Topic · Free Will and Agency
Most cited papers in Free Will and Agency
What are the most cited papers in Free Will and Agency?
The most cited paper in Free Will and Agency is "Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see" (Matthew Botvinick, Jonathan A. Cohen, 1998), with 4,504 citations. Next come "Libertarian Paternalism" (1,873) and "Voluntary action and conscious awareness" (1,592).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 377 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see Matthew Botvinick, Jonathan A. Cohen · Nature | 19 Feb 1998 | 4,504 |
| 2 | Libertarian Paternalism Richard H. Thaler, Cass Robert Sunstein · American Economic Review | Apr 2003 | 1,873 |
| 3 | Voluntary action and conscious awareness Patrick Haggard, Sam L. Clark, Jeri Kalogeras · Nature Neuroscience | 18 Mar 2002 | 1,592 |
| 4 | Moral Exclusion and Injustice: An Introduction Susan V. Opotow · Journal of Social Issues | Apr 1990 | 1,318 |
| 5 | Tonic dopamine: opportunity costs and the control of response vigor Yael Niv, Nathaniel D. Daw, Daphna Joel et al. · Psychopharmacology | 9 Oct 2006 | 1,222 |
| 6 | Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: a PET investigation of agency Perrine Marie Ruby, Jean Decety · Nature Neuroscience | May 2001 | 1,186 |
| 7 | Human volition: towards a neuroscience of will Patrick Haggard · Nature reviews. Neuroscience | 20 Nov 2008 | 1,164 |
| 8 | Sense of agency in the human brain Patrick Haggard · Nature reviews. Neuroscience | 2 Mar 2017 | 1,147 |
| 9 | Beyond the comparator model: A multifactorial two-step account of agency Matthis Synofzik, Gottfried Vosgerau, Albert Newen · Consciousness and Cognition | 7 May 2007 | 1,072 |
| 10 | Insight and Responsibility Fred H. Frankel, Erik Homburger Erikson · Psychosomatic Medicine | May 1965 | 1,067 |
| 11 | Culpable control and the psychology of blame. Mark D. Alicke · Psychological Bulletin | 2000 | 1,008 |
| 12 | Shared representations between self and other: a social cognitive neuroscience view Jean Decety, Jessica A. Sommerville · Trends in Cognitive Sciences | Dec 2003 | 1,006 |
| 13 | Experiencing Oneself vs Another Person as Being the Cause of an Action: The Neural Correlates of the Experience of Agency C. Farrer, Chris Frith · NeuroImage | Mar 2002 | 965 |
| 14 | Willed action and the prefrontal cortex in man: a study with PET Chris Frith, Karl John Friston, Peter Francis Liddle et al. · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences | 22 Jun 1991 | 912 |
| 15 | Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust? Alvin I. Goldman · Philosophy and Phenomenological Research | Jul 2001 | 863 |
| 16 | The impossibility of moral responsibility Galen Strawson · Philosophical Studies | Aug 1994 | 816 |
| 17 | Objectivity and Truth: You'd Better Believe It Ronald M. Dworkin · Philosophy & Public Affairs | Apr 1996 | 810 |
| 18 | Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. Daniel M. Wegner, Thalia P. Wheatley · American Psychologist | 1999 | 798 |
| 19 | Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos Jonathan Wolff · Philosophy & Public Affairs | Apr 1998 | 774 |
| 20 | Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study C. Farrer, Nicolás Franck, N. Georgieff et al. · NeuroImage | Feb 2003 | 750 |
| 21 | The Possibility of Practical Reason J. David Velleman · Ethics | Jul 1996 | 737 |
| 22 | The Strike of the Demon: On Fitting Pro‐attitudes and Value Włodek Rabinowicz, Toni Rønnow‐Rasmussen · Ethics | Apr 2004 | 724 |
| 23 | Moving a Rubber Hand that Feels Like Your Own: A Dissociation of Ownership and Agency Andreas Kalckert, H. Henrik Ehrsson · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | 2012 | 721 |
| 24 | What is Egalitrianism? SAMUEL SCHEFFLER · Philosophy & Public Affairs | 2003 | 717 |
