, social relationships/bullying, and gender nonconformity (the guys who don't act stereotypically "guy-like" are more likely to get harrassed and bullied).

Lowercase Will's observations about his own depression are astute and brutal. He struggles with hopelessness and a bitter knowledge that he "will always be the blood and shit of things." But he still has a wit and spark, and a fragile desire to connect, to find his way. 

And because I loved this character so much, I must include his thoughts on "mental health days":

i think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.

Now--I asked these questions in another post, and I will ask them again because they are just as relevant here. How do you keep characters genuine and believable and relatable even when they're going through something that makes them miserable? Do you feel the temptation to soften them up to keep them sympathetic? Do you pull back from ugliness and anger because you worry you'll lose your reader? And when you read, what is it about a character that keeps you walking down that road, and turning those pages, with him/her? What makes you care about a character like this, and what puts you off?