Impact of personalizing experiences of manipulation outside of awareness on autonomy.

Abstract

Previous studies examining the relationship between beliefs about manipulation of behavior outside of awareness and free will reveal a weak association between both constructs. That is, people reconcile the two in such a way that there is room for free will despite mechanisms determining their behavior. The present study further explores the association between judgments of manipulation outside of awareness and free will, along with other judgments (ultimate control, personal experience, concern) in real-world scenarios where manipulation is expected to occur. The aim was to examine whether the relationship between manipulation outside of awareness and free will could be amplified if personalizing the experiences of the real-world examples was emphasized. To this end, Studies 1a (N = 111) and 1b (N = 106; replication) emphasized that people could have been manipulated, and in Studies 2a (N = 106) and 2b (N = 104; replication) emphasized that they had actually been manipulated. The findings revealed that when the degree of personalization increased, so did the strength of the negative correlation between judgments of manipulation without awareness and free will. A meta-analysis of all studies (8 studies, N = 1,230) that examined this relationship was conducted to locate where (by context, by individual scenario) the relationship between manipulation outside of awareness and free will was strongest. The findings reveal that the strongest associations were found in scenarios that are most prototypically associated with the unconscious (e.g., sleep research, subliminal priming, subliminal advertising, hypnotherapy).

Folk beliefs about where manipulation outside of awareness occurs, and how much awareness and free choice is still maintained.

“…By encouraging a more personalized perspective of the various genuine scenarios that have been volunteered by people (Osman, 2020), the overall relationship between the two (likelihood of manipulation and level of free choice) is strengthened. However, the findings also show that the relationship is still unstable in spite of the experimental instructional manipulations (Osman & Bechlivanidis, 2022). The relationship is stronger in some prototypical contexts commonly associated with unconscious processes being targeted (e.g., sleep research, subliminal priming, subliminal advertising, hypnotherapy).…”

“…A solution would be to associate certain contexts or scenarios with mechanisms that override our conscious deliberative faculties (e.g., unconscious priming) and assume that in such cases we cannot confidently believe the choices we make to be (exclusively) our own. However, the finding from several studies examining people’s folk beliefs (Osman, 2020; Osman & Bechlivanidis, 2021, 2022) is that the relationship between the judged level of manipulation and the level of free choice is weak. The studies are based on people’s appraisals of everyday situations in which choices are made (e.g., electoral voting, consumer choices, interactions on social media), as generated by other people.…”

“…Second, as an extension of prior research (Osman, 2020; Osman & Bechlivanidis, 2021, 2022), the present study asks participants to give ratings on the examples they provide themselves. While this means that there is no possibility of controlling what is generated, only the methods by which judgments are made, the possibility of patterns emerging would provide a valuable insight because of the high number of factors outside of experimental control.…”