Perceptions of Control for Muggles

What is this mythical thing we refer to as free will? From a young age people have been spouting off to us how we are in control of our own actions. Our culture has been pumping us full of the notion: movie titles with the tag line “if you build it, they will come” when it really should read something like “if you do or don’t build it, they may or may not come…actually it probably has very little to do with you at all.” As a person who thoroughly enjoys Harry Potter and most other movies and TV shows featuring magic, it takes a lot for me to say that in instances where we have “willed” something to occur that it isn’t simply magic. If you think about it, that’s how magical powers work…the magical being in question wills it to happen and with the assistance of some potion or incantation, it “happens.” They chose and it happened. Can you imagine if someone you’re sitting down to dinner with all of a sudden turns into a turnip? What explanation other than magic could there be?

We regular non-magical people have a problem with this. As researchers, our job is the find the mechanisms, dives, and motivation for why people behave in certain ways, and why they think the things they do. Generally speaking were working on that. But this notion of free will seems to be totally problematic. There is no way that I would assume that because I thought it would be cool if a tree limb moved when I thought it should, and I couldn’t see the wind blowing or a squirrel walking by, and it moved within seconds of me having the thought and doing the quick surveillance that I would think I willed it to happen. No way. Do people actually think that way? Are they totally out of touch?

Taylor and Brown (1988) have found that some people are totally out of touch. But get this, they’ve found these positive illusions to be psychologically adaptive…up to a certain point. This tendency to view the future more optimistically than objective circumstances can justify, to maintain that one has a higher degree of personal control over the situation than might be justified by the objective facts, and to inflate ones own attributes and characteristics modestly is said to be a means to preserve self-esteem and has been shown to be an exceptional coping strategy. The implication is that illusions of control may be sought because of the generally helpful nature of believing one has control (i.e. when diagnosed with a terminal illness). However, when people exhibit these behaviors long term, they are assumed to be off their rocker, totally out of touch with reality, and probably a prime target for feeling like they are willing things to happen when other situational and environmental factors are truly the culprit. Illusions of control seem to help life appear less random thereby fueling the optimism that one can eventually help some things turn out well…possibly because we willed them to.

“This is a story about control/My control/Control of what I say/Control of what I do”
-- Janet Jackson, Control

xoxox