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Professional Judges’ Disbelief in Free Will Does Not Decrease Punishment

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

Authors

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency toward retributive punishment. This finding has been used as an argument for the idea that promoting anti-free will viewpoints in the public media might have severe consequences for the legal system because it may move judges toward softer retributive punishments. However, actual implications for the legal system can only be drawn by investigating professional judges. In the present research, we investigated whether judges (N = 87) are affected by reading anti-free will messages. The results demonstrate that although reading anti-free will texts reduces judges’ belief in free will, their recommended sentences are not influenced by their (manipulated) belief in free will.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSocial Psychological and Personality Science
Volume12
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)357-362
Number of pages6
ISSN1948-5506
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.04.2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.

    Research areas

  • Business psychology
  • belief in free will, judges, offenders, punishment, social perception

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DOI