Chapter 3

The Threat of Social Psychology

Eddy Nahmias 1. Introduction The account of free will I have developed is naturalistic. Since free will is constituted by a set of cognitive abilities, it is open to empirical investigation. It should therefore be possible to develop scientific explanations for the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities associated with free will, such as introspection on ones motivational states (see Appendix). Scientific theories and experiments may also indicate that these cognitive abilities are limited in humans or that they work in ways that conflict with the proposed conception of free will. For instance, if, as I have suggested, free will involves certain types of abilities and causal processes required for self-knowledge, then, to the extent these abilities or processes are called into question by scientific theories, such theories threaten free will. In this sense scientific theories and the causal processes they describe can pose serious threats to free will, but, as I argued in Chapter 1, these threats should be clearly distinguished from the traditional problem thought to be posed by causal determinism. The scientific theories in questionthose that suggest we are caused to act in ways that conflict with our having knowledge of and control over our actionsneed not rely on the truth of determinism; they may invoke causal processes that are irreducibly probabilistic.1 Or they may turn out to be deterministic. But if so, they would be threatening not because they are deterministic but rather because of the types of causal accounts they propose. That is, their causal accounts conflict with free will, if they do, not because of their formdeterministic versus probabilisticbut because of their content their claims that we do not in fact possess the abilities required for free will, abilities most libertarians as well as compatibilists accept as necessary (if not sufficient). In this context, what may be metaphysically possible (i.e. universal causal determinism) is less threatening than what may be psychologically actual. In this chapter I will focus on a set of theories and experiments from social psychology and examine the various ways their content conflicts with the theory of free will developed in earlier chapters. Put most starkly, the conflict is this: for us to have free will requires that we can know what motivational factors influence us and that we can, through conscious deliberation, know what we really want and influence what we do accordingly; but social psychology suggests that our knowledge of ourselves is extremely limited, as is the influence of our conscious deliberations. More specifically, experimental results in social psychology have been interpreted to imply four troubling theses: (1) The Principle of Situationism: Human behaviors are determined to a surprising extent by external situational factors which we do not recognize and over which we have little control. (2) The Disappearance of the Character Traits: Internal dispositional states are not robust or stable across various situations; character traits are not good predictors of behavior. Rather, it is the consistency of our situations that produce similar behavior over time. The motivational dispositions we identify with or aspire to develop disappear under the weight of situational factors.

Indeed, most results in the social psychology literature I will discuss are presented in statistical terms. Though I imagine many psychologists believe the causal processes underlying these results are deterministic, there is no reason to believe the results they describe are not irreducibly probabilistic.

(3) The Errors of Folk Psychology: We generally do not know about the first two theses, and hence our explanations of behavior are based on mistaken theories. Furthermore, we do not have introspective access to the reasons we act. To the extent we can predict and explain our own attitudes and behavior, such knowledge is not privileged; rather, it is based on the same often mistakenfolk psychological theories we construct to predict and explain others behavior. (4) The Errors of Introspection: When we introspect on the reasons why we feel or act the way we do, such introspection is sometimes detrimental, leading to reduced satisfaction in choices (regret), sub-optimal choices, and inconsistency between reported attitudes and behavior. The act of introspecting on our reasons and consciously identifying ourselves with them does not seem to influence whether we act on them. The basic argument that these theses threaten free will is as follows: (1) When we report on the reasons for our attitudes or actions, we usually mean both that those reasons have influenced us and that they justify our attitudes or actionsthat is, we see the reasons as causal influences and, usually, we accept them as legitimate influences. So, to the extent we actually act on these reasons, we are acting on motivations we identify with, and hence acting of our own free will. (2) However, social psychology experiments suggest that the reasons we report are often not the causes of our behavior (or are not nearly as influential as we believe). Rather, we are often influenced by situational factors we do not recognize, and we often act on motivations, the sources and effects of which we have not evaluatedthat is, we have not considered whether we identify with them. And in many cases, if we were to consider them, we would not identify with them. (3) Therefore, these experiments suggest that oftencertainly more often than we thinkwe act without exercising the abilities associated with free will; that is, we do not act of our own free will. The experiments may even suggest that we do not have the opportunity to introspect on our motivations or to influence them, which would restrict the scope of our free actions and responsibility. Philosophers have noted the threats to free agency posed by other psychological theories, such as the Freudian unconscious or Skinners radical behaviorismtheories that shatter the Cartesian conception that we have incorrigible knowledge of the mental states that cause our behavior and that we have abundant conscious control over those mental states.2 However, little notice has been given to results in social psychology that impinge on our conception of ourselves as free and responsible agents. A few philosophers have discussed the third thesis, our erroneous folk psychology, but mostly in terms of its implications for theories of rationality.3 Other philosophers have recently examined the first and second theses in discussions of character traits
See, for example, Hospers (1950). One reason philosophers may not focus much attention on these psychological theories is that, as with Freuds and Skinners theories, they often collapse under their own weight over time. Another way to look at it, however, is that the more radical aspects of the theories are rejected while many other aspects are folded into the practice of the normal science and even into our everyday language. Part of my task in this chapter will be to distinguish the radical aspects of social psychologys interpretation of our introspective abilities from claims that we should attend to and examine in light of their implications for our freedom and responsibility. See Stich (1983, especially chapter 11, and 1990, chapter 1), Mele (1995, chapter 5, and 1987, chapter 10), Goldman (1986). Holt (1989, 1993, 1999) discusses social psychologys impact on our practical rationality; I will discuss this work in section 6C below. 2
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and moral theories (especially virtue ethics).4 I will mention below some of the issues these philosophers raise. But I will focus on the ways these four theses suggest that our self-knowledge is limited, that we do not have privileged access toand we only rarely have accurate knowledge ofour own motivational states and the causes of our attitudes and behaviors. Our ability to introspect on and identify with certain motivational states will be accordingly limited, along with our ability to influence these states to act in the way we want. Each of four sections below deals with one of the threatening theses of social psychology. In each section, I first outline a few relevant experiments that support the thesis, then discuss their implications for free will, and then offer some responses to these implications. These responses involve asking several questions: (1) Are there alternative interpretations of the experimental results?5 (2) What is the legitimate scope of the results? Are there important boundary conditions that reduce their conflict with free will? (3) Are there ways that the experimental results may be used to increase our knowledge of and control over our behavior? I will present the experiments and the interpretations of their results generously, from the point of view of the researchers, since I want to highlight the possible challenges they pose to our conception of ourselves as free agents. Then, in responding to these challenges, I intend to alleviatethough not dismisstheir impact, so I will raise questions about the experiments and the implications that have been drawn from them. In general, we may conclude that to the extent that the experiments suggest the implications I discuss, to that extent they threaten free will.6 My main goals are to bring attention to largely unnoticed empirical threats to free will, to examine their depth and scope, and to offer suggestions for future research. These points will reinforce an underlying theme of this dissertation: that free will should be investigated empirically as well as conceptually. 2. Some Preliminary Remarks on Reasons and Causes It will be helpful for the following discussion to make some conceptual distinctions that are often glossed over in the psychological literature. Self-knowledge comes in various forms. We may or may not know what kind of mental states we are in (e.g. belief vs. desire), what the content of those states are (e.g. anxiety or frustration), and what caused our mental states to occur (e.g. a previous thought or a previous perception). We generally do not knowat least through
See Flanagan (1991, chapter 13); Doris (1998 and 2001); Schoeman (1987); and Harman (1999). Harman interprets the social psychology research to suggest that people simply do not have character traits and when we think that they do, it causes problems. Flanagan and Doris are less extreme, and though they take the research very seriously, they also offer responses to its implications for virtue ethics and the concept of character traits. In section 4 below, I side with Flanagan and Doris. For the most part I will not be questioning the methodology or statistics of the experiments I discuss. As with any experimental program, such questions have been raised and some may prove damaging. For such questions, see Ericsson and Simon (1984), Adair and Spinner (1981), White (1980), and Cotton (1980). There are also many conceptual and terminological questions that could be raised about this research, but I have space to deal with only a few of them. And, as we will see, different people may be affected to different degrees by these implications, which accords with the idea, discussed in Chapter 2, that there are different degrees of freedom. 3
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introspectionwhat processes, at the functional, much less the neurobiological level, underlie our mental states and behaviors.7 When we intentionally act, many factors, working on various levels, may be singled out in causal explanations of our behavior. Depending on the purpose of the explanation, we may refer to scientific causes, such as neurobiological, genetic, historical, environmental, or social factors; we may also refer to agent-oriented causes, such as character traits, beliefs, desires, intentions, or plans. I will not try to adjudicate here the metaphysical relations between these various causesthat is, whether some of them are identical to, part of, supervene on, or reduce to others, whether some are epiphenomenal or may be eliminated, or whether some are logically distinct descriptions of identical events (though some of these relations will be discussed in the Epilogue). But it is important to recognize that when we explain our own behavior, we generally refer to agent-oriented causes, which we call reasons. We distinguish reasons from scientific causes in several ways: we can generally access our reasons by thinking about them; they are usually meant to justify as well as explain our actions; and they are usually teleologicalthey explain how our actions aim towards some goal. In reporting our reasons, we do not always mean that they are good, much less moral, reasonsfor example, I may recognize that wanting to land a job is a reason, but not a good reason, for enhancing my resume. But often the reasons we offer are meant not only to explain the factors that influenced us but also to indicate our approval of those influences. Often, we do see our reasons both as causes and as good reasons (at least for us). There are long-standing philosophical debates about whether reasons are a type of cause and whether explanations in terms of reasons are compatible with causal explanations. I will assume (with Donald Davidson and others) that reasons are one type of cause and reasons explanations may be offered alongside other types of causal explanations.8 The important question for my purposes is under what conditions reasons explanations conflict with other types causal explanationsspecifically, when the agent-oriented explanations (or justifications) we offer for our behavior are directly undermined by scientific explanations for behavior. For this purpose, I will distinguish between four types of causal influences, which are not meant to be mutually exclusive: (1) scientific causes external to an agent (such as situational factors) that influence her mental states and/or behavior; (2) scientific causes internal to an agent (such as her neural states, genetic makeup, and unconscious functional states) that influence her mental states and/or behavior; (3) reasons which an agent identifies as internal mental states (such as beliefs and desires) that influence her behavior; (4) reasons which an agent identifies as the causes of her mental states (such as other mental states or situational factors she perceives).9 These distinctions allow us to recognize various conflictsand lack of conflictsbetween reasons and causes. For instance, a situational factor that an agent sees as the reason she desires something (type 4) may conflict with external causes that can be shown to be more influential in causing her choice (type 1): I think I want to buy this car because it best meets my criteria, but it
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See Flanagan (1984: 193-200) for useful distinctions between these types of self-knowledge. See Davidson (1980), Goldman (1970), and Mele (1995). These distinctions are loosely based on Locke and Pennington (1982: 216). 4

turns out that I think this primarily because of techniques the salesman uses. On the other hand, an agent may have desires she sees as reasons to act (type 3) which do not conflict with the bodily states that cause the desire (type 2): the hunger I experience, which is caused by the release of certain hormones, causes me to eat. Perhaps, however, an agent thinks her reason is the cause of her choice (type 3) but the choice was in fact produced by brain activity resulting from situational pressures she does not recognize (types 1 and 2): I think Im scolding my child only because he broke the lamp, but I would not scold him if I were not still seething (as caused by, say, increased limbic activity) from a near accident on the commute home. These distinctions also remind us that causes are complex. Some reasons may serve as background conditions (and hence a type of cause) for certain external causes; I may be influenced to help a friend move by a factor I do not recognize (e.g. he told me earlier he liked my haircut), but the fact that he is my friend is still a causal factorone that I recognize as a reasonin my choice. In examining psychology experiments we should keep in mind that many reasons may play causal roles in behavior even if some other factor is identified experimentally as the most significant causal factor. These factors are identified as such because the experiments use a between-subject design: a causal influence is inferred from different behaviors exhibited by an experimental group which is exposed to the factor and a control group which is not (see below). For instance, if the experimental group is told to examine their attitudes and controls are not, and if the behavior between these groups varies, then examining attitudes is identified as the significant factor influencing this behavior, even though other factors, such as wanting to do what the experimenter asks, are surely relevant influences on the behavior all of the subjects. Nonetheless, such experiments may indicate that (1) subjects are influenced by a manipulated factor that they do not report as a reason for acting and (2) subjects report as a primary reason for acting some factor that is shown to play no significant causal role in behavior. We may call the first situation ignorance and the second situation rationalization. Below, I will discuss experiments that suggest such conflicts between the reasons subjects offer for what they do and the scientific causes of what they do. I am particularly interested in experimental results that show the reasons people report as causing their behavior are in fact rationalizations. Again, when we explain the reasons we acted, we are often suggesting that the reason was both a significant causal influence on us and that it justifies our action. If these reasons are not causes, then we may be acting on causes we would not accept as reasons to act. Hence, we may be acting on motivations we would not identify with, which entails that we are not acting of our own free will. A final point: I might have discussed, rather than social psychology, areas of research in neurobiology, genetics, evolutionary psychology, or other sciences that explore human nature, each of which is sometimes seen as posing threats to our knowledge of and control over the causes of our motivation and behavior.10 My discussion of social psychologys particularly salient threats to free will could perhaps be described as just one instance of a broader conflict between the way we conceive of ourselves and the way science describes us and our place in the worldthe conflict between what Wilfred Sellars calls the manifest image and the scientific image.11
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See, for example, Libet (1985) on epiphenomenalism or the sociobiologists/evolutionary psychologists on genetic determinism. There are also research programs in social psychology which I do not discuss even though they present threats similar to the ones I do discuss; for instance, cognitive dissonance, automaticity, and no choice literature each provide enough fodder for another chapter. Sellars (1963). See also Flanagan (forthcoming). 5

