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agency
You consistently overestimate your ability to control external events.
When an outcome is preceded by your own action, even if it is unrelated, you feel a 'sense of agency' that causes you to believe you caused it.
The brain creates a causal link between your movement and the following event as a way to simplify a complex, chaotic world. This leads to the illusion that you influence things that are actually random. It is a byproduct of your brain's search for patterns.
You believe you are the driver of events you are only witnessing.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Wegner, 2002, The Illusion of Conscious Will
- What the check found
- The claim accurately reflects the core thesis of Daniel Wegner's 'The Illusion of Conscious Will' (2002), which posits that the feeling of agency is an inference rather than a direct perception of causality.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.