Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will

by John Baer (Editor), James C. Kaufman (Editor), Roy F. Baumeister (Editor)

Overview

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer.
People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior?
In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198040859
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/25/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	772 KB

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Psychology and Free Will, John Baer, James C. Kaufman, and Roy F. Baumeister2. Determined and Free, David G. Myers3. How Can Psychology Contribute to the Free Will Debate?, Shaun Nichols4. Self-Theories: The Construction of Free Will, Carol S. Dweck and Daniel C. Molden5. Free Will, Consciousness, and Cultural Animals, Roy F. Baumeister6. Reconstrual of "Free Will" from the Agentic Perspective of Social Cognitive Theory, Albert Bandura7. Free Will is Un-natural, John A. Bargh8. The Automaticity Juggernaut - or, Are We Automatons After All?, John F. Kihlstrom9. The Hazards of Claiming to Have Solved the Hard Problem of Free Will, Azim F. Shariff, Jonathan Schooler, Kathleen D. Vohs10. Free Will and the Control of Action, Henry L. Roediger III, Michael K. Goode, Franklin M. Zaromb11. Self is Magic, Daniel M. Wegner12. Some Observations on the Psychology of Thinking about Free Will, Daniel C. Dennett13. Whose will? How free?, George S. Howard14. Free Will as a Proportion of Variance, William R. Miller and David J. Atencio15. Willing Creation: The Yin and Yang of the Creative Life, Dean Keith Simonton16. Free Will Requires Determinism, John Baer17. The Fear of Determinism, Steven Pinker18. Psychology and Free Will: A Commentary, Alfred R. Mele