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Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating? Reconsidering the value of believing in free will

Nadelhoffer, Thomas, Shepard, Jason, Crone, Damien L., Everett, Jim A.C., Earp, Brian D., Levy, Neil (2020) Does encouraging a belief in determinism increase cheating? Reconsidering the value of believing in free will. Cognition, 203 . Article Number 104342. ISSN 0010-0277. (doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104342) (KAR id:83694)

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Abstract

A key source of support for the view that challenging people’s beliefs about free will may undermine moral behavior is two classic studies by Vohs and Schooler (2008). These authors reported that exposure to certain prompts suggesting that free will is an illusion increased cheating behavior. In the present paper, we report several attempts to replicate this influential and widely cited work. Over a series of five studies (sample sizes of N = 162, N = 283, N = 268, N = 804, N = 982) (four preregistered) we tested the relationship between (1) anti-free-will prompts and free will beliefs and (2) free will beliefs and immoral behavior. Our primary task was to closely replicate the findings from Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same or highly similar manipulations and measurements as the ones used in their original studies. Our efforts were largely unsuccessful. We suggest that manipulating free will beliefs in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied by prior work, and that the proposed link with immoral behavior may not be as consistent as previous work suggests.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104342
Uncontrolled keywords: Free will, Skepticism, Moral behavior, Cheating, Replication
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Jim Everett
Date Deposited: 25 Oct 2020 16:23 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 18:16 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/83694 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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