The weirdness of belief in free will |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Vilnius University, Institute of Psychology, Lithuania;2. Vilnius University, Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Lithuania;3. Vilnius University, Institute of Philosophy/Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies, Lithuania;1. Florida State University, Department of Psychology, 1107 West Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4301, USA;2. University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Department of Psychology, Park Hall Room 204, Buffalo, NY 14260-4110, USA;3. The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, Sir Fred Schonell Drive, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;4. University of California, Irvine, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, 4201 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Irvine, CA 92697-7085, USA;1. University of Cologne, Germany;2. Ghent University, Belgium;3. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium;1. University of Oklahoma, United States;2. Center for Applied Social Research, United States;3. National Center for Risk and Resiliency, United States;4. Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany |
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| Abstract: | It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in the context of recent psychological research. Is there a widespread consensus about the conceptual content of free will? We compared English “free will” with its lexical equivalents in Lithuanian, Hindi, Chinese and Mongolian languages and found that unlike Lithuanian, Chinese, Hindi and Mongolian lexical expressions of “free will” do not refer to the same concept free will. What kind people have been studied so far? A review of papers indicate that, overall, 91% of participants in studies on belief in free will were WEIRD. Thus, given that free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content and that most of the reviewed studies were based on WEIRD samples, belief in free will is not a psychological universal. |
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| Keywords: | Belief in free will Concepts Construct validity External validity Cross-cultural research Experimental philosophy Cognitive anthropology |
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