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A Critical Review of Methodologies and Results in Recent Research on Belief in Free Will

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Abstract

There might be value in examining the phenomenon of free will, without attempting to solve the debate surrounding its existence. Studies have suggested that diminishing belief in free will increases cheating behavior and that basic physiological states such as appetite diminish free will. These findings, if robust, could have important philosophical and ethical implications. Accordingly, we aimed to critically review methodologies and results in the body of literature that speaks to the two following questions: (1) whether certain factors can change belief in free will or not (static or dynamic property of free will) and (2) whether changes in belief in free will impact different attitudinal or behavioral factors or not (consequential or inconsequential property of free will). Searching the PubMed and PsycInfo databases with different keyword strategies supplemented with reference section searches, we found 52 relevant papers for review. For each distinct study, we extracted information regarding: (1) sample characteristics and related analyses, (2) procedures and methodology, (3) factors investigated, results, and effect sizes (if reported). Overall, we found that the samples were heavily constituted of women, of students and younger participants, with little information about representation of ethnic minorities. Procedures and methodology relied strongly on the use of experimental manipulations and a wide array of scales, including scales created by researchers. Several studies suggest the static and consequential properties of belief in free will. However, these conclusions are restrained by numerous limitations of the supporting body of evidence and the absence of replication studies.

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Notes

  1. In this paper we focus on the literature on belief in free will. However, this literature can be viewed as a literature that explores one important aspect of agency. Agency is a broader construct than the phenomenon captured by the literature on will or volition more generally since agency captures other aspects of action or of a moral agent’s relationship to action such as responsibility. The sense of agency typically refers to the more subjective aspect of being an agent, i.e., notably the sense of being the author of an action (authorship) instead of merely being the owner of a bodily movement (ownership). For example, if someone is pushed and stumbles, she may recognize that the bodily movement of stumbling is that of her body without having the sense of being its author or initiator.

  2. Importantly, these findings failed to replicate as reported in a special review paper on the replicability of findings in psychology research [64, 65].

  3. An example of a passage would be “[…] So, although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that. The actual cause of the decision may be clear cut or it may be determined by chaos, that is, a very small perturbation may make a big difference to the end result. This would give the appearance of the Will being “free” since it would make the outcome essentially unpredictable. […].” ( [17]; supplementary material, p.1–2)

  4. An example of a scenario would be: “Imagine a universe (Universe A) in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. This is true from the very beginning of the universe, so what happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on right up until the present. For example, one day John decided to have French fries at lunch. Like everything else, this decision was completely caused by what happened before it. So, if everything in this universe was exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it had to happen that John would decide to have French fries.” ( [18]; p.348)

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dearbhail Bracken-Roche and Jelena Poleksic for helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript, Simon Rousseau-Lesage who helped review the literature as well as Sonja Chu and Audrey Francoeur for editorial assistance. We would like to thank all members of the Neuroethics Research Unit for their support and constructive criticism. This project was possible thanks to the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (E.R.) and a career award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (E.R.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroethics Research Unit, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), 110 avenue des Pins Ouest, Montréal, QC,, H2W lR7, Canada

    Esthelle Ewusi-Boisvert & Eric Racine

  2. Division of Experimental Medicine and Biomedical Ethics Unit, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Eric Racine

  3. Department of Medicine and Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Eric Racine

  4. Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

    Eric Racine

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Ewusi-Boisvert, E., Racine, E. A Critical Review of Methodologies and Results in Recent Research on Belief in Free Will. Neuroethics 11, 97–110 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-017-9346-3

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