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An Evolutionary Perspective On Free Will Belief

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Cory Clark at University of Pennsylvania
Cory Clark
Bo Winegard at Independent Scholar
Bo Winegard
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Science Trends article: https://sciencetrends.com/an-evolutionary-perspective-on-free-will-belief/
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An evolutionary perspective on free will belief
By Cory J Clark (Durham University) and Bo M Winegard (Marietta College)
“I'm a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall Michael, if he is to be shot
in the head by a police officer, or be found hung dead in a jail cell... or if he should be struck by
a bolt of lightning, then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room, and then I do not
forgive.”
--Don Corleone, The Godfather
Across cultures, humans enthusiastically punish those who harm the self, one’s kin, or members
of the broader social group, even at great personal cost. This willingness to punish likely confers
adaptive benefits to the self and also helps groups coordinate and cooperate. If people know they
might be punished, they will avoid transgressions in general, and perhaps especially avoid
transgressions against those with reputations as punishers. Don Corleone takes his vengeful
reputation a step further and threatens punishment even if an “unlucky accident” should befall
his son. Holding individuals morally culpable even for harmful accidents likely reduces careless
harmful behavior, which could explain why society punishes harmful acts of “negligence.” Thus,
the human tendency to identify morally culpable agents—even when the existence of one is
dubious—might be evolutionarily advantageous.
To many scholars and everyday people alike, moral responsibility is predicated on free will. The
existence of free will, however, is a contentious and persistent philosophical dispute. Other
similar debates—such as whether a God exists—have been mostly resolved in recent decades as
scholars have been forced by science to reject the supernatural. For religious belief, scholars
have now turned to discussing and investigating the causes. Why did religions evolve? What
situational features increase or decrease religious belief? But until very recently, no analogous
exploration of the causes of free will belief has emerged.
Though scholars have not agreed on the necessary capacities for human free will, and everyday
people do not appear to have a coherent conception of free will,1 belief in free will appears to be
a near cultural universal.2 And this belief appears to be very important to people. A google
search of the phrase “no free will” will reveal images of puppets, chains, and robots, and
discussions of how abandoning the concept of free will could turn everyone into criminals
(because nobody would feel responsible) and destroy our ability to punish (because punishment
would no longer be justified).
That humans nearly universally accept the existence of a concept that has no clear definition—
and with great fervor—suggests that this concept was important for human flourishing, and that
it was likely selected for in some capacity. In other words, free will belief, like religious belief,
likely evolved because such beliefs were advantageous for regulating social behavior and thus
for promoting the survival and expansion of social groups (increasing the inclusive fitness of the
members of the group).
So, why did free will belief evolve?
Both scholars and everyday people seem to agree that free will (whatever it is) is a prerequisite
for moral responsibility (though note, among philosophers, there are numerous definitions and
camps regarding how free will and moral responsibility are linked). This suggests that a crucial
function of free will beliefs is the promotion of holding others morally responsible. And research
supports this. Specifically, when people are exposed to another’s harmful behavior, they increase
their broad beliefs in the human capacity for free action.3 Thus believing in free will might
facilitate the ability of individuals to punish harmful members of the social group ruthlessly.
But recent research suggests that free will is about more than just punishment. People might seek
morally culpable agents not only when desiring to punish, but also when desiring to praise.4 A
series of studies by Clark and colleagues (2018) found that whereas people generally attributed
more free will to morally bad actions than to morally good actions, they attributed more free will
to morally good actions than morally neutral ones. Moreover, whereas free will judgments for
morally bad actions were primarily driven by affective desires to punish, free will judgments for
morally good actions were sensitive to a variety of characteristics of the behavior.
In studies 2a-2b, participants were randomly assigned to read about a morally good behavior or a
comparable morally bad behavior. Participants then responded to a variety of questions about the
behavior, rated the extent to which the behavior was performed of the actor’s own free will, and
reported their broad beliefs in human free will. For participants who read about the immoral
action, higher free will attributions and higher broad beliefs in human free will were predicted by
higher perceptions of the severity of the infraction, more moral outrage, and stronger desires to
punish. Similarly, among participants who read about the morally good action, higher free will
attributions and stronger broad beliefs in human free will were predicted by greater perceived
generosity of the action, feelings of being morally uplifted, and stronger desires to reward.
