Scientific psychology has been fouded on the deterministic view of human being. Implicitly or explicitly, human behaviour was assumed to be totally shaped by the environmental and/or biological forces with the little if any agentive role left to the person.Recently, personality and social psychology attempts at incorporating the idea of freedom and self-determination to the scientific study of human behaviour. Psychologists agree now that one cannot understand and predict what people do without referring to the idea of agency, freedom, or (...) personal control.To avoid apparent inconsistency of "free will" with the assumption of determinism (fundamental for scientific approach to reality), psychologists take subjectivistic solution: They ascribe freedom a status of a cognitive construct. Freedom is understood as a subjective representation of one's own ability to choose among behavioural alternatives. In this context, the Author reviews several current theoretical models of perceived (experienced) freedom in social psychology including approaches of Steiner, Mills, Kelley, Harvey, and Kruglanski.This kind of conceptual solution helps psychologists to preserve deterministic view of the world. However even if being illusion, freedom has — according to them - real existence as psychological entity. As it is demonstrated in numerous studies, feelings of freedom or corecion have profound impact on information processing, affective and motivational processes, and behaviour. (shrink)