Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness

@article{Baumeister2009ProsocialBO,
  title={Prosocial Benefits of Feeling Free: Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness},
  author={Roy F. Baumeister and E. J. Masicampo and C. Nathan DeWall},
  journal={Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin},
  year={2009},
  volume={35},
  pages={260 - 268}
}
Laypersons' belief in free will may foster a sense of thoughtful reflection and willingness to exert energy, thereby promoting helpfulness and reducing aggression, and so disbelief in free will may make behavior more reliant on selfish, automatic impulses and therefore less socially desirable. Three studies tested the hypothesis that disbelief in free will would be linked with decreased helping and increased aggression. In Experiment 1, induced disbelief in free will reduced willingness to help… 
View on SAGE
faculty.missouri.edu
333 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
18
Background Citations
101
Methods Citations
14
Results Citations
23

333 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Believing versus Disbelieving in Free Will: Correlates and Consequences
Some people believe more than others in free will, and researchers have both measured and manipulated those beliefs. Disbelief in free will has been shown to cause dishonest, selfish, aggressive, and…
The Effects of Free Will Beliefs in Japan: Disbelief in Free Will Impairs Overriding Impulsive Decisions
The present research aims at testing the effects of disbelief in free will on overriding impulsive decisions in Japan. Past research conducted in Western countries has found that induced disbelief in…
Reducing self-control by weakening belief in free will
TLDR
The findings show that undermining free will can degrade self-control and provide insights into how disbelieving in free will leads to antisocial tendencies.
Determined to conform: Disbelief in free will increases conformity
Does disbelief in free will reduce people's willingness to exert the effort needed for autonomous thought and action rather than simply conforming to group norms? Three studies tested the hypothesis…
Mere Civility, or Genuine Forgiveness? Prosocial Consequences of Belief in Free Will
Recent empirical findings suggest that greater belief in free will predicts positive behavioral outcomes, such as lowered aggression, decreased cheating, bettered work performance, and improved…
Making punishment palatable: Belief in free will alleviates punitive distress
TLDR
The results suggest that believing in free will permits holding immoral actors morally responsible, thus justifying punishment with diminished negative psychological consequences for punishers.
Disassociating the Agent From the Self
Undermining the belief in free will influences thoughts and behavior, yet little research has explored its implications for the self and identity. The current studies examined whether lowering free…
The Correlates and Consequences of Believing in Free Will
Research has indicated that weakening people’s belief in free will may likewise weaken their belief in moral responsibility and potentially license them to morally transgress. Recent studies in…
Free to punish: a motivated account of free will belief.
TLDR
It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society and the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior predicted free will belief on a country level.
Subjective correlates and consequences of belief in free will
Four studies measured or manipulated beliefs in free will to illuminate how such beliefs are linked to other aspects of personality. Study 1 showed that stronger belief in free will was correlated…
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 37 REFERENCES
Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression
Aggressive impulses arise from many factors, but they are usually held in check by social norms for self-control. Thus, the proximal cause of aggression is often failure of self-restraint. In five…
The Value of Believing in Free Will
TLDR
The study of whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating suggests that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.
Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource?
TLDR
The results suggest that the self's capacity for active volition is limited and that a range of seemingly different, unrelated acts share a common resource.
Altruism as hedonism: a social development perspective on the relationship of negative mood state and helping.
TLDR
It is suggested that the reward character of benevolence derives from the socialization experience, and the youngest, least socialized subjects were somewhat less generous in the negative mood condition, but this relationship progressively reversed itself until in the oldest, most socialized group, thenegative mood subjects were significantly more generous than neutral mood controls.
Depletion Makes the Heart Grow Less Helpful: Helping as a Function of Self-Regulatory Energy and Genetic Relatedness
TLDR
Helping requires self-regulatory energy to manage conflict between selfish and prosocial motivations—a metabolically expensive process—and thus depleted energy reduces helping and increased energy (glucose) increases helping.
The Effects of Perspective Taking on Motivations for Helping: Still No Evidence for Altruism
To investigate the existence of true altruism, the authors assessed the link between empathic concern and helping by (a) employing an experimental perspective-taking paradigm used previously to…
Human aggression.
TLDR
Using the general aggression model (GAM), this review posits cognition, affect, and arousal to mediate the effects of situational and personological variables on aggression.
If you can't join them, beat them: effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior.
TLDR
Responses were specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion.
Personality Moderators of Reactions to Interpersonal Rejection: Depression and Trait Self-Esteem
Two experiments were conducted to examine the moderating effects of depression and trait self-esteem on reactions to social exclusion. Participants received information indicating that they had been…
Do Narcissists Dislike Themselves “Deep Down Inside”?
TLDR
It is tested the logic that narcissism correlates positively with implicit agency and negatively or not at all with implicit communion in two studies and found no simple relation between narcissism and implicit selfesteem.
...
1
2
3
4
...