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However, there is an important difference between the claims of social psychology I will discuss and some of the research programs just mentioned. Many of the explanations in, say, neurobiology and genetics, do not necessarily compete with our own folk psychological explanations of our behaviori.e. with the reasons we offer. These sciences offer causal explanations of our mental states and behavior, but these explanations occur at a different level and refer to different entities (e.g. neurons and genes) than our reasons explanations (e.g. in terms of beliefs and desires). There are, of course, difficult questions about how these lower-level explanations relate to our higher-level explanations, questions that raise thorny philosophical issues about reductionism and mental causation, for instance. But, on a first pass, we may say that most current neurobiological explanations describe mechanisms that underlie or correlate with our perceptions, motivations, beliefs, and actions. Much neurobiological research begins with reported experiences and observed behaviors described in ordinary language and then examines the brain activity that correlates with these experiences or behaviors. Often, the mechanisms uncovered indicate holes or errors in our ordinary descriptions, but adjusting and supplementing these descriptions is usually more appropriate than replacing them (though eliminativism, as I will discuss in the Epilogue, suggests otherwise). Most genetic explanations similarly occur at a level that does not compete with folk psychology (despite misleading media reports that present genes as deterministic causes of traits and behaviors). But the psychology experiments I will discuss do use the language of folk psychology and the concepts we employ when we introspect on our mental statesthis research program occurs on the same level as our mental talk. Although some of scientific psychology only fine-tunes rather than replaces our folk psychology, some of it presents explanations of behavior that compete and conflict with our explanations of our own and others behavior. When I report that the reason I picked this candidate for the job was that he was the most able, intelligent, and flexible candidate, I need not see that explanation as compromised by a description of the brain processes that occurred while I deliberated. However, I will see my explanation as compromised by evidence that suggests my judgments of the various candidates ability, intelligence, and flexibility correlate exactly with the order I met them and with their respective heights.12 These factors, if they represent significant influences on my judgments, conflict with the perceptions, beliefs, and desires that I think have influenced me and that I want to influence me. Hence, even though many research programs in the human sciences may present potential threats to our conception of ourselves as free and responsible, social psychology presents threats that most directly and obviously compete and conflict with the conditions of free will I have discussedand, to repeat, they do so by virtue of operating at the same level, using the same mentalistic concepts. The scientific causes they describe conflict with the conditions required for possessing and exercising free will, because they suggest the agent-oriented causes we offer as the reasons we act demonstrate ignorance or rationalization, or both. With these preliminaries out of the way, let us turn to the experiments themselves.

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Of course, correlation does not entail causation. It is an interesting correlation, however, that the taller Presidential candidate won every election since 1952 (except one, Jimmy Carter). Al Gore, who is taller than George W. Bush, lost the election but did win more votes. 6

3. The Principle of Situationism We generally believe that we know a lot about why we feel, think, and act as we doand that were able to explain and predict our own and others behavior pretty well. We seem to acquire much of our self-knowledge by introspecting on our own mental states, such as our beliefs and desires. We believe we have control over our thoughts and actions and can often consciously guide them in the ways we want. We also describe ourselves and others by reference to character traits: we believe people have different personalities that explain why they are disposed to behave consistently over time as well as differently from each other. In general, while we have come to accept that there are many things about the nature of the world that we dont understand (and we turn to science for explanations of them), we feel that we generally do understand the part of the world closest to usourselves and the people around us.13 Social psychology suggests that we do not know much about why we feel, think, and act as we do, that introspection does not help us understand ourselves, and that we do not have as much control over our thoughts and actions as we believe. Rather, factors external to us determine much of our behavior. Consistency of situational factors accounts for most of the consistency in peoples behavior over time, whereas character traits do not. Hence, social psychology suggests that our understanding of the part of the world closest to us is much less comprehensive and accurate than we believe. As Ross and Nisbett say, social psychology rivals philosophy in its ability to teach people that they do not truly understand the nature of the world, and after graduate students are immersed in social psychology, their views of human behavior and society will differ profoundly from the views held by most people in their culture (1991: 1).14 Much of social psychology seeks to find the social and environmental factors that influence human attitudes and behavior. Unlike behaviorism, it takes into account an agents subjective perception (or construal) of those factors, recognizing that situational stimuli cannot be treated as objective and static, without reference to a persons particular experience of, and history with, such stimuli. But like behaviorism, social psychology recognizes the importance of immediate environmental conditions (including social factors) and has found them to play a larger role in behavior than peoples individual differences and personal histories. Indeed, the principle of situationism says first, that social pressures and other situational factors exert effects on behavior that are more potent than we generally recognize, and second, that to understand the impact of a given social situation, we often need to attend to its subtle details (1991: 28). Aspects of our environment, often ones that appear meaningless to us, influence our behavior in significant ways. This principle underlies all four of the theses I will discuss. First, it suggests that our behavior is largely at the mercy of situational factors we dont recognize. Second and conversely, it suggests that our internal dispositions, our characters, play a smaller role in our behavior than
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Another way of putting this: We have come to accept that our experience of the natural world does not necessarily provide accurate information about the world but we still feel that our experience is a good guide to understanding ourselves and our social relations (which is not to say that we dont supplement this information, but when we do, we often turn to sources distinct from the sciences, like astrology and self-help books). Ross and Nisbett (1991: 1). I should note that social psychology is a broader field with more diverse areas of research than I am presenting. When I speak of social psychology I am usually referring to the situationist camp and most frequently citing the work and interpretations of Lee Ross, Richard Nisbett, Timothy deCamp Wilson, and their collaborators. 7

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we think. Third, because we do not appreciate the power of situational factors, we are subject to the fundamental attribution error: We often mistakenly attribute and predict peoples behavior in terms of their characters rather than the situations in which they find themselves.15 Our folk psychology is rather poor; to the extent it is accurate, this is largely a byproduct of the fact that people generally are in similar situations over time, so that our attribution of traits to them turns out to match their behavior (e.g. a teachers apparently authoritarian character is a byproduct of her generally being in authority). Fourth, we do not recognize many factors that influence our own behavior, so our explanations of our own actions are based on mistaken theories rather than privileged access to internal states that cause our behavior. Because we often do not know why we feel or act as we do, we tend to confabulate plausible reasons (i.e. rationalize) in a way that then may affect the attitudes we report without also changing our behavior. The principle of situationism, therefore, plays a central role in each of social psychologys potential threats to free will. A. Experiments What is the evidence for situationism? The general experimental paradigm is simple: subjects are presented with a situation in which they make choices and behave, and the experimenters manipulate factors that would not seem to influence behavior. Generally, the experimental group, which is exposed to the manipulated factor, behaves differently than the control group, while behavior within each group is consistent enough to suggest that other factorsincluding personality traitsplay no significant role in determining behavior. Usually, subjects are then asked to explain why they behaved as they did. They do not mention the manipulated factor as having played any role; rather, they mention other, more plausible factors as the reasons for their choices and actions.16 A straightforward example of this experimental paradigm is a demonstration of the position effect. Shoppers were presented with four identical pairs of stockings and asked to pick which one they thought was the best quality and why. Subjects tended to choose stockings placed farther to the right.17 Most subjects offered plausible reasons for their choice, saying it was based on the knit, weave, elasticity, or workmanship of the stockings; only two of 52 subjects suspected the stockings were identical, and none reported position as a factor in their choice. Indeed, when asked, they all denied that position could have influenced their decisions. While the subjects perception of the quality of the stockings was presumably a significant proximate cause of their reported choice, the perceptions themselves were not caused by differences in the stockings quality (they were the same) but rather, in large part, by their relative position.18 We may find such results surprising but relatively innocuous, since we dont usually identify ourselves with such consumer choiceswe may not care much about the reasons we
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Though we are more likely to attribute our own behaviors to situational factors. See Ross and Nisbett (1991: 141).

It is interesting to note that the experimenters themselves often introspect to come up with factors that seem insignificant (to them), and sometimes they are mistaken in their predictions about which factors will matter and which wont. See Nisbett and Wilson (1977: 242). Of four positions (A-D), 40% chose the stockings in position D, 31% chose C, 17% chose B, and 12% chose A. Wilson and Nisbett (1978: 123). Thus, the position effect is an example of type 1 scientific causes conflicting with type 4 agent-oriented causes. 8

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make such choices.19 Indeed, many situationist experiments focus on relatively trivial decisions and behaviors, such as reporting on the effects of distracting noises or judging line lengths, describing beverage choices or making word associations.20 That we confabulate reasons for why we choose or behave as we do in such situations may be, in part, a consequence of our not having explanatory or justifying reasons why we feel as we do. Sometimes we simply choose based on what we feelwhich may be affected by many factors beyond our ken. Then (being the humans we are) we are quite willing, when asked, to come up with reasons why we feel and act as we do.21 However, as I will discuss below, even these experiments about trivial choices point to more widespread and troubling trends in our ability to know why we act. Furthermore, some experiments do involve decisions we presumably care about (or should care about)for instance, how we treat those in need. When Kitty Genovese screamed for help for 30 minutes while being stabbed in a New York courtyard, the forty people who witnessed the event did not call police or help in any other way. John Darley and Bibb Latan began testing whether this lack of intervention may have been due to a situational factorthe number of bystanders presentnot, as the media explained it, due to the inherent apathy and callousness of New Yorkers. In a series of experiments, the psychologists found that increasing the number of people who witness an emergency or a person in distress decreases the chances that any one of the witnesses will intervene. For instance, when subjects heard a female experimenter take a bad fall, 70% of solitary subjects went to help, but if subjects sat next to an impassive confederate, only 7% intervened.22 A plausible explanation is that when we are around others, our perception of the situation alters; the responsibility to act is diffused by the possibility that someone else will (or might) take action. Confounding the problem, if no one does take action, we construe the situation as less seriousif no one is reacting, it must not be so bad after all.23
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However, if one values limiting the rampant consumerism in our society (as I do), understanding how situational factors influence our desire to spend might be very important (caller on NPR: America is like a toy storewhen youre in the store and see all the toys, you want them, but as soon as you leave, you forget about them.) And marketing executives certainly care about how to manipulate situational variables to affect peoples behavior. Nevertheless, these results have some troubling implications. For instance, the Asch paradigm shows that we are extremely deferential to the judgments of those around us (i.e. we succumb to peer pressure): 50-80% of subjects will sometimes follow the obviously mistaken judgments of a group of confederates about which line matches a target line (for instance, choosing a 0.5 inch line to match a 1.5 inch line). Stanley Milgram replicated these results with subjects who thought they were testing signals for jet liners! See Ross and Nisbett (1991: 30-32). Especially when subjects interpret giving reasons as demanded by the experimental setting. See Adair and Spinner (1981) and Holt (1993). Reviewed in Ross and Nisbett (1991: 42). In another experiment, when solitary subjects heard an experimenter feign an epileptic seizure, 85% intervened; when subjects believed there was one other listener, 62% intervened; when they believed there were four other listeners, 31% intervened. And in every case, intervention occurred faster when there were fewer subjects.

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Post-experiment interviews confirm this: subjects describe the emergencies in different terms (e.g. the fall victims cries become complaints), and subjects notice them more quickly when alone. Ross and Nisbett (1991: 43). Subjects also may want to avoid embarrassing themselves by doing something when no one else seems to think something should be done, though in some experiments subjects could not see what others were doing. 9

However, people do not recognize these group effects, and if asked, they, like the media, refer to dispositions (apathy or altruism) to explain the unhelpful (or helpful) responses: We asked this question every way we knew how: subtly, directly, tactfully, bluntly. Always we got the same answer. Subjects persistently claimed that their behavior was not influenced by the other people present. This denial occurred in the face of evidence showing that the presence of others did inhibit helping.24 The reasons people give for their helping behavior refer to traits that do not significantly influence behavior or to their perception of the seriousness of the situation, which is skewed by a situational factor they do not recognize as influential. Other studies further indicate that our reactions to moral situations are shaped by situational factors we do not recognize. In one experiment Princeton seminary students were asked to prepare a lecture either on the parable of the Good Samaritan or on job prospects. One group of subjects was told to head over to the lecture hall but that they had plenty of time; another group was told to rush because they were already expected. En route, all participants came upon a man slumped in a doorway, coughing and groaning (paralleling the Biblical story). While 63% of the early subjects stopped to help, only 10% of the late subjects assisted the man in need. No significant correlations were found between helping behavior and the subjects self-reported personality traits, such as whether their religious pursuits were based on a desire to help others.25 Rather, it was a situational factorwhether subjects were in a hurry or notthat made the crucial difference. For some subjects this factor influenced them by changing their perception of the situation: because of time pressures, they did not perceive the scene in the alley as an occasion for ethical decision (108). Again, people are not aware of the role of this situational factor in their construal of the situation and in determining their behavior.26 Even if people consider themselves altruistic, even if they want not to be affected by factors that they view as irrelevant to being helpful, like being in a hurry, it is difficult to see how they could act to override a factor about which they are ignorant.27 Another study on helping behavior showed that subjects who find a dime in a payphone, and hence get a mood boost, are fourteen times more likely to help a passerby pick up dropped papers than subjects who do not find a dime.28 And the famous Milgram obedience studies, which show two-thirds of people will shock a man into unconsciousness during a learning experiment, have been interpreted from the situationist perspective to suggest that setting up incremental (1524 25

Latane and Darley (1970: 124).

