The influential studies
In a 2008 paper, Kathleen Vohs and Jonathan Schooler reported that participants who read a passage arguing against free will were later more likely to cheat. Baumeister, Masicampo, and DeWall subsequently reported that disbelief was associated with greater aggression and less helping. These findings attracted great attention, partly because they implied that public statements about determinism could have social costs.
- Belief is usually measured through questionnaires
- Experiments try to change belief with reading passages
- Outcomes have included cheating, helping, aggression, and blame
Replication concerns
A prominent replication of Vohs and Schooler's cheating result, conducted as part of the Open Science Collaboration's project, did not reproduce the original effect. Other experiments have found that brief manipulations produce weak or unreliable shifts in belief, which limits any downstream effect. Monroe, Brady, and Malle argued that the concept tested in such work may not match what ordinary people mean by free will.
Remaining questions
Correlations between belief in free will and outcomes such as punishment or wellbeing vary across studies and may depend on how the belief is measured. Questionnaires may also conflate free will with personal agency, moral responsibility, or religious ideas. Cultural differences are not well mapped. For now, the claim that disbelieving in free will makes people behave worse should be treated as unproven.
Further reading
- Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1).
- 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(2).
- Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251).