Social Cognition Center Cologne, University of Cologne, 50931 Köln, Germany;
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Sep 19;114(38):10071-10076. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1701916114. Epub 2017 Aug 30.
Free will is a cornerstone of our society, and psychological research demonstrates that questioning its existence impacts social behavior. In six studies, we tested whether believing in free will is related to the correspondence bias, which reflects people's automatic tendency to overestimate the influence of internal as compared to external factors when interpreting others' behavior. All studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the strength of the belief in free will and the correspondence bias. Moreover, in two experimental studies, we showed that weakening participants' belief in free will leads to a reduction of the correspondence bias. Finally, the last study demonstrates that believing in free will predicts prescribed punishment and reward behavior, and that this relation is mediated by the correspondence bias. Overall, these studies show that believing in free will impacts fundamental social-cognitive processes that are involved in the understanding of others' behavior.
自由意志是我们社会的基石，心理学研究表明，质疑其存在会影响社会行为。在六项研究中，我们测试了相信自由意志是否与对应偏差有关，对应偏差反映了人们在解释他人行为时自动倾向于高估内部因素相对于外部因素的影响。所有研究都表明，自由意志的信念强度与对应偏差呈正相关。此外，在两项实验研究中，我们表明，削弱参与者对自由意志的信念会导致对应偏差的减少。最后一项研究表明，相信自由意志可以预测规定的惩罚和奖励行为，这种关系是由对应偏差介导的。总的来说，这些研究表明，相信自由意志会影响理解他人行为所涉及的基本社会认知过程。