Darley and Batson (1973). Subjects instructed to lecture on the Good Samaritan helped more than those instructed to lecture on job prospects (53% to 29% across the various hurry conditions), but not to a statistically significant degree (r = .25). Self-reported types of religiosity had no effect on helping behavior. See Pietromonaco and Nisbett (1982), in which they describe to subjects an experiment similar to the Good Samaritan study and then ask them to predict the outcomes. Subject predict that the majority of seminary students would stop to help, but that 20% more would help if their religion was based on a desire to help others. Subjects did not think being in a hurry would make any difference to whether the seminary students helped. Darley and Batson (1973: 108) add an interesting interpretation to their experiment. Some subjects in the hurry condition did notice the man in need and were anxious after their encounter with him. Perhaps they experienced a conflict of obligations, between their desire to help the man in need and their desire to fulfill their obligation to the experimenter. One might wonder, however, why so few of these subjects offered indirect help by informing someone about the man in need (an action which counted as helping behavior in the experiment). Isen and Levin (1972). 10

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28

volt) increases in the shocks plays an important role in inducing the subjects to continue, as they have trouble finding a justifiable point at which to stop.29 Of course, no one predicts of himself that he would carry through to the 450-volt switch (marked Danger: XXX). We assume our characters would preclude us from performing such actions. And no one predicts that so many others would do it either.30 In each of the above experiments our explanations of why people do what they do refer to their character traits and ignore the situational factors that in fact make the significant difference. That is, they are ignorant of significant causes and, if asked, they offer rationalizations. B. The Implications of Situationism Having surveyed just a few of the experiments that elucidate the principle of situationism (and there are many more31), we can now ask what they may imply about our ability to act freely and responsibly. The experiments may suggest that, to the extent an agents behavior is determined by external factors, it is not controlled by the agent herself. But the concept of control is ambiguous here. There is clearly a sense in which the agent does control her actions despite the significance of situational factors. Shoppers are still making choices, even if they are influenced by the position of the stockings. Seminary students are still walking past the man in need (or stopping to help), even if these actions correlate highly with whether they are in a hurry. The subjects are acting on their own motivations; they are not constrained by external agents (no one is making them choose the stockings or walk past the groaning man). And their perceptions of the situation (e.g. which stockings seem best) do affect their actions. There is nothing in the situationist experiments alone that suggests normal, adult humans do not possess free willthat is, possess the cognitive abilities associated with the Knowledge Condition (though we will see below more comprehensive challenges to our abilities to introspect on our motivational states). But to the extent that the experiments suggest we are influenced by external factors of which we are unaware, they do appear to limit the degree to which we can exercise our free will. Even if we identify with certain motivationsfor instance, to be helpful to those in needwe may not have the opportunity to influence our actions accordingly, because the situational factors affect us without our knowledge. But the experiments do not suggest that agents are simply unable to act on motivations they identify with; some subjects help the man in need despite being rushed, some do not help him despite being unrushed. Time constraints are not the only causal factor influencing helping behavior, and the experiment does not suggest that this factor cannot be counteracted. Assessing the degree to which agents have the opportunity to counteract particular situational influences will be difficult. On my view, it will involve both a normative element based on the extent to which people are expected to know certain information, such as their
Ross and Nisbett interpret Milgram in this way (1991: 56-58), but the experiment has not been replicated to determine if that situational factor was the most significant factor, though many other factors have been ruled out, including the socioeconomic status and national origin of the subjects. Their interpretation is strengthened by the fact that of the one-third of subjects who do stop, most do so when the learner goes unconscious (at 300 volts), a point where they can offer a clear justification for stopping.
30 31 29

After having the experiment described to them, psychologists predict 2% of subjects will continue to the end.

See, for example, Nisbett and Wilson (1977), Ross and Nisbett (1991), Festinger (1957), Latane and Nida (1981), Ross (1977), Wilson et al. (1989). John Doris reports that, between 1962 and 1982 over 1000 experiments showed that unrecognized, small situational factors had significant effects on subjects behavior. 11

obligations to help those in need, and to know how to act accordinglyand an empirical elementbased on the extent to which people can be expected to know how to act accordingly (for instance, to counteract situational factors). If experiments suggest people are six times less likely to help a stranger in need when they are in a hurry, we may treat that factor as a mitigating circumstance in our judgments of the degree to which a person had the opportunity to act accordingly (especially if they are in a hurry because of some competing obligation). Ultimately, we will want to know how pervasive situational factors are and how difficult they are to overcome.32 Even if social psychology experiments do not fully undermine the conditions of free action, they threaten the conditions of freely willed action, since they suggest subjects often do not act on motivations they identify with. Situational factors affect motivation and behavior by influencing the way people perceive situations. Suppose I want my decisions about helping other people to be based on how much danger they face (e.g. the risk of damage to their health); this seems like a good criterion for such decisions. But if I underestimate the danger actually posed by a certain situation because there happen to be a few people around, and if I am unaware of the effect these bystanders have on my judgment, then I may believe I am acting on my decisionmaking criterion when in fact I am not. If I want to be motivated to act on this criterion, then I may act contrary to my identifications because I lack the requisite knowledge of how situational factors influence my perceptions and motivations. Other social psychology experiments further suggest we are unaware of many factors that affect how we perceive situations. For instance, subjects judge a person more favorably if the persons positive traits are listed before negative traits than if the same traits are presented in reverse order. They also judge some traits (such as friendliness) in relation to other traits (such as attractiveness), despite believing no such halo effect exists. And, exemplifying a general tendency to conform to the judgments of ones peers, subjects will rate the profession of politician as prestigious or unprestigious depending on what they are told about how others rated politicians.33 Again, our inability to recognize the influence of such factors on our judgments limits our ability to act in accord with the reasons we want to motivate our decisions and actions (for instance, to judge people by the merits of what they say regardless of whether we see how they look before hearing what they have to say). Hence, situational factors can influence both our perception of situations and our response to them without our awareness of those factors. Furthermore, since the reasons subjects offer for their actions do not correspond with situational factors that exert a powerful influence on their actions, presumably the subjects would not accept these factors as good reasons for their actions. Indeed, in post-experimental interviews, subjects deny (often quite strongly) that the situational factors had any influence on them. We may surmise that they probably do not want these factors to influence their motivational states they do not see them as legitimate reasons on which to base attitudes or actions. People probably would not identify with motivations that derive from positional effects, group effects, or the number of switches on Milgrams shocking machine. In Chapter 2 I advanced a conditional account of identifying with ones motivations, so it is not necessary that we are in fact aware of what moves us to actonly that we would identify
32 33

Compare Schoeman (1987) and Doris (2001). See Ross and Nisbett (1991), chapter 3. 12

with our motivations if we became aware of them. But the situational factors uncovered by social psychology experiments are rejected by subjects precisely because they seem so implausible and unrelated to the reasons we do want to be motivated by, such as a desire to help those in need. We want such desires to motivate us despite our moods (and finding a dime seems like a poor reason to change moods) and despite how rushed we arewe want to judge a crisis based on how dangerous it is, not on how dangerous it seems to be because of our time constraints. So, subjects in the above experiments are usually not acting of their own free will. Even if they became aware of their motivations or the process by which they acquired them, they would usually not identify with them. They would feel constrained by them and try to overcome their influence. Situationism thus threatens our free will because it suggests that our actions are influenced by external factors we do not recognize and hence do not intentionally counteract, and because it is unlikely that we would identify with the influence these factors have on our perceptions and on the development of our motivations. These threats will become clearer as we examine their relation to the other three theses of social psychology. C. Responses to Situationism How might we respond to these initial challenges posed by the principle of situationism? First of all, we may question their scope. Despite the number of experiments suggesting that small situational factors influence behavior in ways we do not recognize, we need to examine whether the principle applies to all or only certain types of human behavior. I pointed out that many experiments supporting the principle deal with relatively trivial choices and behaviors for which we may not have well-considered reasons but which are instead based on unanalyzed motivations. And we may not care about what these motivations happen to be. That is, in some cases we may actin Frankfurts termswantonly, without caring about what motivates us. In such cases, the question to ask, as strange as it sounds, is whether we care that we dont care. For some (perhaps many) of our preferences we might be content to accept that we dont know how we developed them, it isnt important how we developed them, and we dont want them to beor believe they should bedifferent. I dont know why I like strawberry ice cream and not chocolate, but I dont have anything riding on it. I dont know why I have dated more brunettes than blondes. I could come up with some interesting (perhaps Freudian) theories, but I would not be surprised or upset if the theories were misguided. I like Expressivist art more than Impressionist art. Though in this instance I would offer reasons why Expressivism is better, I also recognize that such preferences are largely subjective and might be based on quirky historical factors (e.g. with whom I happened to be when I first saw the art). When I act on preferences like the ones above, I am not concerned about how they developed, though, if asked, I may offer an explanation for why I think they developed. And I am not very concerned about the content of the preferences, though I may offer reasons for why my preferences are best (at least from my point of view). To the extent I do not view my motivational states as importantly identity-constitutiveas in the above casesI will not be threatened if I learn that I developed them in ways I do not recognize. The question of identification simply does not come up (or if it does, I would still be passively identified with my motivations).34

34

This claim should be qualified, since I would feel my autonomy threatened if I learned that I developed a desire through the coercive efforts of another agent (e.g. hypnosis, brainwashing, drugs). 13

On the other hand, I often do care about whether I am motivated to go to an art gallery versus an ice cream store. And I certainly care whether my desire to get to the art gallery or the ice cream store prevents me from stopping to help a man in need. It is precisely when we find ourselves motivated to act in ways that conflict with our identifications that we begin to care about the source of our motivations and whether we are aware of them and can change them.35 As we have seen, some situationist experiments do indicate that factors we fail to recognize influence us in situations where we care about what motivates us and about how we perceive the situation. However, more experiments of this kind are required before we can understand how pervasively such unrecognized situational effects influence our behavior in situations where, as it were, our identity is at stake. I will make some suggestions for such experiments below. For now, we should note that the principle of situationism threatens free will only when it involves actions that we care about. 36 There doesnt have to be a reason for everything, but when we think there should be a reason for why we feel, think, or do what we do, then we want to recognize our reasons and we want these reasons to be significant causes of our feelings, thoughts, and actions. Another response to the principle of situationism turns it on its head: might we increase our ability to act according to our aspirations if we learn about relevant situational effects? That is, might social psychology itself set us free? This is an interesting proposal with some experimental support. For instance, if subjects are informed about experimental results that indicate the power of a particular situational factor, they will be more likely to predict behavior based on that factor. However, this effect is not very strong: subjects, who first read the Good Samaritan experiment and were then asked to predict behavior of people in a similar situation, estimated that the hurry factor would make only an 18% difference in helping behavior (versus the 53% difference reported by Darley and Batson), and they still thought character traits would make a more significant difference.37 Subjects are more likely to adjust their predictions if they are further informed about the perseverance of the fundamental attribution error; if they are told how hard it is for people to stop thinking in terms of character rather than situation, they are better able to start thinking in terms of situation rather than character.38 If subjects can come to change their predictions based on learning about situational effects and our propensity to overlook them, then perhaps they can also come to recognize such effects in their own lives and adjust their own behavior. In fact, one study has suggested just this. Subjects who attended a 50-minute lecture and film about the effects of groups on helping behavior were more likely than controls to intervene when, months later, they witnessed, along with a passive confederate, a staged emergency.39 More experimental support is required to confirm the positive effects of knowledge about situationism, but presumably, the more people come to believe that
35 36

Such cases will often involve ethical decisions, but they will also involve many other kinds of decisions.

There is obviously a subjective element here, since different people care about different behaviors. However, it may be that certain types of behavior, such as moral actions or actions involving self-preservation, could be deemed objectively important such that if a person claimed not to care about them, they would be making a mistake. 37 Ross and Nisbett (1991: 132). They cite this experiment as support of the entrenchedness of dispositionism.
38 39

See Ross, Leper, and Hubbard (1975) and Flanagan (1991: 307).