However, unlike free will judgments regarding the immoral action, perceptions that the morally
good action was atypical or counternormative and that the action required willpower predicted
stronger free will judgments.
If we view free will judgments through the lens of adaptive benefits, these results make sense.
First, punishing harmful behaviors is likely more important for survival than rewarding good
ones, hence the lower threshold of perceiving harmful actions as freely performed (regardless of
other situational features). Second, as noted before, punishing even negligent harmful behaviors,
including those that are normative or performed without intention can reduce careless harms. In
contrast, because people already are inclined to behave in normative ways, rewarding such
behaviors would likely do little to increase them.
Based on these results, we suspect people might attribute more free will to actors and believe
more that certain behaviors result from free will precisely when doing so would be advantageous
to the self and social group. There are a few main evolutionary challenges to consider. First, one
must praise the good and condemn the bad so as to promote morally good behaviors and
discourage morally bad ones among members of one’s social group. But second, one must praise
and condemn effectively so as to not waste resources praising and condemning behaviors that
cannot be shaped by praise and condemnation.
So, for example, people might not ascribe free will to infants, severe schizophrenics, many
animals, and any others who are immune to moral judgment in the sense that their behavior
would not change in response to blame, shame, or reputation damage. Perceiving such agents as
morally culpable would be a waste of one’s time and energy. Moral agency should be reserved
for those whose behavior can be manipulated by moral judgment. In other words, free will
judgments might have evolved to track potential moral agents’ responsiveness to judgment. If an
agent who causes harm would be deterred from causing harm in the future if one morally blamed
and shamed them, then one might say that agent has free will and thus is a morally culpable
agent. Ironically then, people might ascribe free will to an agent not when an agent is perceived
to have great internal control, but rather when an agent is perceived to be externally controllable
by moral judgment.
Of course, research into the origins of free will belief is only in its infancy. More work is needed
to understand when and why people ascribe free will to others and to test and challenge our
evolutionary hypothesis forwarded here. We suspect, however, moral condemnations work best
when the subject is responsive to them and can subsequently change his or her behavior, and free
will judgments might have evolved to make this distinction.
**Science Trends article available here: https://sciencetrends.com/an-evolutionary-perspective-
on-free-will-belief/
References
Clark, C. J., Luguri, J. B., Ditto, P. H., Knobe, J., Shariff, A. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2014). Free
to punish: A motivated account of free will belief. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 106, 501-513.
Clark, C. J., Shniderman, A., Luguri, J. B., Baumeister, R. F., & Ditto, P. H. (2018). Are morally
good actions ever free?. Consciousness and Cognition, 63, 161-182.
Clark, C. J., Winegard, B. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2019). Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility
Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism. Frontiers in
Psychology, 10, 215.
Sarkissian, H., Chatterjee, A., De Brigard, F., Knobe, J., Nichols, S. and Sirker, S. (2010), Is
belief in free will a cultural universal?. Mind & Language, 25, 346–358.
1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319944911_Forget_the_Folk_Moral_Responsibility_Pr
eservation_Motives_and_Other_Conditions_for_Compatibilism
2 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7fc7/cdb5cf1bd690b1ef1d8b76cf746973078ac3.pdf
3
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261066203_Free_to_Punish_A_Motivated_Account_o
f_Free_Will_Belief#pfc
4 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319182636_Are_Morally_Good_Actions_Ever_Free!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
... --Don Corleone, The Godfather By indicating that he will seek vengeance even for accidental harms, The Godfather likely intimidates potential enemies and others from crossing him. Thus, identifying morally culpable agents, even when there may not be one, could be evolutionarily advantageous (Clark & Winegard, 2019b), whereas not identifying a morally culpable agent when there is one could be evolutionarily disastrous. ...
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Article
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