FREE WILL & SELF DEVELOPMENT
Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1), 49-54.
Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1 , participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). The darker and brighter sides of human existence: Basic psychological needs as a unifying concept. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 319-338.
Few things are more intrinsically motivating than the opportunity to test one’s ideas against the challenges provided by other theorists and researchers. In writing the target article we invited such challenges by contrasting our work with other current theories and by making clear, and sometimes controversial, claims. Accordingly, we looked forward to the commentaries with great excitement, mixed with a bit of anxiety, anticipating strong and pointed arguments, which we believe to be the best nutriment for continued theoretical growth. After reviewing the range of comments, we feel appreciative. The comments are indeed pointed, and provoked us to specify our propositions and predictions even further and to make even more direct comparisons with the assumptions and foci of other theories that were used in the commentaries. In several instances the comments suggested specific new ideas and testable hypotheses that have the potential to spawn informative research. Each of the 11 commentaries seriously engaged the self-determination theory (SDT) framework in the spirit of scientific dialog, at times critically and with the fervor that often characterizes an active and socially relevant field of human inquiry. Among the major themes we address in our response are the following: 1. The adequacy of SDT in accounting for the so-called darker sides of human existence. 2. SDT’s eudaimonic (as opposed to hedonic) view of well-being. 3. Why we specify these three needs and not others such as security, meaning, and self-esteem. 4. The role of individual differences in need strength and our critique of match hypotheses. 5. Issues concerning the concepts of autonomy and integration within SDT and the relation of autonomy to approach and avoidance motivational systems. 6. The interpretation and priority we give to the need for relatedness. 7. The social relevance of our findings, which are clearly not palatable to some.
Crone, D. L., & Levy, N. L. (2019). Are free will believers nicer people? (Four studies suggest not). Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(5), 612-619.
Free will is widely considered a foundational component of Western moral and legal codes, and yet current conceptions of free will are widely thought to fit uncomfortably with much research in psychology and neuroscience. Recent research investigating the consequences of laypeople’s free will beliefs (FWBs) for everyday moral behavior suggests that stronger FWBs are associated with various desirable moral characteristics (e.g., greater helpfulness, less dishonesty). These findings have sparked concern regarding the potential for moral degeneration throughout society as science promotes a view of human behavior that is widely perceived to undermine the notion of free will. We report four studies (combined N ¼ 921) originally concerned with possible mediators and/or moderators of the above mentioned associations. Unexpectedly, we found no association between FWBs and moral behavior. Our findings suggest that the FWB–moral behavior association (and accompanying concerns regarding decreases in FWBs causing moral degeneration) may be overstated.
Pereboom, D. (2014). Free will, agency, and meaning in life. Oxford University Press.
According to Pereboom, we ought to strive to eliminate expressions of resentment, indignation and moral anger when confronted with wrongdoing – although we can keep expressing disappointment, hurt, shock, moral concern and moral sadness. If the agent could not help doing wrong, and if expressions of anger would therefore be undeserved and unfair, so would (at least arguably) expressions of sadness. I believe that more arguments are needed for drawing the line where Pereboom does between justified and unjustified reactions to wrongdoing. According to Pereboom, we ought to regard dangerous criminals as analogous to carriers of dangerous diseases. Pereboom furthermore writes that restorative justice processes could have an important place in the larger criminal justice system, and that milder punishments, like fines, can be justified on a deterrence basis (although deterrence alone cannot justify incarceration, since that would violate the Kantian principle).
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford University Press.
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages.As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene’s eye view of evolution – a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research. Forty years later, its insights remain as relevant today as on the day it was published.This 40th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue from the author discussing the continuing relevance of these ideas in evolutionary biology today, as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews.Oxford Landmark Science books are ‘must-read’ classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.
Dennett, D. C. (1991). Real patterns. The Journal of Philosophy, 88(1), 27-51.
Philosophers generally embrace the idea that one must be either a realist or an eliminative materialist. An argument against such an either/or proposition is presented.
Matthijssen, S. J., van Beerschoten, L. M., de Jongh, A., Klugkist, I. G., & van den Hout, M. A. (2018). Effects of “Visual Schema Displacement Therapy”(VSDT), an abbreviated EMDR protocol and a control condition on emotionality and vividness of aversive memories: Two critical analogue studies. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 63, 48-56.
Background and objectives: Visual Schema Displacement Therapy (VSDT) is a novel therapy which has been described as a treatment for stress and dysfunction caused by a traumatic event. Although its developers claim this therapy is quicker and more beneficial than other forms of trauma therapy, its effectiveness has not been tested. Methods: We compared the efficacy of VSDT to an abbreviated EMDR protocol and a non-active control condition (CC) in two studies. In Study 1 participants (N = 30) were asked to recall three negative emotional memories under three conditions: VSDT, EMDR, and a CC, each lasting 8 min. Emotional disturbance and vividness of the memories were rated before and after the (within group) conditions. The experiment was replicated using a between group study. In Study 2 participants (N = 75) were assigned to one of the three conditions, and a follow-up after 6–8 days was added. Results: In both studies VSDT and EMDR were superior to the CC in reducing emotional disturbance, and VSDT was superior to EMDR. VSDT and EMDR outperformed the CC in terms of reducing vividness. Limitation: Results need to be replicated in clinical samples. Conclusions: It is unclear how VSDT yields positive effects, but irrespective of its causal mechanisms, VSDT warrants clinical exploration.