Beaman et al. (1978). In one experiment 67% of trained subjects helped a victim of a bicycle accident, compared to 27% of controls; in a second study 43% of trained subjects helped a man lying in a hallway, compared to 25% of controls. 14

these situational effects are real, the more likely they are to recognize them and counteract their influence (if they want to). In my own case, I certainly try to pay attention to and overcome group effects when confronted with an emergency.40 The moral, consistent with my thesis, is that knowledge is powerthe more we understand the relationship between the environment, our mental states, and our behavior, the more likely we are able to act of our own free will. We will be better able to manipulate our environment to exercise strength of will (for instance, deleting games from our computer because we recognize that we identify with our motivation to write). And we will be better able to control our mental states, such as our perceptions (for instance, recognizing a dangerous situation for what it is by ignoring the influence of other people). Hence, we will be better able to influence our motivations and our actions in accord with what we really want. Indeed, in discovering situational factors that influence behavior, social psychologists also offer information about how to bring about behavior we want to bring about, both in ourselves and others. For instance, small external prompts can help channel peoples attitudes into actions. College students informed about the dangers of tetanus reported that they were convinced inoculation was important, but only 3 percent went to get the shots. However, subjects who were also given a campus map with the clinic circled and told to think about a time they could come for their shots showed up at a rate of 28 percent.41 Having a good reason to act was ineffective unless situational prompts structured the future to make the reasonable action more salient and easier to perform. The more we learn about these so-called channel factors, the more we can employ them to carry out our plans to act in accord with our identifications.42 Such knowledge is particularly relevant for the strong-willed actions discussed in Chapter 2 (for instance, making to do lists publicizes our intentions to ourselves).43 It is not the case that we only control our internal states and behavior; we can also manipulate our environment in order to influence our internal states and behaviors. Therefore, knowledge provided by social psychology about the relationships between environments, internal states, and behaviors can help us manipulate our environment to increase the scope of our free will.44 Despite the possibility that we can learn about and control some situational factors, the worry remains that social psychologistsmuch less the general publicwill not be able to
40

Indeed, the day I defended my dissertation proposal, I witnessed a car accident driving home. Though I had somewhere to be and there were many bystanders, I noticed no one was intervening and I stopped to help (which included borrowing the cell phone of a woman who was unwilling to use it herself to call 911). Ross and Nisbett (1991: 10).

41 42

See Gollwitzer (1999) for a review of experiments that show that subjects carry out the actions that match their goals if they set up their environment to prompt the actions they aim to perform much better than subjects who do not set up such implementation plans. Of course, knowledge of channel factors can also be used to manipulate others actions in ways they would not want (the loan companies that mail people checks ready to cash are well aware of the importance of channel factors). See Harman (1999) for other benefits of recognizing what he sees as the implications of attribution theory (especially for the concept of character). B.F. Skinner (1971) viewed such environmental manipulation as the only way we could control our own actions and have some measure of freedom. But he never explains how we have any control over the ways in whichor the ends for whichwe manipulate our environment. 15

43

44

discover many other factors that influence human behavior without our awareness.45 If situational factors unacknowledged by our folk psychological explanations are as influential as some social psychologists claim, then there is likely to remain a large number of factors that remain undiscovered and whose influence, therefore, cannot be purposefully counteractede.g. by learning about them. Even if people come to recognize the importance of group effects on helping behavior, they may be influenced by weather effects or tone-of-ones-last-conversation effects or noise effects that remain unrecognized. Perhaps, however, there is reason to believe this undiscovered country of situational factors is smaller than suspected. As I explained earlier, the experiments designed to verify the principle of situationism require setting up situations in which several factors are available to play a role in causing subjects behavior. The situations involve a certain level of complexity such that the experimenters can manipulate one factor among others that seem more plausible influences on behavior. Social psychologists deliberately design their experiments to trick their subjects. They think about factors that seem irrelevant but that, given their experience in the lab and in life, they imagine may affect behavior. Sometimes they are wrong, and they rarely report these results (though such cases may indicate that they just missed the significant situational factor). When they are right, they get to report an interesting, counterintuitive finding.46 In more straightforward situations, however, we are presumably much more likely to recognize which factors are relevant to our decisions and to view these factors as reasons for our actions. This is especially likely for immediate reactions to salient stimuli: if I see a mosquito on my arm, I swat it, and I presume the reason (and main cause) for my swatting is that I see the mosquito and desire to kill it. If I scold my child for breaking the lamp, it is quite possible that his carelessness is in fact the reason (and main cause) of my action. Many situations in life are not complex enough to offer social psychologists a chance to trick us. Even when certain unrecognized situational factors play a significant role in causing our behavior, the reasons we do recognize and identify with are not necessarily inefficacious. It is not only the fact that they are early that explains why 67% of the seminary students stopped to help the man in need. They also acted because they perceived a man in need and wanted to help him. The situational factor does not eradicate the existence of the background condition that many subjects are motivated to be helpful. Rather, the situational factor acts on that background condition. And because the studies indicate the effect of manipulated factors only by comparing behavior across groups of subjects, we can never know how much any one factor affected any one individual. In averaging responses across subjects, the experimenters may be missing some important reasons that individuals would recognize for their actions and that do in fact play a significant causal role for that individual. Furthermore, these experiments do not offer an explanation for what makes the difference, within a group of subjects in a particular experimental condition, between those who act in one
45

Ross and Nisbett write: What we have learned, in short is that situational effects can sometimes be far different from what our intuitions, or theories, or even the existing psychological literature tells us they should be. Some facts that we expect to be very important prove to be trivial in their impact; and some factors that we expect to be weak prove, at least in some contexts, to exert a very large influence indeed (1991: 6). Note that unrecognized situational factors can only be discovered if they are singled out and manipulated between an experimental group and a control groupa difficult task. See Ross and Nisbett write (1991: 4). 16

46

way and those who act in another. For instance, though a large number of differences in personality traits and other factors have been ruled out as explaining why one-third of subjects do stop in the Milgram experiments, the fact remains that some subjects did the right thing. Their behavior may be the result of certain motivational factors unconsidered by psychologists but considered by the subjects. Indeed, social psychology itself shows that people often discount the causal influence of one potential factor when they recognize the influence of other factors (this may sometimes involve interpreting a necessary cause as a sufficient cause).47 Perhaps some social psychologists have discounted the influence of other factors in interpreting the power of situational factors. These questions will arise again as we examine the nature of character traits in the next section. I have offered three responses to temper the conflict between social psychologys principle of situationism and the knowledge conditions required for free will: (1) Some of the experiments demonstrate that situational factors we do not recognize influence trivial choices and behaviors, about which we do not care or have not developed wellconsidered reasons. Confabulating reasons (perhaps only because we are asked to provide them) that are not really causes is not particularly troubling unless we care about the choice or action in question. (2) We may be able to adjust our perceptions, motivations, and actions to accord with our identifications if we learn about the influence of situational factors. In fact, we may be able to use situational factors in order to act in the ways we really wantthat is, to exercise strength of will. (3) We may be influenced by unrecognized situational factors only in relatively complex situations. And it is an open question how complex most of our action-opportunities are. More experimental work needs to be done to contradict the commonsense notion that most of our actions are caused by situational factors and internal reasons which are easy for us to recognize. These responses suggest avenues for future research, some of which I will discuss below. 4. The Disappearance of Character Traits The second potentially threatening thesis of social psychology is the flip side of the principle of situationism. To the extent that situational factors play a large role in determining our behavior, differences in peoples internal dispositions play a relatively small role. That is, if a particular situational factor (such as finding a dime in a pay phone) can elicit similar behavior from most subjects, then, it is claimed, differences between the individuals characters are correspondingly insignificant in producing their behavior. The question of whether social psychology implies an elimination of character traits is controversial both within social psychology and in philosophical reactions to it.48 I will not try to adjudicate that debate. I will simply suggest that to the extent that experiments legitimately suggest the disappearance of character traits, they also threaten free will. The situationist camp in social psychology is not claiming, like some radical forms of behaviorism, that no internal dispositions exist and affect behavior. As we have seen, the way
47 48

See, for instance, Wegner and Wheatley (1999: 486).

See, for example, Ross and Nisbett (1991, chapter 4), Doris (1998 and 2001), Harman (1999), and Flanagan (1991, chapter 13). 17

individuals construe a situationtheir perception of itplays an important role in their reactions to it, and individuals unique histories certainly affect their construal of the world. So, there is a sense in which people have different dispositional traits. The claim, rather, is that these dispositions are less robust than we conceive of them; they are limited to relatively local and specific types of situations rather than underlying consistent behavior across a wide range of diverse situations. Faced with highly similar situations over time, agents will behave consistently, but subtle variations between situations can undermine the consistency of their behavior. Trying to predict peoples behavior in novel situations on the basis of character traits is ineffective. Social psychology thus challenges two ideas central to our traditional conceptions of character traits: (1) that character traits represent robust dispositions to behave in certain ways across certain types of situations; (2) that character traits come in clusters, such that the possession of one trait or set of traits correlates highly with the possession of certain other traits. For instance, we are more likely to judge not only that an honest person is less likely than others to lie across a wide range of opportunities for lying, but also that she is more likely than dishonest people to be, say, dependable. We might describe what character traits are and how they operate in this way: if a person has character trait T, then (1) she will perform T-like behaviors in Teliciting situations at a rate markedly above chance (and above the rate of persons without trait T); and (2) she will be more likely than persons without trait T to possess other traits that are believed to reliably cluster around T (e.g. traits R,S, U, and V). Though situationist social psychology experiments challenge both parts of this definition, I will focus only on the first part, the attack on robust and consistent character traits, because it is more relevant to our ability to identify with and influence our motivational dispositions.49 A. Experiments Much of the experimental evidence for the claim that character traits are relatively insignificant in influencing behavior is derived from experiments, like those described above, that support the principle of situationism. Since these experiments suggest that small, seemingly irrelevant situational factors can be highly predictive of subjects responses, they suggest that these factors can make subjects act in ways that seem out of character (e.g. the Milgram experiments) and that alleged differences between subjects are largely irrelevant in producing different responses. In some cases, character traits (as well as other factors that may be thought to reflect dispositions, such as level of income or education) have been specifically examined to see if they correlate with subjects behavior. For instance, Milgram found no significant variations, across personality measures, education, nationality, or gender, from his one great unchanging result that about 65% of subjects continue all the way to 450 volts.50 And the Good Samaritan study found no significant correlation between helping behavior and self-reports of religiosity. Other experiments that suggest the weakness of character traits have looked for correlations between subjects behaviors across situations designed to elicit trait-relevant responses (such as honesty, dependency, extroversion, or impulsivity). For instance, in 1928 Hartshorne and May tested students for honesty across a range of situations, such as willingness to steal change left on a table, to lie to avoid getting another student in trouble, and to cheat on a test.
The attack on the relations between character traits is more relevant to questions about virtue theory (see Doris 1998 and 2001).
50 49

See Flanagan (1991: 294). 18

While subjects behaved similarly when confronted with any one of the same situations more than once, they did not behave consistently across the different situations. The average correlation between types of honesty behavior was .23; so, for instance, knowing that a particular student pilfered change did not reliably indicate that he would cheat on a test and vice versa.51 In general, when subjects predict their own and others behavior across various situations, the correlations between character traits and predicted behavior is high (in the .60-.80 range), but when such behaviors are actually measured, the consistency of individuals behavior is low (in the .10-.30 range). If we try to predict others behavior in a new situation based on the way we perceive their personality, we are likely to be mistaken. As Ross and Nisbett put it: This predictability ceiling is typically reflected in the maximum statistical correlation of .30 between measured individual differences on a given trait dimension and behavior in a novel situation that plausibly tests that dimension. . . . Moreover, the .30 value is an upper limit. For most novel behaviors in most domains, psychologists cannot come close to that (1991: 3). The conclusion drawn by such researchers is that cross-situational consistency might be the exception (96), and strong differences between people [are] apparently limited to specific responses to specific situations (101). In other words, if we want to understand why someone does what he does in situation X, we are better off either looking at his past behavior in a situation very similar to X or looking at the way people in general behave in X than we are if we consider his character traits that we think are relevant in such situations. B. Implications of the Disappearance of Character Traits Several philosophers have noted the relevance of these experimental findings to virtue theory and other moral theories which require consistency of character traits and connections between them (e.g. the unity of the virtues).52 For my purposes, however, the threat to character traits is more significant because it calls into question the existence of stable motivational dispositions which often serve as the objects of our identifications and aspirations. Since identification aims for consistency among our motivations, we generally identify with stable motivational dispositions, not highly situational motivations. And when we aspire to develop motivations, we do so in the hope of acting consistently. When we introspect on our motivational states, we do not generally consider these motivations as highly situational. Instead, we think of general motivational dispositions that would apply to a wide range of situations. Often we think of these as character traits. And we do not think of most character traits only as patterns of behavior; we also assume that there is a pattern of internal states that accounts for the consistency of behavior we see in ourselves and others. If I aspire to be more extroverted, this involves developing a desire to meet people in various types of situations (not just when Im with my friends)and to feel like socializing, not just to go through the motions. To develop the disposition of honesty would involve overcoming inclinations to lie whenever it serves my interests (not just when the situation allows me to get away with it). We do not usually identify ourselves with situation-relative motivations, such as
51

Ross and Nisbett (1991: 98). Contrast this with the .79 correlation between copying from an answer key and copying from an answer key six months later.

