#psychscience — Public Fediverse posts

DATE: August 28, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
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TITLE: People who believe in free will tend to feel more positive

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-who-believe-in-free-will-tend-to-feel-more-positive/

People who believe more strongly in free will tend to feel better in their everyday lives, and experimentally encouraging these beliefs may increase positive feelings, according to research published in Social Psychological & Personality Science.

Belief in free will generally refers to the conviction that people can freely choose how to act and are therefore responsible for their decisions. Although whether free will actually exists is a topic of longstanding debate among philosophers and scientists, psychologists have increasingly studied whether believing in free will matters for how people think and behave.

Previous research has linked stronger free will beliefs with judgments of intentionality and responsibility, punishment decisions, victim blaming, and prosocial behavior. Past research has also found that people who believe more strongly in free will tend to report greater overall well-being and life satisfaction. However, these broad evaluations do not necessarily tell us how people actually feel from moment to moment in their everyday lives.

Positive affect, including experiences such as happiness and joy, is an important aspect of well-being in its own right and has been linked with health, relationships, success, and a sense of meaning. Kathi Diel and colleagues therefore examined whether believing in free will is associated specifically with positive feelings in daily life and whether changing these beliefs can actually influence how people feel.

Studies 1 and 2 involved secondary analyses of previously collected experience-sampling datasets. Study 1 drew on a broader study of social comparison in everyday life. The final sample included 429 adults living in Germany, recruited through research panels and databases, social media, and flyers at the University of Cologne.

Participants completed the 15-item Free Will Inventory, which assessed belief in free will, determinism, and dualism on seven-point scales, along with measures of trait self-control, moral identity, religious beliefs, political orientation, life satisfaction, and demographics. They then completed six days of mobile assessments, receiving five prompts per day between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. and indicating at each prompt whether they currently felt “good” or “bad.” In total, participants provided 9,229 reports of their momentary affect.

Study 2 drew on a separate pre-existing dataset from a larger project examining daily well-being during the UEFA EURO 2024 football tournament. The final sample included 952 participants from England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, who provided 3,627 daily assessments. At intake, participants rated their belief in free will from 1, “no belief in free will,” to 7, “absolute belief in free will,” and reported demographic information, political orientation, and life satisfaction. After each match played by their national team, they rated how happy and satisfied with life they felt that day on seven-point scales.

Study 3 was a new, preregistered experiment involving 1,053 English-speaking adults recruited through Prolific. Participants were randomly assigned to read a passage presenting supposed scientific evidence either supporting or challenging free will, selected three statements consistent with that viewpoint, and described a personal experience related to each. After each description, they rated how they felt from 1, “extremely bad,” to 7, “extremely good,” before completing a manipulation check.

In Study 1, stronger belief in free will was associated with a greater likelihood of feeling good in everyday life. This relationship remained after accounting for beliefs in determinism and dualism, as well as self-control, life satisfaction, moral identity, religious beliefs, political orientation, age, gender, and education. In the most comprehensive model, each one-point increase in free will belief corresponded to a 15% increase in the odds of reporting positive affect. An exploratory finding suggested that the association might weaken at extremely high levels of free will belief.

Study 2 replicated the central finding across five European countries: people with stronger free will beliefs reported greater daily happiness, even after accounting for demographic factors and both their general and day-to-day life satisfaction. However, the possible weakening of the relationship at very high levels of free will belief found in Study 1 did not replicate.

Study 3 provided experimental evidence that adopting a free-will perspective could influence affect. Participants in the pro-free-will condition clearly interpreted the material as more supportive of free will, confirming that the manipulation worked. They also reported substantially more positive feelings about their personal experiences than those in the anti-free-will condition, averaging 5.20 versus 3.25 on the seven-point affect scale (d = 1.77).

The experimental findings complement the first two studies by suggesting that the association is not solely because happier people happen to believe more strongly in free will; encouraging a stronger free-will perspective itself produced more positive affect.

Of note is that the first two studies were correlational and therefore could not determine whether stronger free will beliefs actually caused better everyday moods; however, Study 3 provided experimental evidence supporting a causal effect.

Together, the findings suggest that seeing oneself as capable of freely choosing and taking responsibility for one’s actions may be an important psychological resource for experiencing more positive feelings in everyday life, beyond overall life satisfaction.

The research “Are Free Will Believers Happier? Converging Evidence From Daily Life and Experimental Research” was authored by Kathi Diel, Giel van der Spiegel, Wilhelm Hofmann, David Wisniewski, Sonja Grelle, Yannik A. Escher, Hannes M. Petrowsky, and Oliver Genschow.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-who-believe-in-free-will-tend-to-feel-more-positive/

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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #FreeWillBelieversHappier #PositiveAffect #BeliefInFreeWill #WellBeingResearch #DailyMoodBoost #FreedomToChoose #PsychScience #ExperientialEvidence #HappinessStudies #MindsetMatter

New large scale registered replication project probing Construal-Level Theory.
It shows the typical pattern: Hundreds of published studies (with positive effects), but virtually no replication attempts. Metaanalytic bias correction suggests true effect close to zero.

