Free will beliefs are better predicted by dualism than determinism beliefs across different cultures


Autoři: David Wisniewski aff001;  Robert Deutschländer aff001;  John-Dylan Haynes aff001
Působiště autorů: Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff001;  Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium aff002;  Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff003;  Clinic for Neurology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff004;  Berlin Institute of Health, Max Delbrück Center and Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff005;  Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff006;  Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany aff007;  SFB 940 Volition and Cognitive Control, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany aff008
Vyšlo v časopise: PLoS ONE 14(9)
Kategorie: Research Article
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

Souhrn

Most people believe in free will. Whether this belief is warranted or not, free will beliefs (FWB) are foundational for many legal systems and reducing FWB has effects on behavior from the motor to the social level. This raises the important question as to which specific FWB people hold. There are many different ways to conceptualize free will, and some might see physical determinism as a threat that might reduce FWB, while others might not. Here, we investigate lay FWB in a large, representative, replicated online survey study in the US and Singapore (n = 1800), assessing differences in FWB with unprecedented depth within and between cultures. Specifically, we assess the relation of FWB, as measured using the Free Will Inventory, to determinism, dualism and related concepts like libertarianism and compatibilism. We find that libertarian, compatibilist, and dualist, intuitions were related to FWB, but that these intuitions were often logically inconsistent. Importantly, direct comparisons suggest that dualism was more predictive of FWB than other intuitions. Thus, believing in free will goes hand-in-hand with a belief in a non-physical mind. Highlighting the importance of dualism for FWB impacts academic debates on free will, which currently largely focus on its relation to determinism. Our findings also shed light on how recent (neuro)scientific findings might impact FWB. Demonstrating physical determinism in the brain need not have a strong impact on FWB, due to a wide-spread belief in dualism.

Klíčová slova:

People and places – Geographical locations – North America – United States – Population groupings – Age groups – Biology and life sciences – Psychology – Behavior – Social sciences – Sociology – Culture – Cross-cultural studies – Computer and information sciences – Data acquisition – Research and analysis methods – Research design – Survey research – Surveys – Questionnaires


Zdroje

1. Nadelhoffer T, Shepard J, Nahmias E, Sripada C, Ross LT. The free will inventory: Measuring beliefs about agency and responsibility. Conscious Cogn. 2014;25: 27–41. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.01.006 24561311

2. Paulhus DL, Carey JM. The FAD–Plus: Measuring Lay Beliefs Regarding Free Will and Related Constructs. J Pers Assess. 2011;93: 96–104. doi: 10.1080/00223891.2010.528483 21184335

3. Nahmias E, Morris S, Nadelhoffer T, Turner J. Surveying Freedom: Folk Intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. Philos Psychol. 2005;18: 561–584. doi: 10.1080/09515080500264180

4. Baumeister RF, Masicampo EJ, DeWall CN. Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2009;35: 260–268. doi: 10.1177/0146167208327217 19141628

5. Feldman G. Making sense of agency: Belief in free will as a unique and important construct. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2017;11: e12293. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12293

6. Earp BD, Everett JA, Nadelhoffer T, Caruso GD, Shariff A, Sinnott-Armstrong W. Determined to Be Humble? Exploring the Relationship Between Belief in Free Will and Humility. 2018; doi: 10.31234/osf.io/3bxra

7. Greene J, Cohen J. For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004;359: 1775–1785. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2004.1546 15590618

8. Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, Pearl DK. Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential) the unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. 1983;106: 623–642. doi: 10.1093/brain/106.3.623 6640273

9. Soon CS, Brass M, Heinze H-J, Haynes J-D. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nat Neurosci. 2008;11: 543–545. doi: 10.1038/nn.2112 18408715

10. Wegner DM. The mind’s best trick: how we experience conscious will. Trends Cogn Sci. 2003;7: 65–69. doi: 10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00002-0 12584024

11. Harris S. Free Will. Simon and Schuster; 2012.

12. Fischer JM, Kane R, Pereboom D, Vargas M. Four Views on Free Will. Wiley-Blackwell; 2007.

13. Rolnick J, Parvizi J. Automatisms: Bridging clinical neurology with criminal law. Epilepsy Behav. 2011;20: 423–427. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2010.09.033 21145287

14. Kane RH. Agency, Responsibility, and Indeterminism: Reflections on Libertarian Theories of Free Will. In: Honderich T, editor. Freedom and Determinism. Bradford Book/MIT Press; 2004.

