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David Wegner And Wheatley Experiment Essay

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When two human beings carry out an identical action together, each of them often comes to think that the other person could be the source of the movement, the event. In this way, unpredictability and variability are introduced in their own intentions and actions. David Wegner and Thalia Wheatley in 1999 carry out an experiment in which they are studying exactly how human beings are convinced that they have had a certain effect, despite the fact that they have not done anything. The experiment shows how much we can be wrong about what our action is and what it is not.
The experiment involves one student and one experimentator. The student who participates in the experiment will sit on the same table as the experimenter. On the table there is a …show more content…

The object is to move objects to circles on the computer screen. There are 50 objects on the screen in the book I Spy. Wegner and Wheatley explain to the student that the goal of the experiment is to explore the other feelings and intentions of the act and how they appear. The student is asked to estimate how strongly he feels free will when choosing a stopping place, and it is unknown to him that the experimenter 'moves' the mouse to a particular object. The rule is that the student and the experimenter must stop moving the mouse every 30 seconds and need to evaluate each stop they have made. So each of them has to evaluate what they had intended to stop the mouse. Evaluation is performed on 14-centimeters long, placed in the wings and at the ends of which there is the inscription "Let me do it" and the other side "I'm going to stop." The participant was told to hear the music and words through the headphones during experiment. This will appear in 30 seconds interval after which the music stops. It was said that each of them would listen to two different tracks on the tape, but they would hear the music

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