| 25 | For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything Semir Zeki, Oliver R. Goodenough, Joshua D. Greene et al. · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences | 29 Nov 2004 | 713 |
| 26 | Conscious intention and motor cognition Patrick Haggard · Trends in Cognitive Sciences | 6 May 2005 | 710 |
| 27 | Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language Joshua Knobe · Analysis | Jul 2003 | 707 |
| 28 | What's Wrong with Moore's Argument? James Pryor · Philosophical Issues | 3 Sep 2004 | 706 |
| 29 | Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans Michel Desmurget, Karen T. Reilly, Nathalie E. Richard et al. · Science | 7 May 2009 | 704 |
| 30 | Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology Marcello Ienca, Roberto Andorno · Life Sciences Society and Policy | 3 Apr 2017 | 696 |
| 31 | The Value of Believing in Free Will Kathleen D. Vohs, Jonathan W. Schooler · Psychological Science | 2008 | 671 |
| 32 | What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter? James W. Moore · Frontiers in Psychology | 29 Aug 2016 | 667 |
| 33 | Gamma Frequency–Range Abnormalities to Auditory Stimulation in Schizophrenia Jun Soo Kwon, Brian F. O’Donnell, Gene V. Wallenstein et al. · Archives of General Psychiatry | Nov 1999 | 665 |
| 34 | Moral Responsibility of Public Officials: The Problem of Many Hands Dennis Frank Thompson · American Political Science Review | Dec 1980 | 653 |
| 35 | Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership Manos Tsakiris, Gita Prabhu, Patrick Haggard · Consciousness and Cognition | 19 Dec 2005 | 630 |
| 36 | The phenomenology of action: A conceptual framework Élisabeth Pacherie · Cognition | 27 Nov 2007 | 630 |
| 37 | Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, MARC DAVID HAUSER et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 29 Mar 2010 | 600 |
| 38 | Intentional binding and the sense of agency: A review James W. Moore, Sukhvinder S. Obhi · Consciousness and Cognition | 11 Jan 2012 | 597 |
| 39 | Institutions and the Demands of Justice LIAM B. MURPHY · Philosophy & Public Affairs | Oct 1998 | 596 |
| 40 | The Social Psychology of False Confessions: Compliance, Internalization, and Confabulation Saul M. Kassin, Katherine L. Kiechel · Psychological Science | May 1996 | 586 |
| 41 | Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology Duncan Pritchard · The Journal of Philosophy | 2012 | 584 |
| 42 | The Unconscious Will: How the Pursuit of Goals Operates Outside of Conscious Awareness Ruud Custers, Henk Aarts · Science | Jul 2010 | 578 |
| 43 | The mind's best trick: how we experience conscious will Daniel M. Wegner · Trends in Cognitive Sciences | Feb 2003 | 573 |
| 44 | WRONGFUL LIFE, PROCREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HARM Seana Valentine Shiffrin · Legal Theory | Jun 1999 | 570 |
| 45 | Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe · Noûs | 25 Oct 2007 | 563 |
| 46 | The Truth Will Out: Interrogative Polygraphy (“Lie Detection”) With Event‐Related Brain Potentials Lawrence A. Farwell, Emanuel Donchin · Psychophysiology | Sep 1991 | 563 |
| 47 | Frontal midline theta and the error-related negativity: neurophysiological mechanisms of action regulation Phan Luu, Don M. Tucker, Scott Makeig · Clinical Neurophysiology | 29 May 2004 | 561 |
| 48 | Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism Is Not a Liberal View Samuel Freeman · Philosophy & Public Affairs | Apr 2001 | 561 |
| 49 | Attention to Intention Hakwan C. Lau, Robert David Rogers, Patrick Haggard et al. · Science | 19 Feb 2004 | 546 |
| 50 | Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about free will and moral responsibility Eddy Nahmias, Stephen G. Morris, Thomas Nadelhoffer et al. · Philosophical Psychology | Oct 2005 | 536 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.