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Perception of Free Will: The Perspective of Incarcerated Adolescent and Adult Offenders

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Abstract

The existence of free will has been both an enduring presumption of Western culture and a subject for debate across disciplines for millennia. However, little empirical evidence exists to support the almost unquestioned assumption that, in general, Westerners endorse the existence of free will. The few studies that measure belief in free will have methodological problems that likely resulted in underestimating the true extent of belief. Recently, Rakos et al. (Behavior and Social Issues 17:20–39, 2008) found a stronger endorsement of free will when demand characteristics were eliminated. The current study builds on this work by sampling incarcerated adolescents and adults, whose freedom to act is externally constrained. Belief in free will as well as attitudes toward punishment, self-esteem, and locus of control were measured. The results indicate that free will is strongly endorsed in Western society even when freedom to act is severely restricted. However, incarcerated adolescents endorsed free will to a slightly lesser extent than their nonincarcerated counterparts from Rakos et al. (Behavior and Social Issues 17:20–39, 2008), while incarcerated and nonincarcerated adults offered equally strong endorsements. The comparable endorsement by adults is consistent with the hypothesis that the belief in agency is an evolutionary adaptation. The small decrease found for incarcerated adolescents may reflect the interaction between developmental factors and the expression of an evolutionary adaptation. Additionally, incarcerated adolescents and adults associated beliefs in free will with viewing punishment as a means of deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. Incarcerated adults, but not incarcerated adolescents, associated beliefs in free will with greater self-esteem and with an external locus of control. Finally, though both incarcerated adults and adolescents endorsed free will strongly, the former manifested the belief by emphasizing free agentic choice whereas the latter focused on the personal responsibility that is interwoven with free choice. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of evolutionary, cultural, and developmental factors.

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Notes

  1. Neuroscience research suggests that conscious awareness of an intention to act follows physiological initiation of a voluntary response by approximately 500 milliseconds (e.g., Banks and Isham 2009; Libet et al. 1983; Rigoni et al. 2011).

  2. Examples: “You choose what you do—your neurons don’t just fire at will;” “Even though you have neural impulses, your free will allows you to look over those impulses and decide for yourself;” “I can choose what I want to do;” “We have many impulses but we all have the power to go against them;” “Neural impulses are part of our will” (pp. 218, 220).

  3. Examples: “it makes us sound like robots; “It goes against my own personal beliefs” (p.217).

  4. Examples: “Neural impulses all have to begin somewhere;” “Neural impulses are caused due to our free will” (p. 217).

  5. Psychologically, compatibilists contend that humans can direct some behavior independent of immediate external events through processes such as cognitive self-regulation (e.g., Bandura 2008). Philosophically, compatibilism emphasizes moral responsibility for conscious choice rather than the factors that might constitute the ultimate source of that choice (see McKenna 2009, for discussion). Holmstrom’s (1977) compatibilism suggests that free will is present when a person, first, has and wants to fulfill a particular desire and, second, has actual control over the sources of the desire so control over action is achieved, a position similar to Bandura’s.

  6. Recent research suggests the belief in free will is associated with less cheating, reduced aggression, and greater helpfulness (Baumeister et al. 2009; Vohs and Schooler 2008)

  7. Indirect support for this hypothesis is provided by Rigoni et al. (2011), who found that weakened beliefs in free will suppressed physiological motor preparation. This suppression occurred more than one second prior to the conscious decision to act, possibly decreasing the amount of intentional effort put into action.

  8. These alternative models lead to differing perceptions of choice. Indians reported a sense of free choice when expected to help another, but Americans reported a sense of being compelled (Miller 2003) and U.S. college students perceive making more choices in their daily lives than college students from India; however, the Indian students perceive proportionally more of their choices to occur within an interpersonal rather than individualistic context (Savani et al. 2010).

  9. Even though adolescents and adults endorsed the belief in free will to the same extent, it is possible that the belief in adolescents, who are still maturing,’ is less stable than the belief in adults.

  10. This inverse relationship might reflect an important component of the psychological compatibilist viewpoint—the more one endorses internal libertarian-like agency, the more one is also aware of external constraints on choice and therefore on the operation of that agency.

  11. Beyond incapacitation of the offender, which physically protects society, punishment can also serve as a general deterrent to future unlawful acts through observational learning processes, as a mechanism through which to rehabilitate the offender via therapy, education, job training, etc., and finally, as retribution that establishes moral legitimacy by giving the offender his or her “just deserts” (i.e., the severity of the consequence is proportionate to the offending act) (Bartol and Bartol 1994).

  12. These data were collected as part of a larger study.

  13. The “Social and Personal Attitudes Scale” can be found in Rakos et al. (2008), available at www.bfsr.org.

  14. One reviewer of this paper argued that the items in this scale measured free will in the compatibilist rather than libertarian sense, because most of the items do not eliminate determinism as a consideration; therefore a subject can assert that people have moral responsibility for their actions and are in charge of their decisions and yet believe that their actions and decisions are externally determined. However, the data in the Nahmias et al. studies and the Monroe and Malle study reviewed earlier suggest that people do not in actuality adopt this stance.

  15. The extent of belief in free will of nonincarcerated adults [M = 87.70] and adolescents [M = 88.08] in the Rakos et al. (2008) study also did not differ from each other [t(178) = .28, p = n.s.].

  16. We did not employ a confirmatory factor analysis because our sample was too small. Hair et al. (1998) recommends a 10:1 ratio of observations to variables; we had 192 subjects and 22 variables.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, 43403, USA

    Kimberly R. Laurene & Marie S. Tisak

  2. Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, Chester Building 156, Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA

    Richard F. Rakos

  3. Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, RT 1344, Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA

    Allyson L. Robichaud

  4. Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, Chester Building 161, Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA

    Michael Horvath

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  1. Kimberly R. Laurene
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  2. Richard F. Rakos
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  3. Marie S. Tisak
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  4. Allyson L. Robichaud
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  5. Michael Horvath
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Correspondence to Kimberly R. Laurene.

Additional information

While all authors agree that the belief in free will exists and is an important topic of study, there is variability among them regarding the actual existence of free will.

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Laurene, K.R., Rakos, R.F., Tisak, M.S. et al. Perception of Free Will: The Perspective of Incarcerated Adolescent and Adult Offenders. Rev.Phil.Psych. 2, 723–740 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-011-0074-z

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