"The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in
Determinism Increases Cheating"
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x
ABSTRACT—Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two
experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human
behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1,
participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism
(i.e., that ****trayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and
genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message
increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow
a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems
that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased
cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In
Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by
overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants
who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest
that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and
theoretical, implications.
