Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Causes and Consequences of the Belief in Free Will

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Science of Lay Theories

Abstract

While the question of whether free will exists or not has been debated for centuries, recently researchers have started to investigate the reasons for and consequences of a belief in free will. The current chapter tries to give an overview of this research. We first outline recent empirical research showing that the belief in free will has both cognitive and social determinants. Then, we describe recent research focusing on the behavioral, cognitive, and neural implications of believing or disbelieving in free will. Finally, a speculative theoretical framework concerning how high-level beliefs about free will can influence cognition and behavior is presented.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The key finding of Vohs and Schooler’s Experiment 1 was the object of a replication attempt in the Open Science Collaboration project (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). While in the same direction as the original result, the replication result was smaller in effect size and failed to achieve statistical significance.

References

  • Aarts, H., & van den Bos, K. (2011). On the foundations of beliefs in free will: Intentional binding and unconscious priming in self-agency. Psychological Science, 22(4), 532–537.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baumeister, R. F. (2008). Free will in scientific psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 14–19.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baumeister, R. F., Masicampo, E. J., & Dewall, C. N. (2009). Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 260–268.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 624–652.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brass, M., & Haggard, P. (2008). The what, when, whether model of intentional action. The Neuroscientist, 14(4), 319–325.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brass, M., Lynn, M. T., Demanet, J., & Rigoni, D. (2013). Imaging volition: What the brain can tell us about the will. Experimental Brain Research, 229(3), 301–312.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Carey, J. M., & Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Worldview implications of believing in free will and/or determinism: Politics, morality, and punitiveness. Journal of Personality, 81(2), 130–141.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Carruthers, P. (2009). How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(02), 121–138.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, C. J., Luguri, J. B., Ditto, P. H., Knobe, J., Shariff, A. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Free to punish: A motivated account of free will belief. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 501–513.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Connors, M. H., & Halligan, P. W. (2014). A cognitive account of belief: A tentative road map. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1588.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Crescioni, A. W., Baumeister, R. F., Ainsworth, S. E., Ent, M., & Lambert, N. M. (2015). Subjective correlates and consequences of belief in free will. Philosophical Psychology, 29(1), 41–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crick, F. (1994). The astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul. New York, NY: Touchstone.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. New York, NY: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dutilh, G., Vandekerckhove, J., Forstmann, B. U., Keuleers, E., Brysbaert, M., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2012). Testing theories of post-error slowing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74(2), 454–465.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ent, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Embodied free will beliefs: Some effects of physical states on metaphysical opinions. Consciousness and Cognition, 27, 147–154.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Falkenstein, M., Hohnsbein, J., Hoormann, J., & Blanke, L. (1991). Effects of crossmodal divided attention on late ERP components. II. Error processing in choice reaction tasks. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 78(6), 447–455.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fleming, S. M., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2012). Metacognition: Computation, biology and function. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1594), 1280–1286.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Frith, C. D. (2012). The role of metacognition in human social interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2213–2223.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, S. (2012). Multiple aspects in the sense of agency. New Ideas in Psychology, 30(1), 15–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. (2007). Before and below ‘theory of mind’: Embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 659–669.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gehring, W. J., Goss, B., Coles, M. G. H., Meyer, D. E., & Donchin, E. (1993). A neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychological Science, 4(6), 385–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haggard, P. (2008). Human volition: Towards a neuroscience of will. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(12), 934–946.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5(4), 382–385.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, S. (2012). Free will. NewYork, NY: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holroyd, C. B., & Coles, M. G. H. (2002). The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review, 109(4), 679–709.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Inzlicht, M., & Tullett, A. M. (2010). Reflecting on God: Religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1184–1190.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, E. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (1972). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 79–94). Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kashima, Y., Yamaguchi, S., Kim, U., Choi, S. C., Gelfand, M. J., & Yuki, M. (1995). Culture, gender, and self: A perspective from individualism-collectivism research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 925–937.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Knobe, J., & Fraser, B. (2008). Causal judgment and moral judgment: Two experiments. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral psychology (pp. 441–448). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kornhuber, H. H., & Deecke, L. (1965). Hirnpotentialänderungen bei Willkürbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen: Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale. Pflügers Archiv Für Die Gesamte Physiologie Des Menschen Und Der Tiere, 284, 1–17.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Krueger, F., Hoffman, M., Walter, H., & Grafman, J. (2014). An fMRI investigation of the effects of belief in free will on third-party punishment. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(8), 1143–1149.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lau, H. C., Rogers, R. D., Haggard, P., & Passingham, R. E. (2004). Attention to intention. Science, 303(5661), 1208–1210.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Laurin, K. (2017). Religion and its cultural evolutionary by-products. In C. M. Zedelius, B. C. N. Müller, & J. W. Schooler (Eds.), The science of lay theories—How beliefs shape our cognition, behavior, and health. New York, NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 106, 623–642.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lynn, M. T., Muhle-Karbe, P. S., Aarts, H., & Brass, M. (2014). Priming determinist beliefs diminishes implicit (but not explicit) components of self-agency. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1483.