THE SCIENCE OF SELF AWARENESS
Baumeister, R. F. (2005). Strangers to ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. Harvard University Press
Modern psychology was much influenced by Freud’s theories. Central to them was the shocking idea that people are full of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motivations. The Freudian unconscious became one of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century, shaping how people thought—not just about psychology and mental illness—but also anthropology, literary criticism, politics, historical analyses, and more.
Many psychologists are uncomfortable about the wide influence of Freud’s theory of the unconscious. It was long derided by many hard–nosed researchers as untestable and unfalsifiable. (One is reminded here of published reports noting things such as “The patient’s Oedipus complex was so heavily repressed that no trace of it could be found.”) The vast improvements in methodological technology have lately begun to offer ways to test more and more Freudian ideas, but these have not uniformly confirmed the accuracy of Freud’s theories.*
At this crucial juncture in the evolution of the field, Timothy Wilson’s book is a welcome breath of fresh air. There are two main points that are the basis for the book. First, the unconscious is quite real and well documented. Second, it does not look or act much like Freud proposed. Psychological theory should therefore not throw out the notion of unconscious processing simply because some of Freud’s more extravagant theorizing has failed the test of time.
For Wilson, the essence of unconscious activity is all the information processing that occurs outside of conscious awareness. There is by now considerable work, including Wilson’s own groundbreaking studies, showing that the majority of thinking and information processing falls in this category. Wilson goes to impressive lengths to explode the myths that various kinds of thought are the special province of consciousness. It seems that anything the conscious mind can do, the unconscious can do it better, or at least faster. And if there is anything special that conscious processing can do, it does it only with the extensive aid of unconscious processing. For example, perhaps the conscious mind can have some special, unique thought in reaction to what the person reads, but the reading relies heavily on automatic (non–conscious) processes that convert the incoming rays of light depicting squiggles of ink on paper into meaningful structures of words and sentences.
Hence Wilson proposes a new term: “the adaptive unconscious.” This term effectively captures the change in value judgment that is implicit in the gradual shift from Freudian to modern approaches to the unconscious. For Freud, the unconscious was a source of conflict and turmoil. Wicked, unacceptable thoughts and desires were banished to the unconscious, causing neurosis and hysteria. Therapy was regarded as an alliance between the patient’s conscious self and the therapist, battling against the demons in the unconscious.
In contrast, the adaptive unconscious is our friend (though, to be sure, occasionally prone to problems). Wilson argues persuasively that health and well–being would not be possible without all the work that the unconscious processing system does all the time. He also presents provocative evidence that the unconscious often takes better care of us than our conscious selves, and that people might fare better if they relied more on intuition (understood as an unconscious process) than on their conscious, rational thought processes. Some of his own most striking research has documented how people can make accurate and beneficial judgments quickly and automatically if they rely on intution, but when they try to analyze reasons they lead themselves astray into failure and misery
The last several chapters take an intriguing turn that is also of special interest to clinical and social psychologists. If the conscious self cannot know what goes on in the adaptive unconscious (where the real action is), how is self–knowledge possible? Wilson offers practical, research–based suggestions about how to gain self–knowledge by means more reliable than introspection, such as observing one’s behavior much as one would observe someone else, studying social psychology, and relying on what other people say about us. (Then again, given the general fecklessness of the conscious mind, why does conscious self–knowledge even matter?)
Given the general fecklessness of the conscious mind, though, it remains unclear why self–knowledge is worth bothering about, except to satisfy idle curiosity.
As one who has followed and admired Wilson’s research for years, I found this book a very engaging and informative read. People who are less familiar with his work will gain even more from it. The different chapters present different facets of his work as well as relevant efforts by others. The book includes the exciting research on affective forecasting (showing how people err in predicting their emotional reactions), on dual attitudes (the conscious and unconscious systems may hold discrepant evaluations of the same object), and many other fascinating projects.
This book is an excellent way to gain an up–to–date perspective on how most leading thinkers in the field are coming round to view the relations between conscious and unconscious processing. If I had any reservations about this, it is that by the end one wonders what good consciousness is at all. Clearly the adaptive unconscious can outperform consciousness at every turn. Why, then, do we even have conscious processing, if it is only a stupider and slower way of doing the same things? This, however, is where things stand in the field at large, and Wilson’s account is especially clear and informative. As this book shows, Wilson has helped rediscover the power and value of the unconscious. Perhaps the next generation will find a way to rediscover any power and value that conscious thought may have. For now, however, this book is to be highly recommended to anyone interested in how the mind works.
Tseng, J., & Poppenk, J. (2020). Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nature Communications, 11(1), 1-12.
Researchers have observed large-scale neural meta-state transitions that align to narrative events during movie-viewing. However, group or training-derived priors have been needed to detect them. Here, we introduce methods to sample transitions without any priors. Transitions detected by our methods predict narrative events, are similar across task and rest, and are correlated with activation of regions associated with spontaneous thought. Based on the centrality of semantics to thought, we argue these transitions serve as general, implicit neurobiological markers of new thoughts, and that their frequency, which is stable across contexts, approximates participants’ mentation rate. By enabling observation of idiosyncratic transitions, our approach supports many applications, including phenomenological access to the black box of resting cognition. To illustrate the utility of this access, we regress resting fMRI transition rate and movie-viewing transition conformity against trait neuroticism, thereby providing a first neural confirmation of mental noise theory.
Cepelewicz, J. (2019, September 24). To pay attention, the brain uses filters, not a spotlight. Quanta Magazine. https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-pay-attention- the-brain-uses-filters-not-a-spotlight-20190924/
We attend to only a fraction of the sensory data available to us. New results are helping to explain how the brain filters out the sensations least interesting to it at any moment.
Scalf, P. E., Torralbo, A., Tapia, E., & Beck, D. M. (2013). Competition explains limited attention and perceptual resources: Implications for perceptual load and dilution theories. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 243.
Both perceptual load theory and dilution theory purport to explain when and why task-irrelevant information, or so-called distractors are processed. Central to both explanations is the notion of limited resources, although the theories differ in the precise way in which those limitations affect distractor processing. We have recently proposed a neurally plausible explanation of limited resources in which neural competition among stimuli hinders their representation in the brain. This view of limited capacity can also explain distractor processing, whereby the competitive interactions and bias imposed to resolve the competition determine the extent to which a distractor is processed. This idea is compatible with aspects of both perceptual load and dilution models of distractor processing, but also serves to highlight their differences. Here we review the evidence in favor of a biased competition view of limited resources and relate these ideas to both classic perceptual load theory and dilution theory.
Suzuki, S., Lawlor, V.M., Cooper, J.A. et al. Distinct regions of the striatum underlying effort, movement initiation and effort discounting. Nat Hum Behav (2020).
The ventral striatum is believed to encode the subjective value of cost–benefit options; however, this effect has notably been absent during choices that involve physical effort. Previous work in freely moving animals has revealed opposing striatal signals, with greater response to increasing effort demands and reduced responses to rewards requiring effort. Yet, the relationship between these conflicting signals remains unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with a naturalistic maze-navigation paradigm, we identified functionally segregated regions within the ventral striatum that separately encoded effort activation, movement initiation and effort discounting of rewards. In addition, activity in regions associated with effort activation and discounting oppositely predicted striatal encoding of effort during effort-based decision-making. Our results suggest that the dorsomedial region hitherto associated with action may instead represent the cost of effort and raise fundamental questions regarding the interpretation of striatal ‘reward’ signals in the context of effort demands. This has implications for uncovering the neural architecture underlying motivated behaviour.
Friston, K. (2009). The free-energy principle: A rough guide to the brain? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(7), 293-301.
This article reviews a free-energy formulation that advances Helmholtz’s agenda to find principles of brain function based on conservation laws and neuronal energy. It rests on advances in statistical physics, theoretical biology and machine learning to explain a remarkable range of facts about brain structure and function. We could have just scratched the surface of what this formulation offers; for example, it is becoming clear that the Bayesian brain is just one facetof thefree-energy principle and that perception is an inevitable consequence of active exchange with the environment. Furthermore, one can see easily how constructs like memory, attention, value, reinforcement and salience might disclose their simple relationships within this framework.
Hsieh, P. J., Colas, J. T., & Kanwisher, N. (2011). Pop-out without awareness: Unseen feature singletons capture attention only when top-down attention is available. Psychological Science, 22(9), 1220-1226.
Visual pop-out occurs when a unique visual target (e.g., a feature singleton) is present in a set of homogeneous distractors. However, the role of visual awareness in this process remains unclear. In the experiments reported here, we showed that even though subjects were not aware of a suppressed pop-out display, their subsequent performance on an orientationdiscrimination task was significantly better at the pop-out location than at a control location. These results indicate that conscious visual awareness of a feature singleton is not necessary for it to attract attention. Furthermore, the subliminal popout effect disappeared when subjects diverted their attention toward a rapid sequential visual presentation task while presented with the same subliminal pop-out display. These results suggest that top-down attention is necessary for the subliminal pop-out effect and that the cognitive processes underlying attention and awareness are somewhat independent.
Javanbakht, A. (2011). A neural network model for schemas based on pattern completion. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, 39(2), 243-261.
Recent developments in neuroscience have provided us with a wealth of the basic knowledge and tools which are required for neurobiological understanding of the psychological concepts. This advantage enables contemporary scientists to suggest and test brain models for psychological concepts, theories, and methods. Considering the current dominance of biological ideas in psychiatry and psychology, such models are essential in confirmation of the psychological theories of mind. In this article a brain model for schemas as essential to cognitive theory is proposed. Schemas are seen as patterns which are recognized and memorized through the training phase of an auto associative neural network. Then, these patterns are used to complete ambiguous aspects of future experiences through thalamo and hippocampal-cortical pathways. In relation to the self or the outside world when a pattern with unknown, noisy, or vague aspects is encountered, those aspects are completed by the principal components of previously learned patterns (schema). This process is to help the observer acquire a better understanding of the environment or the self. However, the patterns which are used to complete the uncertainties about the self or the environment are sometimes not good estimates of the reality and lead the person/patient to an illusionary perception of the self/environment. In this article, the role of the mirror neuron system in pattern recognition is also explained. Psychological and biological therapeutic implications of this model are discussed and the importance of a link between dynamic and cognitive therapies is rationalized.
Graziano, M. S., & Webb, T. W. (2015). The attention schema theory: a mechanistic account of subjective awareness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 500.
We recently proposed the attention schema theory, a novel way to explain the brain basis of subjective awareness in a mechanistic and scientifically testable manner. The theory begins with attention, the process by which signals compete for the brain’s limited computing resources. This internal signal competition is partly under a bottom-up influence and partly under top-down control. We propose that the top-down control of attention is improved when the brain has access to a simplified model of attention itself. The brain therefore constructs a schematic model of the process of attention, the ‘attention schema’, in much the same way that it constructs a schematic model of the body, the ‘body schema’. The content of this internal model leads a brain to conclude that it has a subjective experience. One advantage of this theory is that it explains how awareness and attention can sometimes become dissociated; the brain’s internal models are never perfect, and sometimes a model becomes dissociated from the object being modelled. A second advantage of this theory is that it explains how we can be aware of both internal and external events. The brain can apply attention on many types of information including external sensory information and internal information about emotions and cognitive states. If awareness is a model of attention, then this model should pertain to the same domains of information to which attention pertains. A third advantage of this theory is that it provides testable predictions. If awareness is the internal model of attention, used to help control attention, then without awareness, attention should still be possible but should suffer deficits in control. In this article, we review the existing literature on the relationship between attention and awareness, and suggest that at least some of the predictions of the theory are borne out by the evidence.
