Chapter One - Recent Research on Free Will: Conceptualizations, Beliefs, and Processes

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Abstract

This chapter summarizes research on free will. Progress has been made by discarding outmoded philosophical notions in favor of exploring how ordinary people understand and use the notion of free will. The concept of responsible autonomy captures many aspects of layperson concepts of free will, including acting on one's own (i.e., not driven by external forces), choosing, using reasons and personal values, conscious reflection, and knowing and accepting consequences and moral implications. Free will can thus be understood as form of volition (action control) that evolved to enable people to live in cultural societies. Much work has shown that belief in free will (as opposed to disbelief) is associated with actions that are conducive to functioning well in culture, including helpfulness, restraint of aggression, learning via counterfactual analysis, thinking for oneself, effective job performance, and appropriate gratitude. Belief in free will increases in response to misdeeds by others, thus emphasizing the link to personal responsibility. Research on volition indicates that self-regulation, intelligent reasoning, decision making, and initiative all deplete a (common) limited energy source, akin to the folk notion of willpower and linked to the body's glucose supplies. Free will is thus not an absolute or constant property of persons but a variable, fluctuating capability—one that is nonetheless highly adaptive for individuals and society.

The notion that people have free will has been invoked in multiple contexts. Legally and morally, it explains why people can be held responsible for their actions. Theologically, it was used to explain why a supposedly kind and omniscient god would send most of the people he created to hell (Walker, 1964). Yet, for such an important concept, there remains wide-ranging disagreement and confusion over its existence and its nature. For example, philosophers still debate whether humans truly have free will and, if so, under what conditions human volition deserves to be considered free (Kane, 2011). In psychology, most theorists believe that humans engage in self-control, rational choice, planning, initiative, and related acts of volition. The debate is not whether these things occur but merely whether these should be called free will.

This chapter will provide an overview of recent psychology experiments concerned with free will. There are three main and quite distinct sets of problems, each with associated lines of research. The first is concerned with how people understand the idea of free will. The second concerns the causes and consequences of believing in free will. The third focuses on the actual volitional processes that guide human action.

Section snippets

Social Psychology's Contribution to the Free Will Debate

What is the role for experimental social psychology in studying free will? Philosophers and others have debated the grand question of whether people have free will or not. In particular, philosophers have focused heavily on the debate about whether free will is compatible with the idea of determinism. Determinism is the belief that all events are completely caused by prior events or circumstances, so that a single future course of events throughout the universe is already, ineluctably

Understanding Free Will

Arguments about free will are difficult to resolve in part because of the various definitions scholars employ to describe the concept. Thus, what one side invokes as compelling evidence may be considered irrelevant by its opponents. Indeed, we ourselves would answer the question of whether people have free will in different ways depending on which definition is used. Some opponents of free will believe that its essence is exemption from causality (so that to be free, an action must not be

Beliefs About Free Will

Beliefs about free will may seem to be an abstract metaphysical or even theological opinion with little direct relevance to social life. Contrary to that view, research has shown these beliefs to be heavily intertwined with other attitudes and views and to have substantial behavioral and social consequences. This section reviews research on people's beliefs about free will. This work by itself makes no assumptions about the reality of free will, as most or even all such beliefs could be

Freedom and Human Volition

We turn now from beliefs about free will to the actual processes that constitute the reality behind the idea. Even if some scholars reject the idea of free will as untenable, they may still have interest in the volitional processes that guide human behavior. In simple terms, we propose that if free will exists, these are what constitute it, and if free will does not exist, these are the sorts of phenomena that are mistaken for it.

Although social psychologists may be relatively new to these

Conclusions

Free will has moved from being a topic for abstract debate in philosophy, theology, and related fields to being an active research topic for laboratory work in social psychology. This work has suggested new and different ways of thinking about free will. In particular, views of free will as exemption from causality and as influence of souls on behavior should be dropped from the debate, as they are relevant to very little in either the prevailing folk beliefs about free will or to what

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