Embodied free will beliefs: Some effects of physical states on metaphysical opinions

Ent, Michael R.; Baumeister, Roy F.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2014.05.001

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This research has now shown that belief in free will can fluctuate and that such fluctuations have implications. For example, belief in free will can be modulated by both personal characteristics (e.g., physiological desires, religious beliefs, political orientations, self-esteem) (Laurene et al, 2011 ; Carey and Paulhus, 2013 ; Ent and Baumeister, 2014 ) as well as contextual or interpersonal characteristics (e.g., prompts about causal determinism diminishing belief in free will, differences between beliefs about one's free will vs. attribution to others) (Stroessner and Green, 1990 ; Vohs and Schooler, 2008 ; Baumeister et al, 2009 ; Pronin and Kugler, 2010 ; Lynn et al, 2014 ; MacKenzie et al, 2014 ; Nahmias et al, 2014 ). Moreover, changes in belief in free will have been associated with a number of consequential implications on attitudes and behaviors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Will and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction: The Not So Seductive Allure of Neuroscience and Its Modest Impact on the Attribution of Free Will to People with an Addiction

2017

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Free will has been the object of debate in the context of addiction given that addiction could compromise an individual's ability to choose freely between alternative courses of action. Proponents of the brain-disease model of addiction have argued that a neuroscience perspective on addiction reduces the attribution of free will because it relocates the cause of the disorder to the brain rather than to the person, thereby diminishing the blame attributed to the person with an addiction. Others have worried that such displacement of free will attribution would make the person with a drug addiction less responsible. Using the paradigmatic literature on the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations, we tested whether neuroscience information diminishes attributions of free will in the context of addiction and whether respondent characteristics influence these attributions and modulate the effect of neuroscience information. We performed a large-scale, web-based experiment with 2,378 German participants to explore how attributions of free will in the context of addiction to either alcohol or cocaine are affected by: (1) a text with a neurobiological explanation of addiction, (2) a neuroimage showing effects of addiction on the brain, and (3) a combination of a text and a neuroimage, in comparison to a control group that received no information. Belief in free will was measured using the FAD-Plus scale and was, subsequent to factor analysis, separated into two factors: responsibility and volition. The investigated respondent characteristics included gender, age, education, self-reported knowledge of neuroscience, substance-use disorder (SUD), and having a friend with SUD. We found that attributions of volition (in the cocaine-subsample) were reduced in the text and neuroimage-treatment compared to the control group. However, respondent characteristics such as education and self-reported knowledge of neuroscience were associated with lower attributions of responsibility for both substances, and education was associated with lower attribution of volition for the alcohol sub-sample. Interaction analyses showed that knowledge of neuroscience was found to generally decrease attribution of responsibility. Further research on attribution of free will should consider the effects of context and respondent characteristics, which appeared surprisingly larger than those induced by experimental treatments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Will and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction: The Not So Seductive Allure of Neuroscience and Its Modest Impact on the Attribution of Free Will to People with an Addiction

2017

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“…A more recent study inspired by literature on embodied cognition has concluded that the salience of basic physiological signals (e.g., urge to urinate, felt sexual desire) decreases FW (Ent and Baumeister, 2014). An interesting vignette-based study explored the association between neuroscience's ability to understand and predict behavior and concluded that this ability did not significantly impact lay beliefs in FW; rather beliefs in FW were imperiled when the efficacious nature of reasons in behavior were threatened (e.g., through manipulation; Nahmias et al, 2014).…”

Section: The Philosophical Implications Of Scientific Investigations mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A more concrete and meaningful rendition of the concept could be the “ability to do otherwise” (Baumeister and Monroe, 2014). Neuroscience and cognitive science have now investigated the ability to initiate conscious and voluntary action—often but not always designated as “free will”—through a broad range of studies and contributions such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI Libet et al, 1982, 1983; Haggard et al, 2003; Bode et al, 2011), and vignette-based and priming studies (Stroessner and Green, 1990; Vohs and Schooler, 2008; Pronin and Kugler, 2010; Ent and Baumeister, 2014). These studies have reinvigorated a long and very rich tradition of discussions on the nature and existence of FW and voluntary action (VA) (Dilman, 1999), including metaphysical discussions about FW, i.e., ontological debates on the existence of FW, and its alleged profound concrete and conceptual implications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Proposal for a Scientifically-Informed and Instrumentalist Account of Free Will and Voluntary Action

Racine

2017

Front. Psychol.

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The ability to choose freely is captured under the umbrella concept of “free will,” which designates an ability that plays a crucial role in most understandings of autonomy and responsibility and, thus, bears significance for moral practice and moral theory. Some claim that neuroscience research challenges the existence of free will/voluntary action while some who adopt stronger eliminativist stances have gone as far as describing free will as an illusion. Contrary to that, those relying on realist stances have restated the foundational value and role of folk psychological concepts of voluntary action and free will in, for example, the domains of ethics and law. An emerging body of research in cognitive science and social psychology has generated results suggesting that the phenomena captured by the concepts describing free will and voluntary action are dynamic and responsive to priming and framing effects. We propose that this body of research suggests the existence of dynamic and consequential properties of free will better captured following pragmatist theory and instrumentalist epistemology. This contrasts the simpler static concept of free will and the related metaphysics that was at the basis of earlier debates and structured around the poles of realism and eliminativism. This paper contextualizes ontological and epistemological debates about free will, describes a scientifically-informed and instrumentalist account of the concept of free will and voluntary action consistent with recent research in cognitive science, and discusses its implications for research (e.g., theoretical assumptions of research paradigms, interdisciplinary research) and practice (e.g., impact on self-image and social behavior).

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“…Although there are few studies in this field, most are just conceptual discussions [7,15,16] or have important methodological short-comings, such as lack of information on appropriate case-control matching, evaluations that are cross-sectional, or even uncontrolled designs [17][18][19][20][21]. Also, these studies do not investigate the relationship between free will beliefs/experiences and symptoms' severity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A longitudinal evaluation of free will related cognitions in obsessive–compulsive disorder

et al. 2022

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Background Individuals with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) often feel compelled to perform (compulsive) behaviors, thus raising questions regarding their free will beliefs and experiences. In the present study, we investigated if free will related cognitions (free will beliefs or experiences) differed between OCD patients and healthy subjects and whether these cognitions predicted symptom changes after a one-year follow up. Methods Sixty OCD outpatients were assessed for their beliefs in and experiences of free will at baseline and after one year of treatment. A subsample of 18 OCD patients had their beliefs compared to 18 age and gender matched healthy controls. A regression analysis was performed to investigate whether free will cognitions at baseline were able to predict long-term OCD severity scores. Results Patients with OCD and healthy controls do not seem to differ in terms of their beliefs in free will (U = 156.0; p = 0.864). Nonetheless, we found significant negative correlation between (i) duration of illness and strength of belief in determinism (ρ = -0.317; p = 0.016), (ii) age and perception of having alternative possibilities (ρ = -0.275; p = 0.038), and (iii) symptoms’ severity and perception of having alternative possibilities (ρ = -0.415; p = 0.001). On the other hand, the experience of being an owner of ones’ actions was positive correlated with the severity of symptoms (ρ = 0.538; p < 0.001) and were able to predict the severity of OCD symptoms at the follow up assessment. Conclusions Older individuals or those with a greater severity of symptoms seem to have a perception of decreased free will. In addition, patients with a longer duration of illness tend to have a lower strength of belief in determinism. Finally, the experience of being the owner of the compulsions, along with the baseline severity of symptoms, can be a predictor of a worse outcome in the OCD sample.

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Embodied free will beliefs: Some effects of physical states on metaphysical opinions

Cited by 17 publications

References 25 publications

Free Will and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction: The Not So Seductive Allure of Neuroscience and Its Modest Impact on the Attribution of Free Will to People with an Addiction

Free Will and the Brain Disease Model of Addiction: The Not So Seductive Allure of Neuroscience and Its Modest Impact on the Attribution of Free Will to People with an Addiction

A Proposal for a Scientifically-Informed and Instrumentalist Account of Free Will and Voluntary Action

A longitudinal evaluation of free will related cognitions in obsessive–compulsive disorder

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