Baars, B. J. (1988). A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge University Press.
Conscious experience is one of the most difficult and thorny problems in psychological science. Its study has been neglected for many years, either because it was thought to be too difficult, or because the relevant evidence was thought to be poor. Bernard Baars suggests a way to specify empirical constraints on a theory of consciousness by contrasting well-established conscious phenomena – such as stimulus representations known to be attended, perceptual, and informative – with closely comparable unconscious ones – such as stimulus representations known to be preperceptual, unattended, or habituated. Adducing data to show that consciousness is associated with a kind of global workplace in the nervous system, and that several brain structures are known to behave in accordance with his theory, Baars helps to clarify many difficult problems.
Carruthers, G. (2012). The case for the comparator model as an explanation of the sense of agency and its breakdowns. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 21(1), 30-45.
I compare Frith and colleagues’ influential comparator account of how the sense of agency is elicited to the multifactorial weighting model advocated by Synofzik and colleagues. I defend the comparator model from the common objection that the actual sensory consequences of action are not needed to elicit the sense of agency. I examine the comparator model’s ability to explain the performance of healthy subjects and those suffering from delusions of alien control on various self-attribution tasks. It transpires that the comparator model needs case-by-case adjustment to deal with problematic data. In response to this, the multifactorial weighting model of Synofzik and colleagues is introduced. Although this model is incomplete, it is more naturally constrained by the cases that are problematic for the comparator model. However, this model may be untestable. I conclude that currently the comparator model approach has stronger support than the multifactorial weighting model approach.
Wegner, D. M., Sparrow, B., & Winerman, L. (2004). Vicarious agency: experiencing control over the movements of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(6), 838-848.
Participants watched themselves in a mirror while another person behind them, hidden from view, extended hands forward on each side where participants’ hands would normally appear. The hands performed a series of movements. When participants could hear instructions previewing each movement, they reported an enhanced feeling of controlling the hands. Hearing instructions for the movements also enhanced skin conductance responses when a rubber band was snapped on the other’s wrist after the movements. Such vicarious agency was not felt when the instructions followed the movements, and participants’ own covet movement mimicry was not essential to the influence of previews on reported control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Moore, J. W. (2016). What is the sense of agency and why does it matter? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 1272.
Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences. In this article I summarise what we currently know about sense of agency; looking at how it is measured and what theories there are to explain it. I then explore some of the potential applications of this research, something that the sense of agency research field has been slow to identify and implement. This is a pressing concern given the increasing importance of ‘research impact’.
Chater, N. (2018). The mind is flat: the illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind. Penguin Books.
Nick Chater writes clearly, and his book takes the reader through the classic problems of completion in perception and cognition: visual illusions illustrate that we invent most of our world (that is true!); psychological games trick people into defending a political position opposed to the one they had supported 10 minutes earlier; and a few more. If I accept Chater’s argument, that we invent our interpretations of situations, I then have to say that the systematic nature of the outcome of a particular person’s decision-making reveals that there is something that guides or tilts the balance in favour of certain emotions and decisions. I would not extend this to automatic processing because the same evidence shows that we process aspects of a scene in the visual, auditory, memory and interoceptive channels simultaneously.
Miller, G. (2011, January 14). Why loneliness is hazardous to your health. Science, 331(6014), 138-140.
New research suggests that chronic loneliness can cause changes in the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems. In a steady stream of recent papers, social psychologists have identified several potentially unhealthy changes in the cardiovascular, immune, and nervous systems of chronically lonely people. The findings could help explain why epidemiological studies have often found that socially isolated people have shorter life spans and increased risk of a host of health problems, including infections, heart disease, and depression. The work also adds a new wrinkle, suggesting that it’s the subjective experience of loneliness that’s harmful, not the actual number of social contacts a person has. An impressive network of collaborations with researchers in other disciplines is now pioneering a new science of loneliness.
Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44(9), 1175-1184.
The present article examines the nature and function of human agency within the conceptual model of triadic reciprocal causation. In analyzing the operation of human agency in this interactional causal structure, social cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-reflective, and self-regulatory processes. The issues addressed concern the psychological mechanisms through which personal agency is exercised, the hierarchical structure of self-regulatory systems, eschewal of the dichotomous construal of self as agent and self as object, and the properties of a nondualistic but nonreductional conception of human agency. The relation of agent causality to the fundamental issues of freedom and determinism is also analyzed.
Pajares, F., Prestin, A., Chen, J., Nabi, R. L. (2009). Social cognitive theory and mass media effects. In R. L. Nabi & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), The Handbook of Media Processes and Effects (pp. 283-298). Sage.
Bandura’s social cognitive theory is one of the most highly influential and widely celebrated theories in the field of social psychology. Thus, it is no surprise that its influence has extended into multiple fields, including communication and especially the study of media effects. Still, despite the enthusiasm with which media scholars have embraced social cognitive theory, its integration into media research is still in its infancy. The purpose of this chapter is first, to lay out the historical background and basic tenets of social cognitive theory. We will then explore the ways in which media effects scholars have integrated it into their research and consider the ways in which scholars might build on the existing foundation of social cognitive theory-based media research to better illuminate media effects processes and outcomes.
