The Illusion of Time: Testing the Relationship Between Free Will and Temporal Horizons

Belief in free will, operationalized as the ability to freely choose one’s own actions and determine one’s own outcomes, is the embodiment of energy and exhaustion. Belief in free will can energize us, instilling the notion that we are active agents in our social world. Disbelief in free will can exhaust us by dampening our experience of action control and highlighting the constraints in our lives. The subjective experience of time, identified as future time perspective by psychologists, is another personification of energy and exhaustion. Time can feel expansive, energizing us to pursue opportunities. Time can feel limited as if we are exhausting one of the most valuable resources in our lives. Elizabeth Seto, assistant professor of psychology, will look at the current research that examines the bidirectional relationship and dynamic interplay between belief in free will and perceptions of time.