Free to punish: A motivated account of free will belief.

• Autores: Gory J. Clark, Jamie B. Luguri, Peter H. Ditto, Joshua Knobe, Azim F. Shariff, Roy F. Baumeister
• Localización: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, ISSN 0022-3514, ISSN-e 1939-1315, Vol. 106, Nº. 4, 2014, págs. 501-513
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Belief in free will is a pervasive phenomenon that has important consequences for prosocial actions and punitive judgments, but little research has investigated why free will beliefs are so widespread. Across 5 studies using experimental, survey, and archival data and multiple measures of free will belief, we tested the hypothesis that a key factor promoting belief in free will is a fundamental desire to hold others morally responsible for their wrongful behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported greater belief in free will after considering an immoral action than a morally neutral one. Study 2 provided evidence that this effect was due to heightened punitive motivations. In a field experiment (Study 3), an ostensibly real classroom cheating incident led to increased free will beliefs, again due to heightened punitive motivations. In Study 4, reading about others� immoral behaviors reduced the perceived merit of anti-free-will research, thus demonstrating the effect with an indirect measure of free will belief. Finally, Study 5 examined this relationship outside the laboratory and found that the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior (as measured by crime and homicide rates) predicted free will belief on a country level. Taken together, these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)