Daniel Wegner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Merton Wegner (born June 28, 1948 in Calgary , Alberta, Canada; † July 5, 2013 in Massachusetts , USA) was an American psychologist , professor of psychology at Harvard University and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He conducted research in the field of experimental psychology on the subjects of mental control and free will . He developed the construct of transactive memory and the ironic process theory . In his publications he postulated that the human sense of free will is an illusion.

Life

Wegner was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He enrolled in physics at Michigan State University , but switched to psychology.

After receiving his PhD in 1974, he taught at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas for 16 years and became a full professor in 1985. From 1990 to 2000 he researched and taught at the University of Virginia . He then moved to the faculty at Harvard University.

Wegner died on July 5, 2013, in Massachusetts, USA, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Awards

In 2011 Wegner received the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science , the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. In 2012 he received the Donald T. Campbell Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). In addition, shortly after Wegner's death in 2013, SPSP announced that the annual prize for theoretical innovation will be referred to as the Daniel M. Wegner Prize for theoretical innovation to honor his innovative work.

research

Ironic process theory

Wegner and colleagues conducted a series of experiments in which people tried to suppress thoughts by, for example, trying not to think about a white bear. This work showed that trying not to think about a topic leads to the paradoxical effect of increasing the rate of intrusive thoughts about the topic. Wegner coined the term 'ironic mental process' for this effect. The effect contributes to various psychological challenges and disorders. Smokers who try not to think about cigarettes find it more difficult to give up. People who suppress thoughts that can provoke a fear response often make those thoughts more intrusive. Wegner found that the ironic effect is stronger when people are stressed or depressed.

The illusion of free will

Wegner conducted a series of experiments in which people experience an illusion of control and the feeling that their will is shaping events that are actually determined by someone else. He argued that the ease with which this illusion could be created shows that the everyday feeling of free will is an illusion, and that this illusion of mental control is 'the mind's best trick'. He postulated that while people may feel that free will governs their behavior, in reality both behavior and will are the product of other, unconscious mental processes. Wegner's research agrees with Benjamin Libet's earlier findings about the readiness potential of the cerebral cortex. Wegner concluded that 'brain events cause intention and action, while conscious intention itself may not produce action'.

Apparent cognitive control

Wegner defined free will as a function of priority (the thought must come before the action), consistency (the thought must match the action), and exclusivity (the thought cannot be associated with other causes). Wegner argued that the feeling of intention 'after the fact' is attributed to these three principles:

  • Consistency . The principle of consistency says that when the content of one's thoughts is relevant to one's actions, a feeling of control arises.
  • Exclusivity . The exclusivity principle states that one must not believe that there is outside influence or that one has the feeling that an action was intentional.
  • Priority . Finally, the principle of priority requires that the thought occur immediately before the act of creating the illusion of free will.

Wegner did not deny that conscious thinking can induce action, but emphasized that any connection between conscious thinking and action should be determined through scientific research and not through unreliable introspection and feelings.

Transactive memory

In 1985 Wegner proposed the concept of transactive memory . A transactive storage system is a system that groups of people use to jointly encode, store and access knowledge. Transactive memory describes not only the coordination of memory contents in close relationships, but also in teams, larger groups and organizations. These developed a 'group mind', a storage system that is more complex and possibly more effective than that of individuals.

According to Wegner, a transactive memory system consists of the knowledge that is stored in the memory of each individual, combined with a meta memory that contains information on the specialist areas of the various teammates. Just as the individual's meta-memory enables them to know what information is available for retrieval, the transactive storage system provides group members with information about the knowledge they can access as a team. The group members learn who are knowledge experts and how they can access specialist knowledge through communication processes. In this way, a transactive storage system can provide group members with more and better knowledge than is available to each individual alone.