52

See note 4. In addition to Aristotle and other virtue theorists, Hume thought character traits are essential to freedom and morality: Where would be the foundation of morals if particular characters had no certain or determinate powers to produce particular sentiments, and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions? (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). 19

the desire to help people specifically when we are not in a hurry. Rather, we identify with internal states that underlie our tendencies to be helpful, or to give to the needy (generosity), or to work hard (diligence). The more these tendencies can be disrupted by seemingly irrelevant variations in situations, the more we aspire to shore them up and make ourselves consistent. The less we recognize how easily these tendencies can be disrupted (if they can), the less we can make a conscious effort to shore them up and make ourselves consistent. To the extent the dispositional traits we identify with do not in fact correspond with consistent behavior, we are identifying ourselves with constructed concepts rather than actual motivational states. This limits the influence of our identifications. If future behavior cannot be accurately predicted (at above, say, a maximum rate of .3) based on the possession of a character trait, then trying to develop that trait in order to do what we really want might seem fruitless. I may identify with my motivation to give to those in needto cultivate the character trait of generositybut this will be confounded to the extent that (1) I cannot predict how I will be influenced by situational factors that vary across different giving opportunities, and (2) there is no such motivational trait as generosity to identify with. The disappearance of character traits thus threatens our ability to identify with and aspire to develop general motivational dispositions. C. Responses to the Assault on Character Traits One response to these experiments is to suggest that they do not say anything conclusive about the nature of character traits. Researchers in personality psychology continue to develop methodological and statistical approaches that attempt to counter the eliminativist tendencies of situationist researchers. Bem and Allen, for instance, tried to show that measures of character trait consistency would be higher for traits that subjects deemed important to themselvesthat they monitored for consistency. Such an empirical finding would be helpful to my approach, given its emphasis on agents caring about some of their motivational dispositions and aspiring to maintain the influence of these dispositions on behavior. Bem and Allens results showed some support for their hypothesis, though methodological concerns have been raised.53 One of these methodological concerns affects many personality experiments, the use of self-reports of character traits. Such self-reports are highly consistent (i.e. subjects will identify themselves as friendly or conscientious across a range of questions and predictions about how they would behave in various situations). However, if this consistency of self-perception does not translate into consistency of actual behavior, it would be especially troubling for my view of free will, since it would suggest that our (consistent) identification with certain traits has little bearing on the consistency of our behavior. I may identify with my perception of myself as diligent, but if I am, in fact, easily distracted from my work by various unnoticed factors, my identification is inaccurate and ineffective. My goal, however, is not to arbitrate between various camps within social psychology. If the personality theorists win the day to demonstrate the consistency of at least some character traits (especially those we care about maintaining and developing), then my theory of free will avoids one significant threat from empirical work. To the extent psychologists in the situationist camp demonstrate the irrelevance of character traits, they also challenge free will by undermining our ability to identify with and influence our actions in accord with consistent motivational dispositions.
53

Ross and Nisbett (1991: 103-105). 20

Another response to this challenge is to view character traits as ideals that we aspire to achieve and manage to achieve to some (limited) degree. Such a view does not require that character traits actually represent robustly consistent cross-situational dispositions. Rather, they serve as unifying concepts for types of behavior that we set as goals. Since we cannot plan for every situational contingency, character traits give us general guidelines for the motivations we would like to take effect when faced with certain types of situations. Our appeal to traits may be seen as an aspiration to be consistent. This response may be problematic, however, if our reliance on character traits to ground our behavior actually makes us less aware of and responsive to the influence of situational factors. For instance, Jane may assume her trait of fidelity will keep her faithful to her husband and so believe she can go to dinner with her attractive co-worker without risk. But if situational factorssuch as wine and music, not to mention an air of secrecycan overwhelm Janes dispositions, she may be better off, in the sense of doing what she really wants (remaining faithful), if she does not think of herself in terms of character traits.54 Janeand the rest of usmay be better off learning about and attending closely to the power of situational factors rather than relying on the power of a strong character.55 These issues raise two important questions. First, despite any claims from social psychology, it remains an open question (perhaps a testable one) whether identifying ourselves with certain character traits helps us to act more consistently than the alternative. The second question is what the alternative would be. It is unclear what it would mean for humans to try to minimize our reliance on the concept of character traits.56 As with other suggestions from human sciences for radically transforming our conceptual schemes, both the possibility and the consequences of such a transformation are obscure. Nonetheless, as we have seen and will see more in the sections below, our conceptual scheme for understanding human behaviorour folk psychologydoes appear to lead to inaccurate attributions in some, perhaps many, cases. 5. The Errors of Folk Psychology Indeed, the third threatening thesis of social psychology claims that our folk psychology the concepts and theories we use to explain and predict our own and others attitudes and behaviorsis often inaccurate. This thesis follows from the first two. Since we generally explain and predict behavior in terms of dispositional traits while ignoring situational variables, we often misattribute the relative significance of the causes of behavior. Social psychologists have named this tendency: Peoples inflated belief in the importance of personality traits and dispositions, together with their failure to recognize the importance of situational factors in affecting behavior, has been termed the fundamental attribution error.57 The fundamental attribution error
54 55

This example comes from Doris (1998).

Ill leave it to the reader to decide if the common phenomenon of hypocrisy (e.g. televangelists sinning) serves as evidence for this claim. 56 However, some cultures view character traits as less robust and significant than do Western cultures. Indeed, this would be a good time to point out that all of the social psychology research I discuss has been carried out in Western cultures (mostly the United States). Any generalizations they (or I) make should be tempered by this fact. Richard Nisbett has, in fact, turned his research program towards understanding the differences between the folk psychologies of different cultures.
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Ross and Nisbett (1991: 4). That we tend to refer to character traits in explaining behaviorsespecially others behaviorsis a claim informed by experimental research, not just intuition (See ibid., chapter 5). 21

represents peoples tendency to view the agent as the figure that moves against the background of the situation. Since we attend to other peopledynamic and interesting as they areand not to their environmentsstatic and boring as they arewe attribute causal power to agents (the word agent itself suggests this) rather than the situational factors that influence them.58 Given that we base our everyday predictions and explanations of our own and others behavior on a mistaken theory of causal attribution, how is it that these predictions and explanations are still relatively effectivehow is it that, as Ross and Nisbett say, lay psychology, like lay physics, generally gets the job done reasonably well using dramatically mistaken principles (20)?59 Social psychologists offer a very simple response: people are usually in similar situations over time and we usually interact with people in familiar situations, so they usually do behave consistently in response to these situationsand their behavior accords with other peoples conceptions of their character: The predictability of the physicians who examine us, the professors who lecture us, the coaches who exhort us, the colleagues who chat with us, and the assorted friends, neighbors, and family members with whom we intertwine our lives, owes much to the relative consistency of the situational forces and constraints that govern those particular individualsor at least govern them when they interact with us. . . . we count on the fact that particular roles and relationships will render peoples behavior predictabledespite the fact that broader, less biased, and more scientific samples of behavior would reveal inconsistency and unpredictability of a sort and degree that would surprise us profoundly. (148) Persons and their situations are usually confounded in such a way that our nave dispositionism often works when we predict and explain the behavior of people around us. But the claim is that people often make correct predictions on the basis of erroneous beliefs and defective prediction strategies and that our theories will break down when we observe people in new or unfamiliar situations. Social psychologists thus suggest that we come up with plausible and often accurate explanations, but that these explanations are often based on fortuitous correlations rather than the actual causal relations between situations and responses. Some social psychologists suggest a similar account for the source and accuracy of our explanations of our own behavior. They claim that we explain our own behavior by reference to plausible theories of the sort we use to describe others behavior, not by reference to the cognitive events that we introspect as mediating between stimuli and behavior: The accuracy of subjective reports [on the effects of particular stimuli on behavior] is so poor as to suggest that any introspective access that may exist is not sufficient to produce generally correct or reliable
58

However, since we attend to environmental stimuli more when we are considering our own behavior (when we act, we see the world more than ourselves), the fundamental attribution error is less pervasive when people are explaining and predicting their own behavior rather than others (see ibid., 139-141). The analogy between lay psychology and lay physics is based on a fundamental attribution error in our commonsense understanding of physical phenomena (which is reflected in, for instance, Aristotelian physics): we locate the source of movement and change in the properties of objects to the neglect of the external forces that act on the objects just as our lay psychology locates the source of behavior in the agent not the situational forces that act on the agent. 22

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reports.60 Rather, we come up with what the researchers call implicit, a priori theories about the causal connections between types of stimuli and responses, theories based on whether these sorts of stimuli seem to be plausible causes of these sorts of responses.61 For instance, stocking quality seems to be a plausible reason for choosing stockings; possessing or lacking the trait of generosity seems to be a plausible explanation for whether or not a person will give to charity.62 According to the standard situationist analysis, our explanations of why we act are not actually based on our first-personal experiences with and awareness of the particular situation in question. That is, in a given situation we act without knowing why we are acting. Then, if asked for the reasons we acted, though we may feel like we are introspecting on our experience of the situation, we are actually accessing a storehouse of folk psychological theories and applying the most relevant one. When our explanations turn out to be correct, it is not due to our introspective awareness of the relations between perceived stimuli and responses but, instead, due to the incidentally correct employment of a priori causal theories (233). Our explanations of our own behavior are based on the same types of theories we use to explain others behaviortheories that are sometimes inaccurate and which do not derive from introspection on the reasons we act. As Ross and Nisbett (1991) explain: People have theories about what effects their judgments and behavior just as they have theories about all kinds of social processes. These theories, rather than any introspective access to mental processes, seem to be the origin of peoples reports about the influences on their judgment and behavior. Moreover, many of these theories are demonstrably poor ones (82). The social psychologists draw such conclusions from two types of experiments: (1) those that show we explain our own behaviors by reference to reasons that are not plausibly seen as the causes of the behavior (e.g. the stockings qualities are not in fact different; how generous we perceive ourselves to be does not correlate much with whether we will contribute to charity [see note 62]); and (2) those that show our first-personal explanations of our behavior in a particular situation are not different from an observers third-personal explanations, which are based on theories about how he would act in such a situation rather than his actual experience in that situation. Before describing these experiments, I should clarify the social psychologists use of causal language. They are not making the uncontroversial claim that we are unaware of the underlying neural and bodily processes that occur as we perceive, think, and act. Rather, they are referring to what they call higher mental processes that underlie complex activities such as judgment, choice, inference, and problem solving.63 And they are claiming that when we engage
60 61

Nisbett and Wilson (1977: 233).

Nisbett and Wilsons use of a priori is unclear (see, for example, 1977: 233). Presumably, people develop their theories of plausible explanations based on experience, either of their prior observations of the relationships between certain types of stimuli and responses or of their cultures traditions of folk psychological explanation. Hence, it seems they mean a priori to indicate that the explanation is developed without first-hand (introspective) experience with the particular situation.

62

See Ross and Nisbett (1991: 132-133) for a description of an experiment on contributing to a food drive that shows that channel factors (such as a personalized letter asking for help) were much more predictive of whether subjects would contribute than their character traits (as identified by their friends). Furthermore, the friends inaccurately predicted that character traits would make a 63% difference while channel factors would make virtually no difference. See Nisbett and Wilson (1977: 232). 23

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in such activities, we are unaware of the relationships between perceived stimuli and mental states. So, in the language I introduced in section 2, they are claiming that the external causes of our behavior (type 1) do not correlate with the reasons we offer for our behavior (type 3) or for our mental states (type 4). Regardless of any underlying internal scientific causes (type 2) for mental states and behavior, the important claim is that our beliefs about the relationships between our perceptions, our mental states, and our actionsthat is, the reasons we offerdo not accurately track the experimentally controlled relationships between stimuli and behavior.64 Hence, the reasons we offer often suffer from ignorance or rationalization. A. Experiments I have already discussed (in the previous two sections) some experiments that demonstrate the fundamental attribution error and other errors of our folk psychology. Here I will mention just a few experiments that suggest limitations of our introspective accounts for why we act as well as similarities between these first-person accounts and third-person explanations. In Nisbett and Wilsons famous 1977 article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes, they survey 17 experiments in the situationist tradition, each of which manipulates various factors and measures their effects on subjects behavior; then the experimenters usually ask subjects to report on the influence of these factors. Nisbett and Wilson conclude from this survey that subjects are generally (1) unable to report correctly even about the existence of the evaluative and motivational responses produced by the manipulations; (2) unable to report that a cognitive process has occurred; (3) unable to identify the existence of the critical stimulus; and (4) unable to report correctly about the effect of the stimulus on the response (246-247). In short, subjects often report reasons for their attitudes or behavior that are not causes (rationalization) or they fail to report factors that are causes (ignorance); and sometimes they do not realize they have changed their attitudes or behavior at all.65 In many of these experiments subjects are specifically asked to introspect about their experienced responses or the influence of the manipulated factors. For instance, a demonstration of the halo effect showed that subjects who viewed a lecturer acting warm, friendly and enthusiastic were more likely than subjects who viewed the same lecturer acting cold and rigid not only to rate his likability more highly but also to rate his accent, appearance, and mannerisms more highly (attributes that did not change across the lecturers warm and cold presentations). When asked, however, subjects reported that his accent, appearance, and mannerisms had influenced how much they liked him. That is, subjects viewed an effect as a cause (244). Perhaps we should not be surprised that we have a hard time discerning whether it is someones demeanor or their accent that affects us more, but the halo effect is troubling if we do not want our
64 Social psychologists use the concept of causation very loosely, sometimes talking of processes, influences, and factors. I will not try to clarify their usage any more than I have. In general, we can think of their discussions of causation in terms of regular and predictable succession between stimuli, mental states, and behavior, but we should always remember the significance of other background causes (which the social psychologists sometimes neglect).