Rankin‐Esquer, L. A., Burnett, C. K., Baucom, D. H., & Epstein, N. (1997). Autonomy and relatedness in marital functioning. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 23(2), 175-190.
The current investigation expands the focus of cognitive behavioral formulations of marriage by exploring the constructs of autonomy and relatedness in marriage. One hundred forty-one married couples matched to the 1990 U.S. census data on age, race, and income completed a number of self-report marital inventories including the Autonomy and Relatedness Inventory (Schaefel; Edgerton, & Burnett, 1991). Autonomy was measured by evaluating spouses ‘perceptions of the extent to which partners encouraged a sense of independence and individuality for the spouses. Relatedness was measured by evaluating spouses’ perceptions of the amount of closeness that partners provided. It was found that autonomy and relatedness were significantly positively correlated with each other as well as with marital adjustment for both males and females. It was found that for females, the provision of relatedness (as reported by their husbands) was significantly related to the standards that they held for the relationship. In addition, it was found that for females, the provision of relatedness (as reported by their husbands) was significantly related to the standards that husbands held for the relationship. However no significant relationships were found between husbands’ standards and relatedness (either as reported by wives or by husbands). It was concluded that it is appropriate to help couples think of autonomy and relatedness as being two important aspects of marriage that can exist together and are related to a satisfying marriage. Implications of the findings suggest that marital therapists could expand the conceptualization of marital therapy beyond being primarily relationship focused to include attention to individual needs of the spouses.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
According to the reviewer Barrett’s book is, in some respects, a revolutionary book that articulates a new way of thinking about emotions that counters what you learned in Psych 101 class and what many people still tend to take for granted. Barrett’s book offers an appealing blend of research from her affective science lab at Northeastern University with charming personal anecdotes about herself and family life. Yet, her faith in science leads her to oversell the current state (and applicability) of our neuroscientific knowledge about emotions, which becomes apparent as she wanders into the intricate domains of history, culture, and politics. The reviewed work is well worth reading because of its astute reporting on a wide array of research and her defense of a new perspective on emotions, construction, which affirms their deep, social importance. It departs from other, current notions that have garnered a lot of ink, like “emotional intelligence” and “emotion regulation,” in stressing that emotions are constructed, not taught, found, and restricted. Although Barrett emphasizes the social nature of emotions, there is room for more critical evaluation. Like the literatures on “emotional intelligence” and “emotion regulation,” both of which have become growth industries, Barrett’s notion of constructed emotions seems too ready to assume consensus; it overlooks the violence that the dominant culture exercises over minority cultures, failing to recognize their concepts and thereby silencing them. Readers are left to wonder how we might construe emotions in a way that worries about rewarding those who are already privileged in our society. If emotions are constructed and social, isn’t it incumbent upon us to seek to recognize and validate (and render granular) emotions that are associated with opposition and resistance?
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body’s reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life.
McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233-238.
Narrative identity is a person’s internalized and evolving life story, integrating the reconstructed past and imagined future to provide life with some degree of unity and purpose. In recent studies on narrative identity, researchers have paid a great deal of attention to (a) psychological adaptation and (b) development. Research into the relation between life stories and adaptation shows that narrators who find redemptive meanings in suffering and adversity, and who construct life stories that feature themes of personal agency and exploration, tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity. Researchers have tracked the development of narrative identity from its origins in conversations between parents and their young children to the articulation of sophisticated meaning-making strategies in the personal stories told in adolescence and the emerging adulthood years. Future researchers need to (a) disentangle causal relations between features of life stories and positive psychological adaptation and (b) explore further the role of broad cultural contexts in the development of narrative identity.
WHAT IS THE SELF THAT DEVELOPS
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology, Vol. 1. Macmillan.
This book provides a foundation to the principles of psychology. It draws upon the natural sciences, avoiding metaphysics, for the basis of its information. According to James, this book, assuming that thoughts and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowledge, thereupon contends that psychology, when it has ascertained the empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no farther as a natural science.
Harris, S. (2012). Free will. Free Press.
A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H. J., & Haynes, J. D. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11(5), 543- 545.
There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively ‘free’ decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
Koenig-Robert, R., & Pearson, J. (2019) Decoding the contents and strength of imagery before volitional engagement. Scientific Reports. 9(1), Article 3504.
Is it possible to predict the freely chosen content of voluntary imagery from prior neural signals? Here we show that the content and strength of future voluntary imagery can be decoded from activity patterns in visual and frontal areas well before participants engage in voluntary imagery. Participants freely chose which of two images to imagine. Using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) and multi-voxel pattern analysis, we decoded imagery content as far as 11 seconds before the voluntary decision, in visual, frontal and subcortical areas. Decoding in visual areas in addition to perception-imagery generalization suggested that predictive patterns correspond to visual representations. Importantly, activity patterns in the primary visual cortex (V1) from before the decision, predicted future imagery vividness. Our results suggest that the contents and strength of mental imagery are influenced by sensory-like neural representations that emerge spontaneously before volition.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.
More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky’s genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky’s storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person’s reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs–whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person’s brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person’s adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual’s group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours d’horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do…for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
Sherman, J. (2017). Neither ghost nor machine: The emergence and nature of selves. Columbia University Press.
