Sometimes when I ask myself why I’ve made a certain choice, I realise  I don’t actually know. To what extent we are ruled by things we aren’t  conscious of?

Why did you buy your car? Why did you fall in love  with your partner? When we start to examine the basis of our life  choices, whether they are important or fairly simple ones, we might come  to the realisation that we don’t have much of a clue. In fact, we might  even wonder whether we really know our own mind, and what goes on in it  outside of our conscious awareness.

Luckily, psychological  science gives us important and perhaps surprising insights. One of the  most important findings comes from psychologist Benjamin Libet in the  1980s. He devised an experiment which was deceptively simple, but has  created an enormous amount of debate ever since.

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