Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

by Robert M. Sapolsky

Tell subjects there’s been a computer glitch so that they can’t enter their guess; that’s okay, they’re told, we’ll show you the answer and you can just tell us whether you were right. In other words, an opportunity to cheat. Throw in enough of those there-goes-that-computer-glitch-again opportunities, and you can tell if someone starts cheating—their success rate averages above 50 percent. What happens in the brains of cheaters when temptation arises? Massive activation of the PFC, the neural equivalent of the person wrestling with whether to cheat.[16] And then for the profound additional finding. What about the people who never cheated—how do they do it? Maybe their astonishingly strong PFC pins Satan to the mat each time. Major willpower. But that’s not what happens. In those folks, the PFC doesn’t stir. At some point after “don’t pee in your pants” no longer required the PFC to flex its muscles, an equivalent happened in such individuals, generating an automatic “I don’t cheat.” As framed by Greene, rather than withstanding the siren call of sin thanks to “will,” this instead represents a state of “grace.” Doing the right thing isn’t the harder thing.