In Neither Ghost nor Machine, Jeremy Sherman explains the emergence of selves and aims in an aimless universe. He distills for a general audience the theory developed by renowned neuroscientist Terrence Deacon, which extends the breakthrough constraint-based insight that inspired evolutionary, information, and self-organization theory. Emergent dynamics theory provides a testable hypothesis for how mattering arose from matter, function from physics, and means-to-ends behavior from cause-and-effect dynamics. It offers a physics of purpose, demonstrating that there is a strictly physical explanation for the emergence and nature of selves and aims, one that shows our existence in an otherwise inanimate universe is not absurd. Neither Ghost nor Machine bridges the gap between the hard and soft sciences, suggesting fresh and exciting solutions to philosophical mysteries that have perplexed humanity for millennia, from free will to causality to morality.
Busemeyer, J. R., & Bruza, P. D. (2012). Quantum models of cognition and decision. Cambridge University Press.
Much of our understanding of human thinking is based on probabilistic models. This innovative book by Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza argues that, actually, the underlying mathematical structures from quantum theory provide a much better account of human thinking than traditional models. They introduce the foundations for modelling probabilistic-dynamic systems using two aspects of quantum theory. The first, “contextuality,” is a way to understand interference effects found with inferences and decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The second, “quantum entanglement,” allows cognitive phenomena to be modelled in non-reductionist ways. Employing these principles drawn from quantum theory allows us to view human cognition and decision in a totally new light. Introducing the basic principles in an easy-to-follow way, this book does not assume a physics background or a quantum brain and comes complete with a tutorial and fully worked-out applications in important areas of cognition and decision.
Friston, K., Kilner, J., & Harrison, L. (2006). A free energy principle for the brain. Journal of Physiology- Paris, 100(1-3), 70-87.
By formulating Helmholtz’s ideas about perception, in terms of modern-day theories, one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts: using constructs from statistical physics, the problems of inferring the causes of sensory input and learning the causal structure of their generation can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests on Empirical Bayes and hierarchical models of how sensory input is caused. The use of hierarchical models enables the brain to construct prior expectations in a dynamic and context-sensitive fashion. This scheme provides a principled way to understand many aspects of cortical organisation and responses.
In this paper, we show these perceptual processes are just one aspect of emergent behaviours of systems that conform to a free energy principle. The free energy considered here measures the difference between the probability distribution of environmental quantities that act on the system and an arbitrary distribution encoded by its configuration. The system can minimise free energy by changing its configuration to affect the way it samples the environment or change the distribution it encodes. These changes correspond to action and perception respectively and lead to an adaptive exchange with the environment that is characteristic of biological systems. This treatment assumes that the system’s state and structure encode an implicit and probabilistic model of the environment. We will look at the models entailed by the brain and how minimisation of its free energy can explain its dynamics and structure.
Reker, G. T., & Wong, P. T. (2012). Personal meaning in life and psychosocial adaptation in the later years. In P. T. Wong (Ed.) The human quest for meaning: Theories, research, and applications (2nd ed., pp. 433-456).
The first edition of The Human Quest for Meaning was a major publication on the empirical research of meaning in life and its vital role in well-being, resilience, and psychotherapy. This new edition continues that quest and seeks to answer the questions, what is the meaning of life? How do we explain what constitutes meaningful relationships, work, and living? The answers, as the eminent scholars and practitioners who contributed to this text find, are neither simple nor straightforward. While seeking to clarify subjective vs. objective meaning in 21 new and 7 revised chapters, the authors also address the differences in cultural contexts, and identify 8 different sources of meaning, as well as at least 6 different stages in the process of the search for meaning. They also address different perspectives, including positive psychology, self-determination, integrative, narrative, and relational perspectives, to ensure that readers obtain the most thorough information possible. Mental health practitioners will find the numerous meaning-centered interventions, such as the PURE and ABCDE methods, highly useful in their own work with facilitating healing and personal growth in their clients. The Human Quest for Meaning represents a bold new vision for the future of meaning-oriented research and applications. No one seeking to truly understand the human condition should be without it.
Martela, F., & Steger, M. F. (2016). The three meanings of meaning in life: Distinguishing coherence, purpose, and significance. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 531-545.
Despite growing interest in meaning in life, many have voiced their concern over the conceptual refinement of the construct itself. Researchers seem to have two main ways to understand what meaning in life means: coherence and purpose, with a third way, significance, gaining increasing attention. Coherence means a sense of comprehensibility and one’s life making sense. Purpose means a sense of core goals, aims, and direction in life. Significance is about a sense of life’s inherent value and having a life worth living. Although some researchers have already noted this trichotomy, the present article provides the first comprehensible theoretical overview that aims to define and pinpoint the differences and connections between these three facets of meaning. By arguing that the time is ripe to move from indiscriminate understanding of meaning into looking at these three facets separately, the article points toward a new future for research on meaning in life.