For example, students whose views on busing are radically altered by arguing with a persuasive opponent do not report that their views have altered. They claim their pre-argument views were the same as their post-argument views (236). This suggests that we do not like to perceive ourselves as inconsistent. (However, a generous reading of the subjects behavior would view them as maintaining the same premisese.g. that integration is goodbut learning new facts that altered the conclusions reached from those premisese.g. that busing does not in fact help achieve the goal of integration). 24

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judgments of people to be affected by certain factors (such as appearance or accent), and if we do not know about or cannot control this effect (or both).66 Nisbett and Wilson conclude from such experiments that subjects reports on the reasons they feel and act as they do are not based on their introspective access to cognitive processes that occur between their perception of stimuli and their responses to them. Instead, the psychologists propose that when people are asked to report how a particular stimulus influenced a particular response, they do so not by consulting a memory of the mediating process, but by applying or generating causal theories about the effects of that type of stimulus on that type of response (248). These theories are based on general rules of the subjects culture, on the salience of certain stimuli, or on previously observed correlations between stimuli and response. This proposal is further supported by experiments in which observer subjects, who do not actually experiencebut are simply told abouta particular situation, report patterns of reasoning similar to those offered by actor subjects who actually do experience the situation. One of the experiments that demonstrates this correlation between reports by observers and actors involves a behavior we presumably care about: how we judge job candidates. Nisbett and Bellows (1977) asked college students (the actors) to judge a candidate, Jill, for a counseling job to determine if their assessments would be useful for future hiring decisions.67 Subjects rated Jill according to four criteria (likability, intelligence, sympathy, and flexibility) after they read a three-page application file with information about her life, her qualifications, and a prior interview with her. Five aspects of Jills file were manipulated across different sets of subjects: whether Jill was described as attractive, whether she had superior academic credentials, whether she had spilled coffee during her interview, whether she had recently been in a car accident, and whether the subject was told he or she might meet Jill. After rating the candidate on the four criteria, subjects were then asked to rate how important they thought the manipulated factors had been in influencing their judgments on each of the criteria. A second group of subjects (the observers) were asked simply to imagine they were judging a candidate for an unspecified job and, without actually viewing any information about candidates, they rated how important the five factors (appearance, academics, etc.) would be to their judgments on the four criteria (likability, sympathy, etc.). The results showed, first, that the actors reports about what factors had influenced their ratings on the four criteria did not correlate with which factors had, across subjects, actually influenced ratingswith the exception that academic credentials did influence judgments of intelligence to the degree that actors reported (see Figure 2 at end of chapter). That is, subjects reported that whether Jill had been in an accident had the greatest effect on their judgments of her sympathy and her academic credentials had the greatest effect on their judgments of how much they liked Jill, but when the manipulated factors were compared across subjects, it turned out that these explanations were inaccurate; instead, knowing they would meet Jill had, by far, the strongest effect on subjects judgments of her sympathy (as well as her flexibility) and reading that Jill spilled coffee in her interview had the strongest effect on how much they reported they liked her!
66

The halo effect also works in the opposite direction: appearance can affect our judgments of likability, intelligence, competence, etc. The power of appearance is relatively well-known, but even so, it is unclear how much we can (or do) counteract it even when we try to. Since subjects believed their judgments would be compared to the candidates job performance to determine if college students should be used for hiring decisions, the subjects presumably felt motivated to try to judge well. 25

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Second, observer subjects predictions of how they would rate the various factors were statistically identical to the actors reported ratings. Hence, observers ratings were also inaccurate (except for the effect of academic credentials), but no less accurate than those of the actors who actually experienced the various factors in judging Jill. Nisbett and Bellows interpret these results as evidence that the actors did not actually use the reasons they reported when they judged the candidates. Rather, they were unaware of how various factors influenced most of their judgments, and they retrospectively theorized about these influences in the same way the observers theorized about what factors would influence them. And in both cases, the theories were generally mistaken.68 In the one case where the theories were accurate, it is because the connection between academic credentials and intelligence fits plausible cultural rules about such judgments. The authors explain: Verbal reports should be correct wherever there exists a correct causal theory, correctly applied in the particular instance (614), but introspection played little part in subject reports (623). That subjects explanations of their own behavior is inaccurate and that their explanations match those of observers suggests that they did not have introspective access to the mental processes that actually occurred as they made decisions and acted. B. Implications of the Errors of Folk Psychology These sorts of experiments led Nisbett and Wilson to conclude their 1977 paper with a disconcerting claim: A final factor that may serve to sustain our belief in direct introspective awareness is motivational. It is naturally preferable, from the standpoint of prediction and subjective feelings of control, to believe that we have such access. It is frightening to believe that one has no more certain knowledge of the workings of ones own mind than would an outsider with intimate knowledge of ones history and of the stimuli present at the time the cognitive process occurred. (257) It is indeed frightening if it turns out that what we think we are doing when we introspect on the reasons we act does not in fact involve reliable access to our reasons, but instead involves just so stories derived from our folk psychology.69 The social psychologists suggest that when we think we are engaging in practical reasoning, we are actually engaging in theoretical reasoning. Even when we correctly explain the reasons for our actions, the reasons we come up with are theoretical constructs that just happen to match the actual causal relations between stimuli, beliefs and

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It should be noted that subjects reported the effects of the various factors with different degrees of confidence. Sometimes they were guessing about whether a factor had an effect. But sometimes they stated with certainty that some factor had or had not influenced their judgment; Nisbett and Bellows claim, this confidence, where found, rested on their certainty about their a priori theories and not on their certainty about their memories of the judgment process (623).

Nisbett and Wilson (256) allow that our predictions and explanations of our own behavior will often be better than an outsiders, but only because we usually have the best perspective on which stimuli we are perceiving (at least those we perceive consciously) and attending to, and we know more about how we have behaved in the past (especially idiosyncratic behaviors). However, the quotation above also suggests that certain outsiderse.g. social psychologistswho have a better understanding of the causal processes underlying behavior may have more certain knowledge of the workings of ones own mind than the agent herself, which raises the specter of manipulation and control by outside agents. 26

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desires, and actions. These claims present two problems for the conception of free will Ive defended. First, they suggest that our identifications with our motivations to act in certain ways do not influence our actionsat least not remotely as much as we would like to think. When subjects report reasons for their attitudes and actions, they believe they are doing two things: (1) claiming that those factors have causally influenced their attitudes and actions and (2) explaining the factors they think justify their attitudes and actions. For example, when subjects report that knowing Jill has recently recovered from an accident made them more likely to see her as sympathetic, they are likely explaining not only the influence of that factor but also their view that its influence is legitimate. (After all, if it were not legitimate, why would they allow it to influence them?) Conversely, when subjects report that Jills spilling coffee was not a factor in their rating of how much they liked her, they are not only reporting that it had no influence on them but also that they believe it should have no influence on themit is not a good reason to like (or dislike) Jill.70 So, at least in some cases, the reasons subjects reported as the basis of their judgments seem to represent motivations they identify with. However, this experiment (along with others like it) indicates that factors the subjects saw as irrelevant were in fact influential while most factors they saw as important were not. If at least some of these reported influences were also reports of reasons the subjects identify with, then the results indicate that subjects were not motivated to judge Jill by those reasons. And even though subjects judgments of intelligence did correlate with Jills academic credentials, the authors suggest that even that influence occurred without the subjects being aware of it: Subjects were probably correct in their reports of the intelligence judgment not by virtue of any ability to introspect accurately about this judgment, but because their a priori causal theories about the influences of this judgment happened to be correct (1977: 623). If the reasons we reporteven when they are accurateare not the causes of our actions, then our identifications are causally inefficacious. They are retrospective rationalizationsand hence, causally epiphenomenal. The thesis that our folk psychology is largely erroneous threatens free will in a second way, reminiscent of the two theses discussed above. It suggests that we have limited knowledge about how certain situations will causally affect our behavior. We deliberate about how we want to be motivated to act in certain future situations so that we can act accordingly when faced with such situations. But for each unrecognized effect on our motivations and actions, our deliberations are correspondingly restricted. For instance, if I am planning to hire someone for a job, I will deliberate about which criteria are important and how I will determine if candidates meet those criteria. If I am like most people, I will assume interviewing candidates will help me predict their future performance. But experiments suggest that interviews are very poor predictors of performance.71 Furthermore, my judgments may be affected by many factors that I do not want to affect them, such as the candidates appearance or whether they spill coffee at the interview.

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Reported reasons will not always be justifications; some people may recognize that attractiveness influences judgments of liking but not accept that influence as justified. Ross and Nisbett (1991: 136-138) call this the interview illusion. Whereas subjects believe interviews will correlate with performance at a rate of .60, the actual correlation between judgments based on interviews and later performance is usually below .10. (However, they do not discuss how well interviews can predict for likability; it seems many people use interviews not (only) to determine performance but also to make sure the candidate will not drive his or her coworkers crazy.) 27

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The less accurate my knowledge of which factors might influence me, the less I can control the influence of factors I want to make a difference, and the less I can act on my deliberations. Hence, these experiments suggest limitations on our abilities to act on reasons that we think are, and should be, influentialthe motivational factors that we judge as legitimate influences. The experiments also threaten our abilities to plan how we should act in future situations, to set up motivational dispositions to do X when faced with certain situations. The problem is that we act on influences that we do not reliably introspectively pick out and we are unaware of many of the factors in situations that may or may not motivate us to do X. C. Responses to the Errors of Folk Psychology We may, once again, question the scope of these claims against our folk psychology. For instance, Nisbett and Wilson title their paper Telling More Than We Can Know (my italics), a modal claim certainly unjustified by the 17 experiments they cite (even in conjunction with the hundreds of others that suggest the errors of folk psychology), and they make generalized claims like, when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes . . . they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection (1977: 231). To highlight the threats of social psychology to free will, I have presented these generalizations as creditable, but in responding to these threats it is important to recognize that the empirical evidence is limited in certain respects. For instance, it has focused on complex experimental set-upsdesigned precisely to trick subjectsin which subjects are doing things without being asked to attend to what they are doing. It is not implausible that subjects often do not care about and are uninterested in the activities being studied, so they may not have what they see as reasons for what they do. Furthermore, they are asked to explain their judgments or responses only after they complete them. When the subjects report what they experienced, they are not introspecting on their experience, but retrospecting on processes they performed earlier during the task. Perhaps subjects poor memory of the thoughts they had accounts for some of the problems ascribed to their poor introspection. Indeed, none of the experiments ask subjects to introspect on their mental processes while they are choosing, judging, or acting.72 (The experiments described in the next section overcome some of these problems.) Furthermore, none of these experiments ask subjects to introspect about what factors they want to influence them before they act, in order to determine whether such deliberation can counteract the disconnect between subjects reported reasons and the factors that influence their actions. For instance, an important aspect of the interview experiment is the order of events. Subjects first judge Jill, then they introspectmore accurately, retrospecton the effects of several factors on their judgments. But if subjects were asked to consider how much influence certain factors, such as her attractiveness, should have on their judgements of Jill before they read her file, it may turn out that their judgments would more accurately track the reasons they report. Presumably, subjects have thought about the influence academic credentials should have on judgments of intelligence and perhapsjust as they saythose thoughts played a role in their judgments.73 An experiment that tested for the effect of prior introspection would be helpful in determining the significance of conscious deliberation.
72

Nisbett and Wilson suggest that concurrent introspection would interfere with the behaviors in question but see Ericsson and Simon (1984) who have shown that thinking or talking aloud during problem solving does not affect the way subjects problem solve. 73 Even if thoughts about the relevance of academic credentials influence subjects without their being conscious of that influence, it may be that their prior deliberations about whether such an influence is legitimate has sunk in to their unconscious processing in a way allowed by the passive account of identification (see Chapter 2). 28