15. Mele A. Free Will and Substance Dualism: The Real Scientific Threat to Free Will? In: Sinnot-Armstrong W, editor. Moral Psychology, Vol 4: Free Will and Responsibility. MIT Press; 2014.

16. Monroe AE, Malle BF. From Uncaused Will to Conscious Choice: The Need to Study, Not Speculate About People’s Folk Concept of Free Will. Rev Philos Psychol. 2010;1: 211–224. doi: 10.1007/s13164-009-0010-7

17. Stillman TF, Baumeister RF, Mele AR. Free will in everyday life: Autobiographical accounts of free and unfree actions. Philos Psychol. 2011;24: 381–394. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2011.556607

18. Nahmias E, Morris SG, Nadelhoffer T, Turner J. Is Incompatibilism Intuitive? Philos Phenomenol Res. 2006;73: 28–53. doi: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00603.x

19. Deery O, Davis T, Carey J. The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the question of natural compatibilism. Philos Psychol. 2015;28: 776–801. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2014.893868

20. Forstmann M, Burgmer P. A free will needs a free mind: Belief in substance dualism and reductive physicalism differentially predict belief in free will and determinism. Conscious Cogn. 2018;63: 280–293. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2018.07.003 30001841

21. Nahmias E, Shepard J, Reuter S. It’s OK if ‘my brain made me do it’: People’s intuitions about free will and neuroscientific prediction. Cognition. 2014;133: 502–516. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.009 25195077

22. Preston JL, Ritter RS, Hepler J. Neuroscience and the soul: Competing explanations for the human experience. Cognition. 2013;127: 31–37. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.12.003 23318352

23. Nichols S. Experimental Philosophy and the Problem of Free Will. Science. 2011;331: 1401–1403. doi: 10.1126/science.1192931 21415346

24. Henrich J, Heine SJ, Norenzayan A. The weirdest people in the world? Behav Brain Sci. 2010;33: 61–83. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X0999152X 20550733

25. Bloom P. My Brain Made Me Do It. J Cogn Cult. 2006;6: 209–214. doi: 10.1163/156853706776931303

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

27. Martin ND, Rigoni D, Vohs KD. Free will beliefs predict attitudes toward unethical behavior and criminal punishment. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2017;114: 7325–7330. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1702119114 28652361

28. Hui C-CH. Locus of control: A review of cross-cultural research. Int J Intercult Relat. 1982;6: 301–323. doi: 10.1016/0147-1767(82)90036-0

29. Smith PB, Trompenaars F, Dugan S. The Rotter Locus of Control Scale in 43 Countries: A Test of Cultural Relativity. Int J Psychol. 1995;30: 377–400. doi: 10.1080/00207599508246576

30. Hofstede G, Hofstede GJ, Minkov M. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, Third Edition. McGraw Hill Professional; 2010.

31. Hofstede GH, Hofstede G. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations. SAGE; 2001.

32. Collaboration OS. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. 2015;349: aac4716. doi: 10.1126/science.aac4716

33. Wagenmakers E-J. A practical solution to the pervasive problems of p values. Psychon Bull Rev. 2007;14: 779–804. doi: 10.3758/BF03194105 18087943

34. Nichols S. The Folk Psychology of Free Will: Fits and Starts. Mind Lang. 2004;19: 473–502. doi: 10.1111/j.0268-1064.2004.00269.x

35. Burnham KP, Anderson DR. Multimodel Inference: Understanding AIC and BIC in Model Selection. Sociol Methods Res. 2004;33: 261–304. doi: 10.1177/0049124104268644

36. Sosa E. Experimental philosophy and philosophical intuition. Philos Stud. 2007;132: 99–107. doi: 10.1007/s11098-006-9050-3

37. Vignoles VL, Owe E, Becker M, Smith PB, Easterbrook MJ, Brown R, et al. Beyond the ‘east–west’ dichotomy: Global variation in cultural models of selfhood. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2016;145: 966–1000. doi: 10.1037/xge0000175 27359126

38. Feldman G, Farh J-L, Wong KFE. Agency Beliefs Over Time and Across Cultures: Free Will Beliefs Predict Higher Job Satisfaction. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2018;44: 304–317. doi: 10.1177/0146167217739261 29191084

39. Sarkissian H, Chatterjee A, Brigard FD, Knobe J, Nichols S, Sirker S. Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal? Mind Lang. 2010;25: 346–358. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2010.01393.x

40. Demertzi A, Liew C, Ledoux D, Bruno M-A, Sharpe M, Laureys S, et al. Dualism persists in the science of mind. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009;1157: 1–9. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2008.04117.x 19351351

41. Forstmann M, Burgmer P. Adults are intuitive mind-body dualists. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2015;144: 222–235. doi: 10.1037/xge0000045 25494547

42. Miresco MJ, Kirmayer LJ. The Persistence of Mind-Brain Dualism in Psychiatric Reasoning About Clinical Scenarios. Am J Psychiatry. 2006;163: 913–918. doi: 10.1176/ajp.2006.163.5.913 16648335

43. Lindeman M, Riekki T, Svedholm-Häkkinen AM. Individual Differences in Conceptions of Soul, Mind, and Brain. J Individ Differ. 2015;36: 157–162. doi: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000167

44. Robbins P, Jack AI. The phenomenal stance. Philos Stud. 2006;127: 59–85. doi: 10.1007/s11098-005-1730-x

45. Churchland PS. The Hornswoggle Problem. J Conscious Stud. 1996;3: 402–8.

46. Forstmann M, Burgmer P, Mussweiler T. “The Mind Is Willing, but the Flesh Is Weak”: The Effects of Mind-Body Dualism on Health Behavior. Psychol Sci. 2012;23: 1239–1245. doi: 10.1177/0956797612442392 22972908

47. Bering JM. The folk psychology of souls. Behav Brain Sci. 2006;29: 453–462. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X06009101 17156519

48. Hodge KM. Descartes’ Mistake: How Afterlife Beliefs Challenge the Assumption that Humans are Intuitive Cartesian Substance Dualists. J Cogn Cult. 2008;8: 387–415. doi: 10.1163/156853708X358236

49. Feldman G, Chandrashekar SP. Laypersons’ Beliefs and Intuitions About Free Will and Determinism: New Insights Linking the Social Psychology and Experimental Philosophy Paradigms. Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2018;9: 539–549. doi: 10.1177/1948550617713254 30220960

50. Unger P. Free Will and Scientiphicalism. Philos Phenomenol Res. 2002;65: 1–25. doi: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00180.x

51. Crone DL, Levy NL. Are Free Will Believers Nicer People? (Four Studies Suggest Not). Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2019;10: 612–619. doi: 10.1177/1948550618780732 31249653

52. Rigoni D, Kühn S, Gaudino G, Sartori G, Brass M. Reducing self-control by weakening belief in free will. Conscious Cogn. 2012;21: 1482–1490. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2012.04.004 22579497

53. Schultze-Kraft M, Birman D, Rusconi M, Allefeld C, Görgen K, Dähne S, et al. The point of no return in vetoing self-initiated movements. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2016;113: 1080–1085. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1513569112 26668390


Článek vyšel v časopise

PLOS One


2019 Číslo 9
Nejčtenější tento týden