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Belief in free will affects causal attributions when judging others’ behavior
Edited by Jonathan W. Schooler, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Michael S. Gazzaniga June 19, 2017 (received for review February 3, 2017)

Significance
The question whether free will exists or not has been a matter of debate in philosophy for centuries. Recently, researchers claimed that free will is nothing more than a myth. Although the validity of this claim is debatable, it attracted much attention in the general public. This raises the crucial question whether it matters if people believe in free will or not. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias—that is, people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. Overall, we demonstrate that believing in free will increases the correspondence bias and predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior.
Abstract
Free will is a cornerstone of our society, and psychological research demonstrates that questioning its existence impacts social behavior. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias, which reflects people’s automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others’ behavior. All studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the strength of the belief in free will and the correspondence bias. Moreover, in two experimental studies, we showed that weakening participants’ belief in free will leads to a reduction of the correspondence bias. Finally, the last study demonstrates that believing in free will predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior, and that this relation is mediated by the correspondence bias. Overall, these studies show that believing in free will impacts fundamental social-cognitive processes that are involved in the understanding of others’ behavior.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: oliver.genschow{at}uni-koeln.de.
Author contributions: O.G., D.R., and M.B. designed research; O.G. and D.R. performed research; O.G. and D.R. analyzed data; and O.G., D.R., and M.B. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. J.W.S. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1701916114/-/DCSupplemental.
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- Article
- Abstract
- Study 1
- Study 2a
- Study 2b
- Study 3a
- Study 3b
- Study 4
- Relationship Between Free-Will Beliefs and Internal Versus External Attribution
- General Discussion
- Assessment of Participants’ Belief in Free Will in All Studies with the FWI (39)
- Assessment of the Correspondence Bias (38) in Study 1
- Assessment of the Correspondence Bias (42) in Studies 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, and 4
- Manipulation of Participants’ Belief in Free Will in Studies 3a and 3b
- Further Methodological Details of Study 3b
- Assessment of Participants’ Certainty in the Judgments in Study 4
- Assessment of Prescribed Punishment and Reward for Each Scenario in Study 4
- Assessment of Participants’ Locus of Control in Study 4 with the Locus of Control Scale (45)
- Additional Analyses
- Acknowledgments
- Footnotes
- References
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