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I'm no neuroscientist but I don't think this has anything to do with the two hemispheres being separated - it's just how the human mind works. When something happens we come up with an explanation for it that's sometimes factual and sometimes completely made up. These people don't know that they're making it up - they genuinely believe the reason they're giving. We're not comfortable with uncertainty, especially when it comes to our own behavior.
I'm personally one of the people who doesn't believe in free will so these findings make perfect sense to me and are in no way in conflict with my worldview, but I get how hearing about this might make someone else uncomfortable.
What's your source (and i don't mean a citation, more like reasoning) for us making things up even without brain damage? That, uh; feels made up, ironically.
Like i'm not saying i sit around contemplating every single assumption i make, but i can't recall ever realizing my explanation for something was just completely not based in reality. If i'm not sure then i just say i'm not sure, it's something i've specifically made an effort to be precise about (for example i've rewritten a bunch of this text several times as i decide what parts i know and what parts i recon).
The idea of uncontrollably coming up with incorrect explanations is uncomfortable to me not because of uncertainty, but because it would make me fundamentally unable to approach closer and closer to """objective""" reality.
I like uncertainty because it means i'm not mistakenly stating something as fact, and thus deluding myself (and potentially others). I kind of prefer to say "i'm not sure" because it means i'm not risking accidentally hiding the truth, it can always be improved upon later.
It's not that the explanation we give isn't necessarily based on reality but rather that it's an educated guess at best. We simply don't have access into the depths of our minds to the extent that we can genuinely access the source code and find the ultimate reason for why we act the way we do and why we hold certain beliefs and such. We can always give an explanation for why we don't like something for example but it's always post-hoc. You can't think of a thought before you think it and the reason why you think X rather than Y will always remain mysterious to you.
Like I said, I don't believe in free will and by extension I don't believe in the "self" either as in there being this "rider on a horse" located behind your face looking out into the world and making decisions. Life happens to us rather than we happening to live. We're just along for the ride. You didn't pick your genes nor the environment you live in. You could've been born in a different place to different parents and hold beliefs that are completely opposite to the beliefs you hold now and it would all equally make sense to you, seem moral and feel like the rational stance to have.
We live in a deterministic universe and we're not in control of any of it. The best we can do is to look for patterns and try to make sense of it. Sometimes it works - sometimes it doesn't. This isn't so much an absolute truth claim about human existence but rather the worldview I've pieced together based on the thousands of hours I've spent learning about human psychology and behaviour and one that best seems to explain why things are the way they are. There's not really anything for me to gain from trying to convert people into this worldview. If they want to explore the topic I'm willing to engage but whether they adopt the views themselves or not doesn't really affect me whatsoever.