Publications

Author

  • Wegner, DM, & Vallacher, RR (1977). Implicit psychology: An introduction to social cognition . New York: Oxford University Press. Japanese translation by Sogensha, 1988.
  • Vallacher, RR & Wegner, DM (1985). A theory of action identification . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Wegner, DM (1989). White bears and other unwanted thoughts: Suppression, obsession, and the psychology of mental control . New York: Viking / Penguin. German translation by Ernst Kabel Verlag, 1992. 1994 Edition, New York: Guilford Press.
  • Daniel Merton Wegner: The Illusion of Conscious Will . MIT Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-262-23222-7 .
  • Schacter, DS, Gilbert, DT, & Wegner, DM (2011). Psychology: 2nd Edition . New York: Worth.
  • Wegner, DM, & Gray, K. (2016). The mind club: Who thinks, what feels, and why it matters . New York: Viking.

editor

  • Wegner, DM, & Vallacher, RR (Eds.). (1980). The self in social psychology . New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Wegner, DM, & Pennebaker, JW (Eds.) (1993). Handbook of Mental Control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Susan J. Blackmore: Daniel Wegner . In: Conversations on consciousness . Oxford University Press, November 15, 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-280622-2 , pp. 245-257 (accessed March 21, 2011).
  2. ^ "More than good intentions: Holding fast to faith in free will," The New York Times December 31, 2002.
  3. ^ Uni Freiburg (web archive) , Institute of Psychology, University of Freiburg
  4. ^ Bryan Marquard: Daniel M. Wegner, 65; Harvard social psychologist unraveled mysteries of thought and memory . In: The Boston Globe . July 12, 2013. Accessed January 4, 2016: “Dr. Wegner ... died last Friday in his Winchester home of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Hey what 65. "
  5. ^ Trinity University - Daniel Wegner . Accessed July 31, 2020.
  6. ^ Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR III, White TL. Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1987; 53: 5-13
  7. ^ Roy F. Baumeister, Brad J. Bushman: Social Psychology and Human Nature . Cengage Learning, October 16, 2009, ISBN 978-0-495-60133-3 , p. 135 (accessed March 21, 2011).
  8. ^ Daniel L. Schacter: Searching for memory: the brain, the mind, and the past . Basic Books, 1996, ISBN 978-0-465-07552-2 , p. 340 (accessed March 21, 2011).
  9. ↑ James W. Pennebaker: Opening up: the healing power of expressing emotions . Guilford Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1-57230-238-9 , pp.  59 - (Accessed March 21, 2011).
  10. ↑ Thomas needle Hoffer: Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings . John Wiley and Sons, June 11, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-9019-0 , p. 236, (accessed March 21, 2011).
  11. ^ A b Daniel M. Wegner: The mind's best trick: how we experience conscious will Archived from the original on May 22, 2013. In: Trends in Cognitive Sciences . 7, No. 2, 2003, pp. 65-69. doi : 10.1016 / s1364-6613 (03) 00002-0 . PMID 12584024 .
  12. ↑ John O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas J. O'Shaughnessy: The Undermining of Beliefs in the Autonomy and Rationality of Consumers . Routledge, December 10, 2007, ISBN 978-0-415-77323-2 , p. 3 (accessed March 21, 2011).
  13. ↑ a b D.M. Wegner, T. Wheatley: Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will . In: American Psychologist . 54, No. 7, 1999, pp. 480-492. doi : 10.1037 / 0003-066x.54.7.480 . PMID 10424155 .
  14. ^ DM Wegner, T. Wheatley: Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will . In: American Psychologist . 54, No. 7, 1999, pp. 480-492. doi : 10.1037 / 0003-066x.54.7.480 . PMID 10424155 .
  15. ↑ a b Wegner, DM, Giuliano, T., & Hertel, P. (1985). Cognitive interdependence in close relationships. In WJ Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships (pp. 253-276). New York: Springer-Verlag .
  16. ^ DM Wegner: A computer network model of human transactive memory . In: Social Cognition . 13, No. 3, 1995, pp. 319-339. doi : 10.1521 / soco.1995.13.3.319 .
  17. ↑ Wegner, DM (1986). Transactive memory: A contemporary analysis of the group mind. In B.Mullen & GR Goethals (Eds.), Theories of group behavior (pp. 185–205). New York: Springer-Verlag
  18. ^ A critical article by Wegner in Behavioral and Brain Sciences , vol. 27, pp. 649-692, 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Wegner, Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wegner, Daniel Merton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychologist, described free will as an illusion
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Calgary , Alberta, Canada
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 2013
Place of death Massachusetts , USA