Superstitious conditioning shapes the illusory experience of free will under causal determinism.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience January 1, 2026 Cooper Kansala, Emre Cicek, Vanessa B Nkansah-Okoree et al.
The experience of free will is a conditioned illusion—a misattribution of causality reinforced through operant learning. Decisions and actions are determined, but the temporal contiguity of premotor and motor activations gives rise to superstitious conditioning, shaping an experience of and belief in free will compatible with determinism. Sustained by dopaminergic circuits and reinforced by sensorimotor feedback loops, this framework situates free will as an experiential phenomenon rooted in the functional neuroanatomy of learning. Implications for medicine, ethics, and law are discussed, along with conditions under which the experience may be disrupted or restructured.