The preregistered replication:

* N = 11,775 from 27 countries and regions; 99.995% power for g = 0.23
* direct and paradigmatic replications

Results (positive effects are consistent with hypotheses):

* temporal, d = 0.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.003, 0.16] (effect in original study: d = 0.92);
* spatial, d = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.03, 0.11] (effect in original study: d = 0.55);
* social, d = −0.27, 95% CI = [−0.34, −0.19]; and
* likelihood, d = 0.03, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.11].

"These findings provide limited evidence for the predictions of the theory and present a critical challenge for CLT.“

OA paper: Calderon et al:: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25152459251401177

#PsychScience #Replication #OpenScience https://getmona.app/rich_text/593518390090

📄 "To Be FAIR: Theory Specification Needs an Update"

New paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17456916251401850

Semantic versioning of theories? Citable theory objects that are reproducible and published independently of classical papers?

Van Lissa et al. (2025) argue that psychological theories need clearer and more systematic specification. The paper adapts the #FAIRprinciples (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) – well known from open data – to the way theories are defined, documented, and communicated.

1/2

#OpenScience #Theory #PsychScience #MetaScience

Six postdoctoral positions to work in six different collaborative projects related to psychology, cognition, and neuroscience at the @[email protected] Granada! #PsychScience

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qas2bdytgrrncukt3ttlyo24/post/3m7kpsbiexc2a

Do you work on the psychology of disinformation? The CIMCYC (UGR), a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence, is hiring a Postdoctoral Researcher. 📍 Granada, Spain 📅 Apply: Sept 15–26, 2025 🧑‍🔬 Postdoc (1 yr, renewable) Please share! #SocialPsychology #PsychScience cimcyc.ugr.es/en/informati...

Job Offer: Postdoctoral Resear...

Do you work on the psychology of disinformation? The CIMCYC (UGR), a María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence, is hiring a Postdoctoral Researcher. 📍 Granada, Spain 📅 Apply: Sept 15–26, 2025 🧑‍🔬 Postdoc (1 yr, renewable) #SocialPsychology #PsychScience 👉 cimcyc.ugr.es/informacion/...

Oferta de Empleo: Investigador...

Adopted and donor-conceived children were way less likely to confound nature and nurture than traditionally-conceived kids (ages 4 to 8).

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 And this difference wasn’t explained by differences in parents.

📄 Here's the free preprint (otherwise paywalled in Developmental Psychology): https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3e8rj

#parenting #psychScience #childDevelopment #genetics #Adoption #IVF #donorConception #essentialism #xPhi #philMind #philSci

Don't believe people underrate discussing divisive topics with people who disagree?

A paper in #PsychScience has you covered:

🔓 http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/userfiles/brownbags/marketing/files/WaldKardasEpley.pdf

🔒 https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241230005

Kudos to #KatyMilkman for reminding us to ask people for action plans. ;)

For baseball fans: research suggests complaining to umps gets you more favorable calls.

"After being excessively criticized, home-plate umpires (N = 110 adults, employed in the United States) were less likely to call strikes to batters from the complaining team and more prone to call strikes to batters on the opposing team."

@psychology
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976241227411

#Psychology #Research #PsychScience #MLB #Baseball #Umpries

The "you are not immune to false information" effect:

"Results indicated participants were able to detect outliers. Nevertheless, participants’ estimates were still biased in the direction of the outlier, even when they were most certain that they detected invalid information. ... These findings suggest that individuals may incorporate invalid information they meant to ignore when forming beliefs."

@psychology

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976241231571

#Psychology #Research #PsychScience #FalseBelief

Interesting new study in Psych Science:

"inhibitory control predicted a shared or general psychopathology dimension, but not ADHD-specific, anxiety-specific, or irritability-specific dimensions. Inhibitory control also showed a significant, selective association with global efficiency in a frontoparietal control network delineated during resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging."

@psychology

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976241231574

#Psychology #Research #PsychScience #ADHD #InhibitoryControl

Heute nicht Kaffee, sondern Chai Latte mit Balklava beim Zeichnen von #psychoSophComic Skizzen!

Today it isn't coffee but chai latte and baklava while drawing some #psychosoph sketches!

#psychmasto #psychScience #neuroMasto #neuroscience #scicomm #wisskomm #comic

Randi Martin will begin her term as #APS President-Elect in June 2023, and will be joined by new APS Board Members-at-Large Teresa Bajo and Lila Davachi, as they begin their three-year terms. #psychscience

Thanks to the Association for Psychological Science for interviewing me for the Jan/Feb issue of the #Observer on #PsychScience and #AI. 👶🤖 Check out my interview here! https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/careers-up-close-moira-dillon

@s_michelmann @ptoncompmemlab

Oh yes and this should get tags.

#Memory
#MemoryResearch
#ContinuousMemories
#PsychScience
#PtonCompMemLab (I guess?)

Sorry, I'm interested because I'm hoping such research will lead to better information about the treatment of PTSD and cPTSD but I'm more of an end user than someone knowledgeable on the subject so I'm probably missing loads.

So cool seeing everyone migrating over or at least giving this prehistoric animal app a try.

Someone should really start a #psychology, #psychscience, or #psychmethods server so we can all reconnect (and I can leech knowledge from all of you lol). Honestly, I would do it but I don’t know where to start and $$$