Are persons who are impulsive less likely to use their free will?

There are a few milliseconds that are really essential between the time when you become consciously aware of a
plan to act and the time when you actually carry out that plan. Some researchers believe that it is only within
this short window that we are able to make decisions according to our own free will. It presents us with the
opportunity to make a choice intentionally, leading us to believe that we are not only the prisoners of our
instincts.

A research that was conducted and published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness a year ago
discovered that persons who are impulsive had a narrower window of time between their knowledge of an
upcoming action and the action itself. This was reported in the New Scientist. Researchers from the Université
Libre de Bruxelles, Emilie Caspar and Axel Cleeremans, requested 72 individuals to take out questionnaires so
that they could evaluate the participants' levels of impulsivity. The participants were then instructed to monitor a
dot on a computer screen that was moving through the different places of a clock and to hit a key whenever they
felt the need to do so. This would cause the dot to cease moving. They were cautioned against making any
advance plans for their movements.

People wore electrode caps to monitor their brain activity, and as was to be predicted, there was a spike in
neural activity (known as "the ready potential") before participants were consciously aware of their intention to
press the key. This was the case in all of the participants. People who are impulsive have a substantially shorter
amount of time between when the brain activity spike occurs and when they become cognizant of it.

It is not entirely agreed upon at this point whether or not the readiness potential conclusively demonstrates that
the brain is ready to take action. However, the existence of free will could be called into question by the
evidence of this behavior, according to a subset of cognitive scientists.

According to Cleeremans, according to Quartz, "On one interpretation, we're not free." "If you believe that brain
states are driving what you do, then it lessens the feeling that we have of being able to freely choose the
activities that we carry out," he said. "If you think that brain states are driving what you do, then it diminishes
the sense that we have of being able to Because you are determined by the activity of your brain, and the activity
of your brain is determined by the experiences you've lived, you are not free to do whatever you desire. This is
because the activity of your brain is influenced by the experiences you've experienced.

According to Cleereman, persons who are impulsive have "less of a chance to modify the path of the unfolding
action" than the rest of us do. This conclusion is based on the research that Cleereman conducted.

According to Cleeremans, however, that conclusion is founded on a very particular definition of free will, which
runs counter to a significant portion of what we know about the relationship between brain activity and mental
life. He continues:

The human brain is not an electronic computer. It is a malleable organ in which everything you learn or
experience is stored in some kind for future reference. And your brain has free will, which is not the freedom to
do whatever you want, but rather the power to carry out sensible decisions that are founded on experiences. It's
more like a constrained kind of free choice."
To put it another way, it's possible that we don't have the kind of free will that allows us to constantly make
conscious, logical choices while ignoring the ways in which our experiences mold our subconscious. However,
it's possible that our own experiences of emotion, rather than rational thought, are what determines our free will.

According to Joshua Knobe, a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University, there is no
definitive right or wrong solution to this problem. This was said in an interview with Quartz.

"There is a perspective of the self that may be found in some thinkers, dating all the way back to Aristotle, that
asserts that who you truly are is your ability for rational thought. "And the only time you are your genuine self is
when you are using that ability and meditating on the arguments for and against whatever it is that you are
doing," he continues. On the other hand, logic isn't always the most important aspect of free will.

For instance, if someone is so driven by rage that they behave irrationally, should we hold them morally
accountable for their acts, or does this indicate that their emotional impulses took precedence over their free
will? Is it still a rejection of a person's actual identity and free choice if they do an act of kindness because they
are so overtaken with compassion that they feel compelled to help others?
According to Knobe, in order to have free will, a person must behave in a manner that is a reflection of who
they are. "When seen from that vantage point, it's possible that you were acting on impulse; but, that impulse
was maybe the period when you felt the most free. According to Knobe, "it better reflects who you actually are
as a person."

Many people have the impression that the notion of free will can be understood easily, however this is not the
case. But if being impulsive is fundamental to your sense of self, then giving in to those urges could be an
indication that you have free will in and of yourself.
The following link provides more information on this topic: https://qz.com/596391/do-impulsive-people-have-
less-free-will/