The Illusion of Free Will (and how to make better decisions)

We think we're making our own choices, but so much around us is designed to nudge what we decide. So do we really have free will? Think about something as simple as ordering food online. One delivery option is already selected, the app suggests a tip, and the button it wants you to press is the easiest one to find. None of that forces you to choose anything, but it can still change what you end up doing. Behavioural scientists call this choice architecture. And even when you know exactly what you want to do, that does not necessarily mean you are going to do it. You can genuinely want to read more, spend less time on your phone, save money, exercise, or finally do the thing you have been putting off, and somehow the intention still disappears. We will look at why that happens, why simply reminding yourself is often not enough, and the ways people can make it harder for their future selves to abandon a decision they have already made. Then we get to the decisions that involve other people, because sometimes everybody can be making a perfectly reasonable choice and you can still end up with a result that is worse for everyone. Using behavioural science, game theory, audience votes and a few short games, Dr. Fei Song will look at why we make the choices we do, what changes when our choices depend on somebody else, and whether we have as much control over our decisions as we think we do. Dr. Fei Song is a Professor of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behaviour at Toronto Metropolitan University, where her research looks at how people make decisions, particularly when questions of cooperation, competition, trust, fairness and incentives are involved. Most recently, she co-authored a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looking at collective-action problems across 34 countries. Her work draws from behavioural economics and social psychology to understand why we make the choices we do, both alone and when our decisions depend on other people.