Professional judges’ disbelief in free will and punishment

There is a debate in psychology and philosophy on the societal consequences of casting doubts about individuals’ belief in free will. Research suggests that experimentally reducing free will beliefs might affect how individuals evaluate others’ behavior. Past research has demonstrated that reduced free will beliefs decrease laypersons’ tendency towards retributive punishment. This finding has been used as an argument for the idea that promoting anti-free will viewpoints in the public media might have severe consequences for the legal system, because it may move judges towards softer retributive punishments. However, actual implications for the legal system can only be drawn by investigating professional judges. In the present research, we investigated whether judges (N = 87) are affected by reading anti-free will messages. The results demonstrate that although reading anti-free will texts reduces judges’ belief in free will, their recommended sentences are not influenced by their (manipulated) belief in free will.

心理学与哲学领域就质疑个体对自由意志信念的社会后果展开了激烈的讨论。研究结果表明，通过实验降低对自由意志的信念可能会影响个体对他人行为的评价。以往的研究已经证实，降低对自由意志的信念会减少普通人倾向于实施报复性惩罚的倾向。这一发现被用作支持一种观点的论据，即推广反自由意志的观点在公共媒体中可能对法律体系产生严重后果，因为它可能导致法官趋向于较为温和的报复性惩罚。然而，对于法律体系的实际影响，只能通过调查专业法官来得出。在本研究中，我们探讨了法官（N = 87）是否受到阅读反自由意志信息的影響。研究结果表顯，尽管阅读反自由意志的文本降低了法官对自由意志的信念，但他们对（操纵的）自由意志信念的推荐刑罚并未受到影响。