Woźniak M. (2018). “I” and “Me”: The Self in the Context of Consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 1656. https://doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01656
James (1890) distinguished two understandings of the self, the self as “Me” and the self as “I”. This distinction has recently regained popularity in cognitive science, especially in the context of experimental studies on the underpinnings of the phenomenal self. The goal of this paper is to take a step back from cognitive science and attempt to precisely distinguish between “Me” and “I” in the context of consciousness. This distinction was originally based on the idea that the former (“Me”) corresponds to the self as an object of experience (self as object), while the latter (“I”) reflects the self as a subject of experience (self as subject). I will argue that in most of the cases (arguably all) this distinction maps onto the distinction between the phenomenal self (reflecting self-related content of consciousness) and the metaphysical self (representing the problem of subjectivity of all conscious experience), and as such these two issues should be investigated separately using fundamentally different methodologies. Moreover, by referring to Metzinger’s (2018) theory of phenomenal self-models, I will argue that what is usually investigated as the phenomenal-“I” [following understanding of self-as-subject introduced by Wittgenstein (1958)] can be interpreted as object, rather than subject of experience, and as such can be understood as an element of the hierarchical structure of the phenomenal self-model. This understanding relates to recent predictive coding and free energy theories of the self and bodily self discussed in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. Vol. 1. A theory of personality. Vol. 2. Clinical diagnosis and psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
“The first volume expounded a new theory of personality… illustrated the theory’s use in a clinical setting involving both diagnosis and therapy… a repertory of diagnostic constructs for the clinician’s daily use was developed… (the Rep test)… . The second volume is concerned with the implications of the psychology of personal constructs in the field of clinical practice… here we have striven for extensive coverage of cook-book details… the role of the psychotherapist and some of his stand-by techniques, the cataloguing of experience and activity data, and a schedule of diagnostic procedures.”
Kuhl, J. (1981). Motivational and functional helplessness: The moderating effect of state versus action orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(1), 155-170.
Presents a 3-factor theory of learned helplessness that differs from M. E. Seligman’s theory in placing the emphasis on functional rather than motivational helplessness. Generalized performance decrements following exposure to uncontrollable results are attributed to deteriorated cognitive functioning caused by an increase of state-oriented cognitions (functional helplessness). Motivational helplessness (i.e., performance decrements caused by motivational deficits that are attributable to a belief in uncontrollability) is considered a special case of the 3-factor theory. Two experiments (36 undergraduates) demonstrated that Ss did not generalize reduced perception of controllability from training to test task. Ss exposed to uncontrollable failure in training nevertheless showed increased or decreased performance compared to a control group. Those performance effects could be explained on the basis of a personal disposition for and situational induction of state vs action orientation. It is concluded that a decision concerning the type of therapy for helplessness–depression should not be made until it is known whether motivational or functional helplessness is the primary problem. Although an attributional training may reverse motivational helplessness, it may have adverse effects when applied to depressives characterized by functional helplessness.
Rotter, J. B. (1975). Some problems and misconceptions related to the construct of internal versus external control of reinforcement. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(1), 56-67.
Research involving perceived internal vs external control of reinforcement as a personality variable has been expanding at a rapid rate. It seems clear that for some investigators there are problems associated with understanding the conceptualization of this construct as well as understanding the nature and limitations of methods of measurement. This article discusses in detail (a) the place of this construct within the framework of social learning theory, (b) misconceptions and problems of a theoretical nature, and (c) misuses and limitations associated with measurement. Problems of generality-specificity and unidimensionality-multidimensionality are discussed as well as the logic of predictions from test scores.
Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63-78.
Attempts to organize, summarize, or explain one’s own behavior in a particular domain result in the formation of cognitive structures about the self or self-schemata. Self-schemata are cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of the self-related information contained in an individual’s social experience. The role of schemata in processing information about the self was examined in 2 experiments by linking self-schemata to a number of specific empirical referents. In Exp I, 48 female undergraduates either with schemata in a particular domain or without schemata were selected using the Adjective Check List, and their performance on a variety of cognitive tasks was compared. In Exp II, the selective influence of self-schemata on interpreting information about one’s own behavior was investigated in 47 Ss. Results of both experiments indicate that self-schemata facilitate the processing of information about the self, contain easily retrievable behavioral evidence, provide a basis for the confident self-prediction of behavior on schema-related dimensions, and make individuals resistant to counterschematic information. The relationship of self-schemata to cross-situational consistency in behavior and the implications of self-schemata for attribution theory are discussed.
Greenwald, A. G., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1984). The self. In R. S. Wyer, R.S. & T. K. Srull. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Cognition (pp. 129-178). Erlbaum.
Reviewing recent social psychological literature on the self, Greenwald and Pratkanis (1984) concluded that the (adult) self is “a complex, person-specific, central, attitudinal schema.” In this description, the self is characterized as complex because it incorporates a great variety of knowledge; as person-specific because it is an idiosyncratic knowledge structure; as central because it is a major (perhaps the major) structure of personality; as attitudinal because it is invested with the affect that is associated with one’s sense of self-worth; and, most importantly, the self is identified as a schema because it is an organized structure of knowledge.
Harris, M. A., Brett, C. E., Johnson, W., & Deary, I. J. (2016). Personality stability from age 14 to age 77 years. Psychology and Aging, 31(8), 862-874.
There is evidence for differential stability in personality trait differences, even over decades. The authors used data from a sample of the Scottish Mental Survey, 1947 to study personality stability from childhood to older age. The 6-Day Sample (N = 1,208) were rated on six personality characteristics by their teachers at around age 14. In 2012, the authors traced as many of these participants as possible and invited them to take part in a follow-up study. Those who agreed (N = 174) completed a questionnaire booklet at age 77 years, which included rating themselves and asking someone who knew them well to rate them on the same 6 characteristics on which they were rated in adolescence. Each set of 6 ratings was reduced to the same single underlying factor, denoted dependability, a trait comparable to conscientiousness. Participants’ and others’ older-age personality characteristic ratings were moderately correlated with each other, and with other measures of personality and wellbeing, but correlations suggested no significant stability of any of the 6 characteristics or their underlying factor, dependability, over the 63-year interval. However, a more complex model, controlling rater effects, indicated significant 63-year stability of 1 personality characteristic, Stability of Moods, and near-significant stability of another, Conscientiousness. Results suggest that lifelong differential stability of personality is generally quite low, but that some aspects of personality in older age may relate to personality in childhood.