One problem with this response, however, is that in real life situations we are not told which factors to consider before we act, and presumably we would not consider factors like coffee-spilling or history of auto accidents before we made decisions about them. It is more likely that we would consider factors we already saw as plausible (or at least possible) influences on our behavior. If so, we would consider the very factors involved in our folk psychological theories, the ones we then use to explain our decisions. To break out of this circle, it seems we would need to learn more about the types of situations we will face, the factors that might influence us, and the methods we might use to be influenced by factors we see as good reasons. That is, knowledge would help. Once again, the knowledge we might gain if we learned about the effects social psychology discovers could be beneficial in acting on our deliberations. Indeed, as we will see below, increased knowledge in general about the activities we engage in increases the effectiveness of our deliberations about how to act. One final response to the threats imposed by our erroneous folk psychology is to embrace the power of the situation. If social psychologists are correct that our predictions about the consistency of a persons character are correct (when they are) because we usually interact with the person in similar situations, then this suggests we may actually influence our behaviorand consistencyby seeking out or creating situations that elicit motivational dispositions we identify with. That is, in choosing what sorts of roles we take on, we indirectly develop consistent behaviors by putting ourselves in situations that elicit those behaviors.74 Imagine Doctor Manley believes he possesses the character trait of diligence because he consistently works hard. Social psychologists suggest, however, that he works hard because his environment (a tough residency program) demands hard work. Will he stop working hard when he finishes his residency? Would he work hard if he were writing a (loosely supervised) dissertation? These sorts of counterfactual questions highlight the relevant significance of situations versus character traits in accounting for the consistency of our behaviors. On this view, we become the kinds of persons we aspire to be not by developing the appropriate characters and motivations but by immersing ourselves in the appropriate environments. Take away that environment and we may no longer act in character.75 The question then turns to how much knowledge and control we exercise in choosing our environments (especially early in our lives) and how much control we can exert over remaining in the same environment. Again, knowledge about how certain situations elicit certain behaviors will help us seek out or create the situations that motivate us to act in ways we identify with. 6. The Errors of Introspection The fourth threatening thesis of social psychology further challenges our ability to introspect on the reasons we act. It includes the thesis discussed abovethat our explanations of the causes of our own behavior are as inaccurate as our explanations of others behaviors. But since we believe that many of our explanations of our own attitudes and actions derive from introspection and privileged access to our reasons, other problems arise. Experiments in social psychology suggest that when we introspect about the reasons why we feel or act the way we do, we believe we are offering accurate reasons. However, for many types of behavior, we do not
74 75

See Ross and Nisbett (1991: 154-155). See, also my discussion of role responsibility in Chapter 2, section 5.

A possibility we accept as quite conceivable given stories like The Prince and the Pauper and movies like Trading Places. 29

have access to the most significant causes, often situational, for our feelings and actions. So we come up with plausible reasons (rationalizations), the sort represented by our often mistaken folk psychology. Seeking consistency, we adjust our reported attitudes and our immediate behavior to match the reasons we offer. However, our long-term behavior does not necessarily change in accord with our reported attitudes, since the very factors and motivations of which we are unaware remain potent in determining how we act. Hence, by introspecting we end up destabilizing the consistency between our behavior and the attitudes we introspect and report. If we adjust our immediate behavior to accord with the attitudes we report, we may end up regretting those actions later. Furthermore, introspecting on reasons can lead us to alter our choices in deleterious ways (i.e. away from the choices made by more knowledgeable people). The implication drawn by some social psychologists is that self-reflection may not always be a beneficial activity.76 Indeed, contrary to Socrates admonition, at least at times, the unexamined choice is worth making.77 A. Experiments This counterintuitive conclusion follows a complicated and contentious line of reasoning. To clarify it, I will describe some experiments designed to demonstrate it. These experiments suggest that in certain situations introspection can lead to three problems: (1) inconsistency between attitudes and behavior, (2) reduced satisfaction with choices, and (3) sub-optimal choices or judgments. Timothy Wilson, who has led much of this type of research, demonstrated the first problem by presenting subjects with five paper-and-pencil puzzles to play with. After familiarizing themselves with the puzzles, control subjects rated their interest in the puzzles on a seven-point scale. Introspecting subjects were asked, before they rated the puzzles, to think about and write out the reasons why they found each puzzle interesting or boring.78 Then, each group was told they could continue to play with the puzzles until the experimenter came back. The behavioral measure meant to indicate each subjects actual interest in the various puzzles was how long he or she played with each of them during the free-time period. This behavioral measure of their real attitudes was then compared with the reported attitudes towards the puzzles. If introspecting about the reasons for ones attitudes clarifies and perhaps strengthens these attitudes, then introspecting subjects should, more than controls, behave in accord with their ratings (i.e. should spend the most time playing with the puzzles they said they like most). But just the opposite occurred. Control subjects behavior correlated with their reported attitudes at a much higher rate (.54) than introspecting subjects (.17). 79
76 77 78

Wilson and LaFleur (1995: 21).

Wilson and Schooler (1991: 192). In these experiments, in an attempt to avoid subjects feeling pressure to present reasons that would satisfy others (e.g. the experimenters), subjects are told that their introspections are meant only to help them sort out their attitudes and they are told to throw their written analyses in the garbage. Wilson et al. (1984). Most of these experiments follow this pattern: (1) subjects are presented with the object (which may be an object, an activity, a person, etc.); (2) introspecting subjects introspect on the reasons why they have certain attitudes towards the object (controls dont introspect or focus only on their attitudes but not the reasons they have them); (3) all subjects report their attitudes towards the object; (4) real attitudes are measured by some behavior involving the subjects interactions with the object; 30

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Similar experiments have shown greater inconsistency between reported attitudes and subsequent behavior for introspecting subjects on tests of beverage preference and vacation destinations.80 Other studies show that introspecting subjects choices of strawberry jams and methods of rating psychology courses did not correlate as well with the judgments of experts as did control subjects ratings.81 These experiments suggest that introspection leads to sub-optimal judgments. And an experiment on poster choices showed that introspecting subjects chose posters based on their reported attitudes but did not hang up their chosen posters as much as control subjects did, suggesting that introspection can lead to choices that the subjects later regret.82 While each of these studies suggests that introspecting on the reasons for ones attitudes can be detrimental, they also share a common feature: like some of the experiments discussed above, they deal with relatively trivial choices that subjects presumably dont care, know, or deliberate about very much. This will be important in the discussion of responses below. However, a few experiments have tested activities about which we presumably do care and deliberate: voting and dating. For instance, subjects (back in 1984) were asked to report their attitudes towards the Mondale candidacy; introspecting subjects first thought about the reasons they have such attitudes. Subjects were then asked to hand out fliers for Mondale-Ferraro as the behavioral measure of their actual attitudes. Introspecting subjects behavior-attitude consistency was .43 while controls was .46, suggesting that, even when it comes to a behavior we may (or should?) care about, such as voting, when we think about why we feel the way we do, we do not accurately recognize our true feelings (i.e. the feelings that actually motivate us).83 Perhaps even more troubling, when dating couples were asked to introspect on the reasons for their feelings about their partners and their relationships, the correlation between their reported attitudes (e.g. how likely they thought the relationship would last) and their behavior (whether they were still dating several months later) was lower than the couples who reported their attitudes without introspecting (.10 versus .62, a very significant difference).84 Both the voting and dating studies, however, offer an interesting caveat that will be important in the discussion below.

(5) reported attitudes are compared with real attitudes and consistency is compared between introspecting subjects and controls. The proposed explanation for the inconsistency in introspecting subjects: S introspects on her reasons for attitudes (and comes up with plausible reasons) S reports attitudes in accord with these considered reasons S acts on real attitudes (and hence inconsistently with reported attitudes)
80 81 82

Wilson and Dunn (1986) and Wilson et al. (1984). Wilson and Schooler (1991). The experts were, respectively, jam connoisseurs and psychology professors.

Wilson et al. (1993). Similarly, subjects who chose among beverages after introspecting about why they like them drank less of the one they picked than controls who chose without introspecting. Wilson et al. (1989).

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Wilson et al. (1984). One might suggest that we do not expect or care to be able to offer accurate reasons for our romantic feelings (the idea of justifying ones love seems wrong). But we do offer reasons (to ourselves, friends, and family) for why we are in the relationships we are in. Presumably, we want those reasons to bear some relation to reality, and we do not want the act of coming up with reasons to disturb our actual feelings. 31

B. The Implications of the Errors of Introspection These experiments show not only that we are often mistaken in our explanations and predictions of the causes of our behavior and feelings but also that when we make an effort to introspect on those causes, we may disrupt our behavior in seemingly adverse ways. Why is this problematic for free will? First, it suggests that, in such cases, we likely act on motivations that we have not evaluated. For instance, imagine John is a subject in the voting study. He is asked to write down reasons why he feels Walter Mondale is or is not a good candidate for President and then to report how much he supports Mondale. A little later John is asked how many campaign fliers he is willing to take to distribute around campus; this behavior seems a fair indication of what John really thinks about Mondale and of the behavior he will exhibit in the futurefor instance, how he will vote. However, since this behavior does not match the attitudes John expresses based on his considerations of the reasons for his feelings, we can assume that Johns voting behavior is not caused by reasons he has considered. Rather, John will vote based on attitudes that he has apparently not attempted to identify with and that influence him without his knowledge. If John represents the average voter, then it seems the average voter does not decide how to vote by exercising his free willa claim that may be unsurprising to the sociologist who knows most people vote with the party of their parents, the pollster who knows most people vote with their pocketbook, or the political advertiser who uses subliminable (RATS) messagesbut a claim that should be troubling to any philosopher or political scientist who argues for democracy.85 A second problem posed by the errors of introspection is it suggests that when we do consider the reasons for our motivations, we have difficulty adjusting our behavior to accord with motivations we identify with. Take, for instance, the dating study. Imagine Julia is asked to analyze why she feels as she does about her relationship with Alex and then to rate her feelings about their relationship; she says, for example, that Alex is a good listener and that is one reason she rates their relationship as likely to last a long time. However, her rating will correlate poorly, compared to controls, with whether her relationship, in fact, lasts.86 If we assume (as I have argued is generally plausible) that Julias reported reasons for her feelings about Alex (e.g. that he is a good listener) represent what she sees as both actual influences and good reasons for her feelings, then we can assume that the attitudes she bases on these reasons are the ones she identifies with. However, her behavior (assume she breaks up with Alex) does not seem to reflect these attitudes. That is, she does not act on the reasons she identifies with; instead, she is apparently motivated by factors she has not accessed and may not accept as legitimate (perhaps Alexs sensitivity actually turns her off, or, even less accessible, his pheromones do not turn her on). As we will see, these problems need not suggest, as the authors sometimes put it, that the unexamined choice is worth making. But they do suggest that, at least under certain conditions,
85

To say the average voter does not exercise his free will in voting is not to say that his voting is not a free (and responsible) act: given my distinctions in Chapter 2, as long as the voter had the opportunity to exercise his or her free will in voting, then it is a free act, and as we will see below, it is certainly possible to vote according to considered reasons if one cares about and learns about the object of ones deliberations. I am assuming Julia is representative of the average introspecting subject. By the way, the experimenters request to introspect did not cause more breakups. The inconsistency between reported attitudes and behavior worked in both directions. That is, the introspecting couples did not break up more than controls; their attitudes were less predictive both for success and for failure of their relationships. See Wilson and Kraft (1993). 32

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reflection does not help the agent recognize which motivations affect his behavior or help to influence his motivations to accord with his identifications. Hence, we need a better understanding of what these conditions are. C. Responses to the Errors of Introspection In responding to these implications, the social psychologists themselves offer some experiments and suggestions. Wilson et al. (1993) write: We cannot emphasize too strongly, however, that we are not making a broadsided attack on introspection and self-reflection. Such an attack would be unwarranted for several reasons (338). Each of these reasons offers a response to the problems raised by the errors of introspection. First of all, the experiments discussed above deal with a particular kind of introspection; they ask the subjects to analyze the reasons why they have certain attitudes about the object in question (e.g. puzzles, dating partners).87 Other experiments, however, ask subjects to introspect on the attitudes themselvesthat is, to focus attention on what they feel, not why they feel it. This type of introspection does not lead to the problems discussed above; rather, such introspection can actually strengthen the feelings (as indicated by subsequent behavior).88 This would be beneficial as long as the attitudes in question were ones the subject identified with. Subjects who focus on their attitudes clearly are aware of them, but they may or may not have considered whether they identify with those attitudes. In at least some cases, we may have strong attitudes that motivate us and that we have considered and identify with, or we may have attitudes that we would identify with if we became aware of them. But these attitudes may be inaccessible given the type of introspection demanded by the experiments, and they may become disrupted when we are asked to introspect about the reasons we have them. We may, for instance, have forgotten some of the reasons why we adopted the attitudes and then come up with explanations that seem plausible. It may even be that we sometimes deliberate about our motivations in a language of thought that we cannot then verbalize. That is, we have considered the reasons we feel as we do but, if asked to explain them, we succumb to the constraints of language, offering reasons that are easy to verbalize but that may not represent our true feelings; these reasons then disrupt our attitudes.89 Indeed, it may be that the way subjects are directed to introspect in such experiments does not represent the way we normally introspect on our reasons (or perhaps the way we should introspect on them). At least one experiment suggests that introspecting for too short or too long a period of time can undermine self-insight, but with the right amount, reflection appears to channel thinking and reveal a clearer picture of who and what one is.90 If different types of introspection allow for different degrees of self-understanding and action in accord with identification, then it seems that introspection is a skill that can be developed. Indeed, it may turn
87

I will follow the psychological literature in using object to refer generally to the activity, person, situation, etc. that is the object of introspection in these experiments. See, for instance, Wilson and Dunn (1986). See, for instance, Wilson et al. (1985).

88 89 90

Hixon and Swann (1993: 42). The experiment tested how well people chose interaction partners whose views confirmed their self-views. However, this experiment also suggested that thinking about why one is the way one is decreased self-insight. 33

out that these experimental results could be used to increase our free will if they can help us understand when and how introspection can best serve our goal to act in accord with our identifications. They may teach us that we should not over-analyze certain decisions, because doing so may lead us to call to mind irrelevant reasons, or that we should guard against assuming that plausible reasons are good reasons. These ideas suggest that different agents may understand how to introspect with different degrees of success, supporting the idea that free will, as a set of cognitive abilities, can be exercised with varying degrees of success. Indeed, this idea is further demonstrated by an important boundary condition on the results described above. It turns out that, when the experimenters controlled for subjects knowledge about the objects of the attitudes they analyzed, the knowledgeable subjects did not have the same problems with introspection as other subjects. These subjects did not change their attitudes based on the reasons they reported, so their behavior remained consistent with these attitudes, and their attitudes did not diverge from the experts (since they were, in a sense, experts). Take, for example, the voting study. When subjects who demonstrated significant knowledge about the candidates were asked to introspect on the reasons for their attitudes towards Mondale, their behavior (taking fliers) was relatively consistent with their reported attitudes.91 Presumably, these subjects would also vote in accord with the reasons they reported. Similarly, in the dating study, when subjects were parsed according to the length of their relationshipsa likely indication of their knowledge about their partner and the relationshipthe knowledgeable subjects expressed their attitudes (by staying together or breaking up) in a way that was relatively consistent with their reported attitudes.92 Finally, studies with trained professionals (clinical psychologists and stockbrokers) show that, because they have learned explicit decision processes, they can accurately explain the reasons for their judgments.93 These data, which Nisbett and Wilson call a lonely outcropping of accuracy (1977: 254), suggest that when subjects have sufficient experience with the object involved, they may have already considered the reasons for their attitudes towards it. Hence, introspecting on the reasons for their attitudes does not cause them to come up with what they see as plausible (or good) reasons that then destabilize their attitudes. They already have what they see as good reasons, and their attitudes already reflect these reasons. If so, this answers both of the concerns raised above. First, when we know and care about what were dealing withand the fact that we have made the effort to learn about it likely indicates that we care about itthen it is likely we have evaluated our attitudes towards it. We have deliberated about what sort of attitudes we want to move us. Second, this deliberation has sunk in to affect our motivations; our actions align with our

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Wilson et al. (1989: 313). Knowledgeable introspecting subjects correlation between behavior and reported attitudes was .53, compared to -.43 for unknowledgeable subjects.

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Wilson et al. (1989: 312). Correlations for longer relationships were .56, versus -.19 for newer relationships. Two other experiments support the conclusion that knowledgeable subjects do not act against their reasons: another study of attitudes towards political candidates and the poster study.

Nisbett and Wilson (1977: 254). However, the authors claim that these experiments do not indicate that people can introspect accurately on their cognitive processes, but that they can simply describe the formal rules of evaluation that they have learned and that they (automatically) act on. 34

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identifications. In such cases, introspection on the reasons for our attitudes does not disrupt our attitudesrather, it displays to us patterns of reasoning we have made our own.94 However, making our reasons our own, making them sink in, is not necessarily easy. When we are asked (as in these experiments) to consider the reasons why we feel the way we do, we may alsoperhaps for the first timeconsider whether we have good reasons for feeling the way we do. That is, we may question our attitudes. If we are then asked to give reasons for them, we may not have many or any. But (being the humans we are) we will try to come up with reasons, likely ones we see as good, justificatory reasons. It should be no surprise, then, if these reasons do not accord with our (unconsidered) attitudes but instead support attitudes we do not really haveat least not yet. But the process of changing our attitudes and actions must begin somewhere, and one place to begin is with our considering our various motivations. If this process disrupts our attitudes and actions and the consistency between them, that may simply reflect the first step in our attempts to change both our attitudes and actions to reflect what we see as good reasons. And, as we all know, such changes do not happen immediately or easily. But such changes may be a good thing, both in terms of our exercising our free will and in terms of improving our attitudes and actions. Indeed, consistency between attitudes and behavior should not be the goal if those attitudes and behaviors are deleterious to the agent (e.g. based on a poor self-image) or to others (e.g. racial prejudice). As Wilson et al. write: It would be beneficial to alter these [types of] reactions, even if only temporarily, by having people examine the reasons that underlie them (1993: 338). One of the problems I discussed above is that the introspection experiments suggest we often act on unreflective motivations. The converse is that when we reflect on our motivations, we may find reasons to change themwe may aspire to develop or curtail some of them. This change will not occur immediately, and in the meantime, the attitudes we report based on our newfound reasons may not be reflected in our behavior. It will take time and effort to change our habitual motivations. In fact, it may take strength of will and such methods as I discussed in Chapter 2. And these efforts may, alas, be unsuccessful. This, however, is the nature of free will; its not always easy. Lynn Holt makes a similar point in an essay titled Rationality is Hard Work. Holt argues, following Aristotle, that for an agent to exercise deliberative practical rationality, or phronesis, he will need (1) to be able to identify which actions will contribute (causally or constitutively) to his ends, (2) to recognize when a situation calls for such an action, and (3) to be habituated into the skills required to do the right thing at the right time (1989: 257). These abilities align significantly with my discussion of introspection, identification, and influence as the abilities required for free will. Both Holt and I respond to the social psychology research by recognizing that these abilities require that agents care about the object of deliberation, have knowledge about it, and act on the reasons that they recognize during deliberations. These conditions will not be met for some agents on some occasions, and the social psychology experiments described in this chapter exhibit some such occasions. But experiments also show that when subjects care about and acquire knowledge about the objects of their deliberations, they are able to deliberate effectivelyor they are able to act on habituated attitudes that stem from previous deliberations.

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We should be wary, however, of the possibility that we have simply learned some rules of decision-making that we have not evaluated or identified with, but that affect our attitudes and actions and that we can accurately report (see previous note). 35

Putting these last two responses together, we can see that the way to overcome both of the threatening implications of the introspection experiments is not to conclude that sometimes the unexamined choice is worth making, but to conclude that gaining knowledge about the world and oneself and reflecting on the reasons for ones motivations makes one better able to exercise ones free will. I am not suggesting that we should analyze the reasons for all of our choicesas I have said, for trivial decisions (such as puzzles, or even, for some, voting), introspecting on our reasons is superfluous. But for choices we care about, we should introspect on why we are inclined to make the choices we make. And the more we know about the situations in which we act and our own motivations relative to those situations, the more our introspection will be accurate and effective in influencing us to act on the reasons we identify with. 7. Further Research Gerald Dworkin, whose hierarchical theory of autonomy I mentioned in Chapter 2, writes: there is a task that philosophers have relegated to social scientistswho have responded by ignoring the issue. This is to speculate about what psychological and social conditions are likely to promote the development and maintenance of autonomous individuals. The excuse given by philosophers is that this is an empirical question about which they have no expertise or knowledge. But what I am suggesting is not that philosophers assess the evidence for and against various hypotheses but that they suggest types of inquiry. (1988: 162) I agree wholeheartedly with the tenor of this passage. Part of my project is to speculate on the psychological conditions (cognitive abilities) that allow free will and that may be developed to increase free will. However, in this chapter I have discussed experiments by social scientists who implicitly and sometimes explicitly claim their work does bear directly on questions of autonomy. I agree with their claim, so I have assessed their hypotheses and evidence. Their work offers some useful starting points for empirical inquiry into the nature of free will, but it has not yet answered some important questions. Hence, I will suggest some directions for further research. What we need to understand better is whether our conscious recognition of our motivational states and our introspection and evaluation of them makes any difference in our behavior; and if it does, when and how. Most of the social psychology experiments I have discussed suggest that our conscious mental activity and our awareness of it does not make much of a difference in what we dothat unrecognized external factors or unconscious processes largely determine our behavior. However, there are some significant gaps in this body of research that raise questions about its scope. First, too few experiments involve attitudes and actions we care about; too many may be successful in showing our ignorance and tendency to rationalize only because they involve relatively trivial activities. More experiments need to test whether we are unaware of the critical situational factors when we care about the outcomes of our decisions and actions. Of the experiments discussed above (and others I have seen in the literature), only one deals with something of direct relevance to subjects significant interests and goals: the dating study. Even the others that involve decisions we should care about, such as helping behavior and voting, do not directly impact on most peoples life projects.95 It would be helpful to see the
95

There are some other experiments which involve activities significant to the subjectsfor example, their phobias, their insomnia, and their willingness to take electrical shocksbut these studies use particularly complex manipulations to demonstrate the subjects inability to report on influential stimuli. See Nisbett and Wilson (1977). 36

results of more experiments that test subjects abilities to report accurately about their mental states and reasons for action in situations that make an important difference in their lives (though it may be tough to work around the constraints of the Office of Human Subjects Research!). A second suggestion for further research deals with deliberation about future actions. None of the experiments discussed asked subjects to introspect about how they want to behave about which factors they want to influence themand then examined whether such deliberation has the desired effects. The experiments that come closest to filling these gaps are those that examined the accuracy of introspection by subjects knowledgeable about the objects or activities in question. These subjects presumably do care about these objects (e.g. their relationships, voting), have thought about the reasons they hold their attitudes towards the objects in question, and have been able to influence their attitudes and actions in accord with their prior deliberations. A useful type of experiment would compare two groups of knowledgeable subjects faced with a novel situation about which they both care and have relevant experience; subjects in one group are allowed to deliberate beforehand about how they should act; subjects in the other group are forced to act without time for deliberation.96 For instance, an experiment could ask a group of career counselors (who, let us imagine, have had success in determining which job candidates will be effective in certain jobs) to judge which of several colleges various high school students should apply to and predict how likely they are to get into each. (The counselors could be motivated by being told their suggestions will be used by the students, and their success could be judged by comparing their predictions with the actual acceptance rates of students.) One group of subjects, before making their judgments, would be given some student files and information about the relevant colleges to peruse and then told they could think about (perhaps write out) the criteria they will examine in each file to make their judgments. The other group of subjects would simply be given the information and told to make their judgments within a certain time period to minimize their ability to deliberate about how best to use the information. My prediction is that the deliberative subjects will be far more accurate in their predictions (and would be more helpful as counselors). Similar experiments involving other experienced subjects and other objects of introspection could be designed to test this hypothesis that prospective introspectiondeliberation about how one might be motivated and how one wants to be motivated to act in future situations can influence and increase the success of future decisions and behavior.97 8. Summary Free will requires that we can identify with and aspire to be influenced by certain motivational dispositions (and not others). Freely willed actions are the result of such deliberative identifications. Such an account requires that there in fact exist relatively stable motivational dispositions, that we can recognize them and evaluate them, and that we can influence them. Social psychology threatens each of these conditions. It suggests that our behavior is determined by situational factors more than by consistent motivational dispositions. It suggests that our
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See Holt (1999: 217) for similar suggestions for experiments, though Holt focuses on examining whether experts, like chessmasters, will perform more or less effectively if they deliberate (e.g. have time to think about their moves). I am more interested in situations in which people have to deliberate about which factors they want to influence them in future situations. Other experiments could test whether educating subjects about an activity they would then engage in could help them introspect accurately on the reasons for their choices and actions. Further experiments are also required to determine the effectiveness of educating people about the results of social psychology experiments. 37

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understanding of our motivations is limited and theoretical, and that introspecting on our reasons is generally not effective. And it suggests that our ability to influence our motivational states is compromised by this lack of knowledge about how particular situations affect our attitudes and actions. I have not mentioned one particular response that could be offered to the research in social psychology presented here as threatening to free will: that the research is fundamentally flawed for conceptual or empirical reasons. Such responses may turn out to have merit, but I leave the empirical concerns to be hashed out by the psychologists, and I have postponed many of the conceptual concerns for another day. I am convinced that the experiments I have described indicate some important limitations to our folk psychological explanations and introspective abilities. The extent of these limitations is another question, and I have offered various reasons to think their scope is more limited than the social psychologists suggest. But in any case, these sorts of experiments about our knowledge of our motivational states and of the reasons we act suggest that free will, as a set of cognitive abilities, is open to empirical investigation. While such investigations may indicate limits on our freedom, they also have the potential to increase our knowledge of ourselves in ways that augment our free will. In addition to these empirical challenges to the cognitive abilities that constitute free will, there are conceptual challenges to these abilities posed by certain views in philosophy of mind. I turn next to these challenges.

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