When people are made to feel helpless and with less agency by being stymied by an unsolvable puzzle, the size of their early readiness potentials decreases. And when people are prompted to believe less in free will, the same occurs, with less belief predicting a greater blunting of the wave (without changing the size of the subsequent wave in the motor cortex itself)—people seem to not be trying as hard, focusing as hard on the task.[5]
