Not so motivated after all? Three replication attempts and a theoretical challenge to a morally motivated belief in free will.

Monroe, Andrew E.; Ysidron, Dominic W

doi:10.1037/xge0000788

Cited by 22 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…They find that perpetrators were judged more negligent if their behaviour was preceded by exceptional circumstances. Monroe and Ysidron (2020) demonstrate that an agent's deviation from typical behaviour facilitates attributions of a particular desire and choice for this kind of behaviour. Spontaneous inference when information about mental states is absent have been argued to function as a tool to make sense of other people's past actions, promote accountability or predict future behavior (Young & Saxe, 2009;Young & Tsoi, 2013).…”

Section: Single Actionsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…However, epistemic states not only determine causal attributions to (atypical) behaviour; there is evidence that deviations from normal behaviour trigger inferences about a wider class of mental states to the agent (Alicke, 2000;Gerstenberg et al, 2018;Knobe, 2003;Monroe & Ysidron, 2020;Sytsma, 2019). Research in attribution theory has traditionally argued that unexpected or odd behaviour is diagnostic of that agent having certain mental states, or dispositional and internal attributes (Jones, Davis, & Gergen, 1961;Jones & Harris, 1967;Kelley, 1967Kelley, , 1973Lucas, Griffiths, Xu, & Fawcett, 2009;Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010).…”

Section: To Know or Not To Know: The Role Of Mental Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People draw strong inferences about an individual's motives, intentions or character when their present action deviates from past behaviour (Heider & Simmel, 1944) or general expectations (Jones et al, 1961;Jones & Harris, 1967). Engaging in a prescriptively or statistically 'abnormal' behaviour receives higher attributions of free will (Clark, Baumeister, & Ditto, 2017;Clark et al, 2014), mediated by an inference about a particularly strong personal desire for and choice of the abnormal action (Monroe & Ysidron, 2020).…”

Section: To Know or Not To Know: The Role Of Mental Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The experiments in this paper have exclusively focused on causal attributions to two agents in a conjunctive causal structure. As demonstrated by the 'hitchhiker case' (Kahneman & Miller, 1986), people are also more prone to generate counterfactual alternatives and attribute causality if a negative outcome results from a single agent performing an atypical vs. typical action (Fillon et al, n.d.;Hilton & Slugoski, 1986;Kahneman & Miller, 1986;Monroe & Ysidron, 2020). Crucially, in these scenarios, the action is not directly causal for the outcome, as the agent passively experiences an external event (e.g.…”

Section: Single Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents’ epistemic states

Kirfel¹,

Lagnado²

2020

Preprint

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A prominent finding in causal cognition research is people's tendency to attribute increased causality to atypical actions. If two agents jointly cause an outcome ("conjunctive causation’"), but differ in how frequently they have performed the causal action before, people judge the atypically acting agent to have caused the outcome to a greater extent than the normally acting agent. In this paper, we argue that it is the epistemic state of an abnormally acting agent, rather than the abnormality of their action, that is driving people's causal judgments. Given the predictability of the normally acting agent's behaviour, the abnormal agent is in a better position to foresee the consequences of their action. We put this hypothesis to test in four experiments. In Experiment 1, we show that people judge the atypical agent as more causal than the normally acting agent, but also perceive an epistemic advantage of the abnormal agent. In Experiment 2, we find that people do not judge a causal difference if there is no epistemic asymmetry between the agents. In Experiment 3, we replicate these findings for a scenario in which the abnormal agent's epistemic advantage generalises to a novel context. In Experiment 4, we extend these findings to mental states more broadly construed. We develop a Bayesian Network model that predicts the degree of mental states based on action normality and epistemic states, and find that people infer mental states like desire and intentions to a greater extent from abnormal behaviour. We discuss these results in light of current theories and research on people’s preference for atypical causes.

show abstract

Section: Single Actionsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: To Know or Not To Know: The Role Of Mental Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: To Know or Not To Know: The Role Of Mental Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Single Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents’ epistemic states

Kirfel¹,

Lagnado²

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We conducted a preliminary test of our hypothesis by assessing whether tendencies to hold others morally responsible for blameworthy actions mediate the relationship between conservative ideology and belief in free will. The Free Will and Determinism Scale-Plus (FAD-Plus; Paulhus & Carey, 2011) is probably the most widely used free will belief scale, but it is routinely criticized for confounding free will and moral responsibility for blameworthy actions (Clark et al, 2014;Clark, Winegard, & Baumeister, 2019;Monroe & Ysidron, 2019). Items such as "Criminals are totally responsible for the bad things they do" and "People must take full responsibility for any bad choices they make" measure beliefs about how blameworthy people generally are for bad actions more than beliefs about freedom and control.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political differences in free will belief are driven by differences in moralization

Clark¹,

Everett²,

Luguri³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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In fourteen studies, we tested whether political conservatives’ stronger free will beliefs were linked to stronger and broader tendencies to moralize, and thus a greater motivation to assign blame. In Study 1 (meta-analysis of five studies, n=308,499) we show that conservatives have stronger tendencies to moralize than liberals, even for moralization measures containing zero political content (e.g., moral badness ratings of faces and personality traits). In Study 2, we show that conservatives report higher free will belief, and this is statistically mediated by the belief that people should be held morally responsible for their bad behavior (n=14,707). In Study 3, we show that political conservatism is associated with higher attributions of free will for specific events. Turning to experimental manipulations to test our hypotheses, we show that: when conservatives and liberals see an action as equally wrong there is no difference in free will attributions (Study 4); when conservatives see an action as less wrong than liberals, they attribute less free will (Study 5); and specific perceptions of wrongness account for the relation between political ideology and free will attributions (Study 6a and 6b). Finally, we show that political conservatives and liberals even differentially attribute free will for the same action depending on who performed it (Studies 7a-d). These results are consistent with our theory that political differences in free will belief are at least partly explicable by conservatives’ tendency to moralize, which strengthens motivation to justify blame with stronger belief in free will and personal accountability.

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Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents' epistemic states

Kirfel

Lagnado

2021

Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A prominent finding in causal cognition research is people's tendency to attribute increased causality to atypical actions. If two agents jointly cause an outcome ("conjunctive causation"), but differ in how frequently they have performed the causal action before, people judge the atypically acting agent to have caused the outcome to a greater extent than the normally acting agent. In this paper, we argue that it is the epistemic state of an abnormally acting agent, rather than the abnormality of their action, that is driving people's causal judgments. Given the predictability of the normally acting agent's behaviour, the abnormal agent is in a better position to foresee the consequences of their action. We put this hypothesis to test in four experiments. In Experiment 1, we show that people judge the atypical agent as more causal than the normally acting agent, but also perceive an epistemic advantage of the abnormal agent. In Experiment 2, we find that people do not judge a causal difference if there is no epistemic asymmetry between the agents. In Experiment 3, we replicate these findings for a scenario in which the abnormal agent's epistemic advantage generalises to a novel context. In Experiment 4, we extend these findings to mental states more broadly construed. We develop a Bayesian network model that predicts the degree of mental states based on action normality and epistemic states, and find that people infer mental states like desire and intention to a greater extent from abnormal behaviour. We discuss these results in light of current theories and research on people's preference for atypical causes.

show abstract

Not so motivated after all? Three replication attempts and a theoretical challenge to a morally motivated belief in free will.

Cited by 22 publications

References 47 publications

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents’ epistemic states

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents’ epistemic states

Political differences in free will belief are driven by differences in moralization

Causal judgments about atypical actions are influenced by agents' epistemic states

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