Professional Judges’ Disbelief in Free Will Does Not Decrease Punishment

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-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

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. 'Climate neutral' is a lie - abandon it as a goal
  2. SHEstainability
  3. Who becomes a small-scale entrepreneur in a post-socialist environment
  4. Mehr Transparenz wagen
  5. Consumer concerns about drinking water in an area with high levels of naturally occurring arsenic in groundwater, and the implications for managing health risks
  6. Nutrient enrichment increases invertebrate herbivory and pathogen damage in grasslands
  7. Gender-specific perspectives of mangrove ecosystem services
  8. Listening to the Body Moving
  9. Beurteilereffekte bei der Messung von Unterrichtsqualität
  10. Globalismus/Globalism
  11. Analyzing the social factors that influence willingness to pay for invasive alien species management under two different strategies
  12. Human-nature connectedness as leverage point
  13. Unfair wage perceptions and sleep: Evidence from German survey data
  14. Urlaubsmotive: Warum wir Urlaubsreisen machen
  15. Situatives Multiplizieren
  16. Neustrukturierung des Mittleren Freihafens zum Central Terminal Steinwerder (CTS)
  17. Virtueller Raum
  18. Governance im Diskurs
  19. Ab in den Urlaub
  20. Od Pacmana do Lary Croft. Jak badać postać w grach wideo?
  21. Pathogen induced disturbance and succession in temperate forests
  22. Heterogenität in berufsbegleitenden sozialwissenschaftlichen Studiengängen am Beispiel einer quantitativen Datenerhebung unter Studierenden und Lehrenden
  23. Taufanerkennung bei bleibend unterschiedlicher Lehre?
  24. ML-basierte Absatzprognose mit Frühindikatoren
  25. Reformation process of the neuronal template for nestmate recognition cues in the carpenter ant (Camponotus floridanus)
  26. Empathy-motivated helping
  27. Welt-Bilder und Weltmodelle
  28. Transdiagnostic internet intervention for indonesian university students with depression and anxiety
  29. The Psychology of Entrepreneurship: Action and Process
  30. 'Bildung' jenseits pädagogischer Theoriebildung?
  31. Marktorientierte Markenbewertung
  32. Einleitung
  33. Resilience principles and a leverage points perspective for sustainable woody vegetation management in a social-ecological system of southwestern Ethiopia
  34. Die Idee
  35. Response to Reuven Avi-Yonah, Steven Dean and Cees Peters
  36. Die Privatisierung des Politischen bei Carl Schmitt
  37. The conceptualisation of "opportunity" in strategic management research
  38. Nachtragsbeispiele, Mengenermittlung und Gemeinkostenbilanz
  39. Grundwissen Christentum Bd. 2