Karwowski, M. (2016). The dynamics of creative self-concept: Changes and reciprocal relations between creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity. Creativity Research Journal, 28(1), 99-104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2016.1125254
Although creative self-concept constructs are intensively studied in the creativity literature, little is known about the dynamics of their changes during the life span and the relationships between different aspects of the creative self-concept. Using a longitudinal and a cross sequential design, this investigation aimed to test changes in two important creative self concept constructs—creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity—over short (6 months) and longer (20 months) periods of time, while simultaneously examining reciprocal relationships between them. The results showed the short-term stability of both constructs, but they also revealed significant change over the longer period―specifically, a growth of creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity in people from late adolescence to early adulthood and a drop among older participants. Reciprocal longitudinal relationships between creative self-efficacy and creative personal identity were also demonstrated, with creative self efficacy being a more stable predictor of creative personal identity than the reverse.
Rubianes, M., Muñoz, F., Casado, P., Hernández‐Gutiérrez, D., Jiménez‐Ortega, L., Fondevila, S., … & Martín‐Loeches, M. (2020). Am I the same person across my life span? An event‐related brain potentials study of the temporal perspective in self‐identity. Psychophysiology, 58(1). Article e13692.
While self‐identity recognition has been largely explored, less is known on how self‐identity changes as a function of time. The present work aims to explore the influence of the temporal perspective on self‐identity by studying event‐related brain potentials (ERP) associated with face processing. To this purpose, participants had to perform a recognition task in two blocks with different task demands: (i) identity recognition (self, close‐friend, unknown), and (ii) life stage recognition (adulthood ‐current‐, adolescence, and childhood). The results showed that the N170 component was sensitive to changes in the global face configuration when comparing adulthood with other life stages. The N250 was the earliest neural marker discriminating self from other identities and may be related to a preferential deployment of attentional resources to recognize own face. The P3 was a robust index of self‐specificity, reflecting stimulus categorization and presumably adding an emotional value. The results of interest emerged for the subsequent late positive complex (LPC). The larger amplitude for the LPC to the self‐face was probably associated with further personal significance. The LPC, therefore, was able to distinguish the continuity of the self over time (i.e., between current self and past selves). Likewise, this component also could discriminate, at each life stage, the self‐identity from other identities (e.g., between past self and past close‐friend). This would confirm a remarkable role of the LPC reflecting higher self‐relevance processes. Taken together, the neural representation of oneself (i.e., “I am myself”) seems to be stable and also updated across time. While extant studies extensively address the neural signs of the diachronic component of self‐identity (self vs. others), the synchronic component (self‐identity across time) is overlooked. This study provides new evidence about specific neural correlates to self‐identity indicating preferential and stable processing compared to other identities, being modulated across life stages. These findings extend current knowledge on the evolution of the mental representation of the self.
Nurius, P. S. (1989). The self-concept: A social cognitive update. Social Casework, 70(5), 285-294.
The author discusses deficits inherent in traditional views of the self-concept and discusses recent findings that alter earlier views of this concept. An alternative formulation of the self-concept is introduced and defined, and applications for social work practice are discussed.
Levinson, D. J. (1978). Eras: The anatomy of the life cycle. Psychiatric Opinions, 15(9), 39-48.
Presents a developmental scheme of the human life cycle, especially for males, including the following overlapping stages: (a) preadulthood, from birth to 22 yrs; (b) early adulthood, from 17 to 45; (c) middle adulthood, from 40 to 65; (d) late adulthood, from 60 to 85; and (e) late, late adulthood, from 80 on. The last stage is tentative and little defined, and the age ranges are averages for a physically healthy population. The tasks, roles, problems, and rewards of each stage and the transition periods are described, with greatest detail being given to the early- and middle-adult stages.
Linville, P. W. (1985). Self-complexity and affective extremity: Don’t put all your eggs in one cognitive basket. Social Cognition, 3(1), 94-120.
This research develops and tests a model relating complexity of self-representation to affective and evaluative responses. The basic hypothesis is that the less complex a person’s cognitive representation of the self, the more extreme will be the person’s swings in affect and self-appraisal. Experiment 1 showed that those lower in self-complexity experienced greater swings in affect and self-appraisal following a failure or success experience. Experiment 2 showed that those lower in self-complexity experienced greater variability in affect over a 2-week period. The results are discussed, first, in terms of self-complexity as a buffer against the negative effects of stressful life events, particularly depression; and, second, in terms of the thought patterns of depressed persons. The results reported here suggest that level of self-complexity may provide a promising cognitive marker for vulnerability to depression.
Koch, C. (2012). Consciousness: Confessions of a romantic reductionist. MIT Press.
“What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book–part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation–describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest–his instinctual (if ‘romantic’) belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990’s and 2000’s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a ‘fringy’ subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life’s work–to uncover the roots of consciousness.
For a good overview of integrated information theory that is regularly updated: Integrated information theory. (2015, June 25). In Scholarpedia. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Integrated_information_theory
Integrated information theory (IIT) attempts to identify the essential properties of consciousness (axioms) and, from there, infers the properties of physical systems that can account for it (postulates). Based on the postulates, it permits in principle to derive, for any particular system of elements in a state, whether it has consciousness, how much, and which particular experience it is having. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation for empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations.