Authors
Tom St Quinton, Oliver Genschow
Published in
Consciousness and cognition. Volume 143. Pages 104097. Jul 15, 2026. Epub Jul 15, 2026.
Abstract
Manipulations of belief in free will and behavioral outcomes have demonstrated mixed success raising the question under which conditions free will belief manipulations effectively change beliefs with its downstream consequences. Across four experiments (N = 3182) we tested the importance of commonly used manipulation characteristics by manipulating information type (text only vs. statements only vs. text and statements combined) and participants' engagement (asking participants to read the information vs. asking participants to summarize the information vs. asking participants to write about their personal experiences) on modifying belief in free will and punishment decisions measured at different time points. We found manipulations including combined text and statements as well as personalized manipulations to be particularly effective in weakening belief in free will measured immediately after the manipulation (Experiments 1, 2 and 4). However, neither information type nor engagement affected free will beliefs measured at the end of the experiment (Experiment 3). The use of combined text and statements and personalization led to greater changes in punishment behavior (Experiments 2-4). These findings have important implications for the development of manipulations targeting belief in free will and behavioral outcomes, such as punishment.
PMID:
42456239
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 16 Jul 2026.
Read full publication at:
Please sign in
to see all details.
Advertisement
Stats
- Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
- Views 4
- Comments 0