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Kummen Å, Haggard P, Williams G, Charles L. Mistaking opposition for autonomy: psychophysical studies on detecting choice bias. Proc Biol Sci 2023; 290:20221785. [PMID: 37040800 PMCID: PMC10089716 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1785] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2022] [Accepted: 03/07/2023] [Indexed: 04/13/2023] Open
Abstract
Do people know when they act freely and autonomously versus when their actions are influenced? While the human aspiration to freedom is widespread, little research has investigated how people perceive whether their choices are biased. Here, we explored how actions congruent or incongruent with suggestions are perceived as influenced or free. Across three experiments, participants saw directional stimuli cueing left or right manual responses. They were instructed to follow the cue's suggestion, oppose it or ignore it entirely to make a 'free' choice. We found that we could bias participants' 'free responses' towards adherence or opposition, by making one instruction more frequent than the other. Strikingly, participants consistently reported feeling less influenced by cues to which they responded incongruently, even when response habits effectively biased them towards such opposition behaviour. This effect was so compelling that cues that were frequently presented with the Oppose instruction became systematically judged as having less influence on behaviour, artificially increasing the sense of freedom of choice. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that acting contrarian distorts the perception of autonomy. Crucially, we demonstrate the existence of a novel illusion of freedom evoked by trained opposition. Our results have important implications for understanding mechanisms of persuasion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Åshild Kummen
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Patrick Haggard
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Gwydion Williams
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
| | - Lucie Charles
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AZ, UK
- Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Behavioural and Biological Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
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Guseva M, Bogler C, Allefeld C, Haynes JD. Instruction effects on randomness in sequence generation. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1113654. [PMID: 37034908 PMCID: PMC10075230 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1113654] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2022] [Accepted: 02/20/2023] [Indexed: 04/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Randomness is a fundamental property of human behavior. It occurs both in the form of intrinsic random variability, say when repetitions of a task yield slightly different behavioral outcomes, or in the form of explicit randomness, say when a person tries to avoid being predicted in a game of rock, paper and scissors. Randomness has frequently been studied using random sequence generation tasks (RSG). A key finding has been that humans are poor at deliberately producing random behavior. At the same time, it has been shown that people might be better randomizers if randomness is only an implicit (rather than an explicit) requirement of the task. We therefore hypothesized that randomization performance might vary with the exact instructions with which randomness is elicited. To test this, we acquired data from a large online sample (n = 388), where every participant made 1,000 binary choices based on one of the following instructions: choose either randomly, freely, irregularly, according to an imaginary coin toss or perform a perceptual guessing task. Our results show significant differences in randomness between the conditions as quantified by conditional entropy and estimated Markov order. The randomization scores were highest in the conditions where people were asked to be irregular or mentally simulate a random event (coin toss) thus yielding recommendations for future studies on randomization behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maja Guseva
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- *Correspondence: Maja Guseva,
| | - Carsten Bogler
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Carsten Allefeld
- Department of Psychology, City University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - John-Dylan Haynes
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, City University of London, London, United Kingdom
- Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Abstract
Is it possible to predict the freely chosen content of voluntary imagery from prior neural signals? Here we show that the content and strength of future voluntary imagery can be decoded from activity patterns in visual and frontal areas well before participants engage in voluntary imagery. Participants freely chose which of two images to imagine. Using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and multi-voxel pattern analysis, we decoded imagery content as far as 11 seconds before the voluntary decision, in visual, frontal and subcortical areas. Decoding in visual areas in addition to perception-imagery generalization suggested that predictive patterns correspond to visual representations. Importantly, activity patterns in the primary visual cortex (V1) from before the decision, predicted future imagery vividness. Our results suggest that the contents and strength of mental imagery are influenced by sensory-like neural representations that emerge spontaneously before volition.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Joel Pearson
- School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
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Rens N, Bode S, Burianová H, Cunnington R. Proactive Recruitment of Frontoparietal and Salience Networks for Voluntary Decisions. Front Hum Neurosci 2018; 11:610. [PMID: 29311873 PMCID: PMC5733024 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00610] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2017] [Accepted: 11/29/2017] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