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, J. G., & Bersoff, D. M. (1992). Culture and moral judgment: How are conflicts between justice and interpersonal responsibilities resolved? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(4), 541–554.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Monroe, A. E., & Malle, B. F. (2010). From uncaused will to conscious choice: The need to study, not speculate about people’s folk concept of free will. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(2), 211–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monroe, A. E., Dillon, K. D., & Malle, B. F. (2014). Bringing free will down to Earth: People’s psychological concept of free will and its role in moral judgment. Consciousness and Cognition, 27, 100–108.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, J. W., & Obhi, S. S. (2012). Intentional binding and the sense of agency: A review. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(1), 546–561.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moser, J. S., Schroder, H. S., Heeter, C., Moran, T. P., & Lee, Y.-H. (2011). Mind your errors: Evidence for a neural mechanism linking growth mindset to adaptive post-error adjustments. Psychological Science, 22(12), 1484–1489.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nahmias, E., Coates, D. J., & Kvaran, T. (2007). Free will, moral responsibility, and mechanism: Experiments on folk intuitions. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31(1), 214–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nahmias, E., Morris, S., Nadelhoffer, T., & Turner, J. (2005). Surveying freedom: Folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical Psychology, 18(5), 561–584.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Notebaert, W., Houtman, F., Van Opstal, F., Gevers, W., Fias, W., & Verguts, T. (2009). Post-error slowing: An orienting account. Cognition, 111(2), 275–279.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Oliveira, F. T. P., McDonald, J. J., & Goodman, D. (2007). Performance monitoring in the anterior cingulate is not all error related: Expectancy deviation and the representation of action-outcome associations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(12), 1994–2004.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pailing, P. E., & Segalowitz, S. J. (2004). The error-related negativity as a state and trait measure: Motivation, personality, and ERPs in response to errors. Psychophysiology, 41(1), 84–95.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Paulhus, D. L., & Carey, J. M. (2011). The FAD-Plus: Measuring lay beliefs regarding free will and related constructs. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93(1), 96–104.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pronin, E., & Kugler, M. B. (2010). People believe they have more free will than others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(52), 22469–22474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Protzko, J., Ouimette, B., & Schooler, J. (2016). Believing there is no free will corrupts intuitive cooperation. Cognition, 151, 6–9.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rabbitt, P., & Rodgers, B. (1977). What does a man do after he makes an error? An analysis of response programming. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(4), 727–743.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Brass, M., Roger, C., Vidal, F., & Sartori, G. (2013a). Top-down modulation of brain activity underlying intentional action and its relationship with awareness of intention: An ERP/Laplacian analysis. Experimental Brain Research, 229(3), 347–357.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Kühn, S., Gaudino, G., Sartori, G., & Brass, M. (2012). Reducing self-control by weakening belief in free will. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(3), 1482–1490.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Kühn, S., Sartori, G., & Brass, M. (2011). Inducing disbelief in free will alters brain correlates of preconscious motor preparation: The brain minds whether we believe in free will or not. Psychological Science, 22, 613–618.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Pourtois, G., & Brass, M. (2015). “Why should I care?” Challenging free will attenuates neural reaction to errors. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(2), 262–268.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Sammicheli, L., & Sartori, G. (2015). Looking for the right intention: Can neuroscience benefit from the law. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9(432).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rigoni, D., Wilquin, H., Brass, M., & Burle, B. (2013b). When errors do not matter: Weakening belief in intentional control impairs cognitive reaction to errors. Cognition, 127(2), 264–269.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sarkissian, H., Chatterjee, A., De Brigard, F., Knobe, J., Nichols, S., & Sirker, S. (2010). Is belief in free will a cultural universal? Mind and Language, 25(3), 346–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schurger, A., Sitt, J. D., & Dehaene, S. (2012). An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(42), E2904–E2913.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Shariff, A. F., Greene, J. D., Karremans, J. C., Luguri, J. B., Clark, C. J., Schooler, J. W., et al. (2014). Free will and punishment: A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1563–1570.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shea, N., Boldt, A., Bang, D., Yeung, N., Heyes, C., & Frith, C. D. (2014). Supra-personal cognitive control and metacognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(4), 186–193.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Shibasaki, H., & Hallett, M. (2006). What is the Bereitschaftspotential? Clinical Neurophysiology, 117(11), 2341–2356.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Timmermans, B., Schilbach, L., Pasquali, A., & Cleeremans, A. (2012). Higher order thoughts in action: Consciousness as an unconscious re-description process. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1594), 1412–1423.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Vocat, R., Pourtois, G., & Vuilleumier, P. (2008). Unavoidable errors: A spatio-temporal analysis of time-course and neural sources of evoked potentials associated with error processing in a speeded task. Neuropsychologia, 46(10), 2545–2555.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, W. (2008). The value of believing in free will. Psychological Science, 19, 49–54.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Young, L., & Phillips, J. (2011). The paradox of moral focus. Cognition, 119(2), 166–178.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, X., Liu, L., Zhang, X., Shi, J., & Huang, Z. (2014). The effect of belief in free will on prejudice. PLoS ONE, 9, e91572.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Davide Rigoni & Marcel Brass

  2. Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group, Brussels, Belgium

    Axel Cleeremans

  3. Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences, Brussels, Belgium

    Axel Cleeremans

  4. ULB Neurosciences Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Axel Cleeremans

Authors
  1. Davide Rigoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Axel Cleeremans
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marcel Brass
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Davide Rigoni .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA

    Claire M. Zedelius

  2. Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Barbara C. N. Müller

  3. Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA

    Jonathan W. Schooler

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Rigoni, D., Cleeremans, A., Brass, M. (2017). Causes and Consequences of the Belief in Free Will. In: Zedelius, C., Müller, B., Schooler, J. (eds) The Science of Lay Theories. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57306-9_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation