Abstract
How does belief in free will affect altruistic behavior? In an online experiment we undermine subjects’ belief in free will through a priming task. Subjects subsequently conduct a series of binary dictator games in which they can distribute money between themselves and a charity that supports low-income people in developing countries. In each decision task, subjects choose between two different distributions, one of which is more generous towards the charity. In contrast to previous experiments that report a negative effect of undermining free will on honest behavior and self-reported willingness to help, we find an insignificant average treatment effect. However, we do find that our treatment reduces charitable giving among non-religious subjects, but not among religious subjects. This could be explained by our finding that religious subjects associate more strongly with social norms that prescribe helping the poor, and might therefore be less sensitive to the effect of reduced belief in free will. Taken together, these findings indicate that the effects of free will belief on prosocial behavior are more nuanced than previously suggested.
Highlights
Given the limited effect size we note that this result is merely suggesting that helping norms play a role in moderating the effect of free will disbelief among religious people. With this experiment we aimed to explore how undermining belief in free will affects altruistic behavior in terms of charitable giving
On the basis of previous studies [17,18] that found free will disbelief to be associated with reduced prosocial behavior we expected that undermining people’s belief in free will would reduce the probability that subjects would select the more generous distribution
Whereas the average treatment effect was insignificant, our results indicate that the treatment did significantly reduce charitable giving among non-religious subjects
Summary
With this experiment we aimed to explore how undermining belief in free will affects altruistic behavior in terms of charitable giving
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