There is evidence that neural patterns are predictive of voluntary decisions, but findings come from paradigms that have typically required participants to make arbitrary choices decisions in highly abstract experimental tasks. It remains to be seen whether proactive neural activity reflects upcoming choices for individuals performing decisions in more complex, dynamic, scenarios. In this functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated proactive neural activity for voluntary decisions compared with instructed decisions in a virtual environment, which more closely mimicked a real-world decision. Using partial least squares (PLS) analysis, we found that the frontoparietal and salience networks were associated with voluntary choice selection from a time at which decisions were abstract and preceded external stimuli. Using multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we showed that participants’ choices, which were decodable from motor and visual cortices, could be predicted with lower accuracy for voluntary decisions than for instructed decisions. This corresponded to eye-tracking data showing that participants made a greater number of fixations to alternative options during voluntary choices, which might have resulted in less stable choice representations. These findings suggest that voluntary decisions engage proactive choice selection, and that upcoming choices are encoded in neural representations even while individuals continue to consider their options in the environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Natalie Rens
- Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Stefan Bode
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.,Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
| | - Hana Burianová
- Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.,Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom
| | - Ross Cunnington
- Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.,School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
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Wisniewski D, Goschke T, Haynes JD. Similar coding of freely chosen and externally cued intentions in a fronto-parietal network. Neuroimage 2016; 134:450-458. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.04.044] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2015] [Revised: 03/01/2016] [Accepted: 04/17/2016] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
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Lavazza A. Free Will and Neuroscience: From Explaining Freedom Away to New Ways of Operationalizing and Measuring It. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:262. [PMID: 27313524 PMCID: PMC4887467 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00262] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2016] [Accepted: 05/18/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The concept of free will is hard to define, but crucial to both individual and social life. For centuries people have wondered how freedom is possible in a world ruled by physical determinism; however, reflections on free will have been confined to philosophy until half a century ago, when the topic was also addressed by neuroscience. The first relevant, and now well-known, strand of research on the brain correlates of free will was that pioneered by Libet et al. (1983), which focused on the allegedly unconscious intentions taking place in decisions regarded as free and voluntary. Libet’s interpretation of the so-called readiness potential (RP) seems to favor a sort of deflation of freedom (Soon et al., 2008). However, recent studies seem to point to a different interpretation of the RP, namely that the apparent build-up of the brain activity preceding subjectively spontaneous voluntary movements (SVM) may reflect the ebb and flow of the background neuronal noise, which is triggered by many factors (Schurger et al., 2016). This interpretation seems to bridge the gap between the neuroscientific perspective on free will and the intuitive, commonsensical view of it (Roskies, 2010b), but many problems remain to be solved and other theoretical paths can be hypothesized. The article therefore, proposes to start from an operationalizable concept of free will (Lavazza and Inglese, 2015) to find a connection between higher order descriptions (useful for practical life) and neural bases. This new way to conceptualize free will should be linked to the idea of “capacity”: that is, the availability of a repertoire of general skills that can be manifested and used without moment by moment conscious control. The capacity index, which is also able to take into account the differences of time scales in decisions, includes reasons-responsiveness and is related to internal control, understood as the agent’s ownership of the mechanisms that trigger the relevant behavior. Cognitive abilities, needed for one to have capacity, might be firstly operationalized as a set of neuropsychological tests, which can be used to operationalize and measure specific executive functions, as they are strongly linked to the concept of control. Subsequently, a free will index would allow for the search of the underlying neural correlates of the capacity exhibited by people and the limits in capacity exhibited by each individual.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Lavazza
- Neuroethics, Centro Universitario Internazionale Arezzo, Italy
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Bode S, Murawski C, Soon CS, Bode P, Stahl J, Smith PL. Demystifying “free will”: The role of contextual information and evidence accumulation for predictive brain activity. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2014; 47:636-45. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.10.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/05/2014] [Revised: 08/19/2014] [Accepted: 10/20/2014] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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Soon CS, Allefeld C, Bogler C, Heinzle J, Haynes JD. Predictive brain signals best predict upcoming and not previous choices. Front Psychol 2014; 5:406. [PMID: 24847303 PMCID: PMC4021141 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00406] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2014] [Accepted: 04/17/2014] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Chun S Soon
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore ; Department of Psychology, Technical University Dresden Dresden, Germany
| | - Carsten Allefeld
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Carsten Bogler
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany
| | - Jakob Heinzle
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Translational Neuromodeling Unit, Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Zurich, Switzerland
| | - John-Dylan Haynes
- Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin Berlin, Germany ; Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Berlin, Germany
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