Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal?

TLDR

Recent experiments reveal surprising patterns in intuitions about free will and moral responsibility, yet have been limited to Western participants. The study extends prior work by conducting a cross‑cultural investigation of free‑will and moral‑responsibility intuitions in participants from the United States, Hong Kong, India, and Colombia. The authors surveyed participants from these four regions to assess their beliefs about determinism and moral responsibility. Across all four cultural groups, most participants agreed that the universe is indeterministic and that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism, indicating strong cross‑cultural convergence.

Abstract

Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cross-cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism.