Bad is freer than good: Positive-negative asymmetry in attributions of free will

The "3R Team" in action! Implementation of a program of learning from excellence in a neonatal and pediatric intensive care unit in France

BACKGROUND

The pursuit of improving quality of care and of patient safety is a crucial objective in intensive care units (ICUs). Classically, safety is characterized by analyzing adverse events. Neonatal and pediatric ICUs (NICUs/PICU) are highly technological units, with evidence of risk for elevated levels of emotional exhaustion and thus a significant level of staff turnover. We hypothesized that appreciative inquiry (AI), currently used in many organizations, could be introduced in our ICU. In the PICU and NICU, this new concept is termed "learning from excellence" (LFE).

OBJECTIVE

To assess the impact of the implementation of an LFE program on well-being and on an educational program in the NICU/PICU of a tertiary care center in France.

METHODS

We created a workgroup composed of caregivers called the "3R team" for "right resuscitations reviews," based on the concept of AI. Before and 1 year after implementation, we administered two validated surveys-the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Siegrist survey-to the entire staff of the 22-bed unit.

RESULTS

The questionnaire on satisfaction revealed a high percentage (93%) of satisfaction with the work of the 3R team and that scores of well-being and burnout were improved. The educational program was highly enhanced, especially simulation. Benevolence and happiness were increased.

CONCLUSION

Implementation of an LFE program in a NICU and PICU is feasible, and tends to increase the well-being and self-confidence of all categories of caregivers. It promotes educational programs of dynamic learning, including simulation. The next important step will be to study the impact on staff turnover and on quality of care.

Direct and indirect freedom in addiction: Folk free will and blame judgments are sensitive to the choice history of drug users

People view addiction as a source of diminished free will and moral responsibility. Yet, people are also sensitive to the personal histories of moral actors, including, perhaps, the way by which people became addicted. Across two studies (N = 806), we compare people's moral intuitions about cases in which the actor becomes addicted by force or by choice. We find that perceptions of reduced free will partially mediate an association between choice (vs. no choice) in addiction and moral blame for a bad act (Study 1). We replicate this pattern and show that blame judgments are stronger when the bad act is related (vs. unrelated) to obtaining the addictive substance (Study 2). Our work is novel in demonstrating that lay people evince relatively nuanced intuitions about the role of free will in addiction and morality-they track direct and indirect paths to choices when making free will and blame judgments.

Behavioral explanations reduce retributive punishment but not reward: The mediating role of conscious will

Conceptions of responsibility are associated with the degree to which people ascribe conscious will to others. However, it is not known how the biological and environmental circumstances of moral actors independently impact attributions of conscious will. Although reductions in conscious will are associated with diminished punishment of criminals, does a reduced sense of conscious will of a hero affect support for reward? In two pre-registered studies (total N = 2668), we investigated the effects of biological or environmental histories on judgements of punishment and reward. Biological and environmental circumstances (especially biological) reduced perceptions of conscious will, which in turn reduced conviction judgements and punishment severity (Studies 1-2). In the context of a moderated mediation, we found that reductions in perceptions of conscious will were unrelated for a desire to reward a hero (Study 2). Findings are discussed in the context of a model of judgement, conscious will, and responsibility.

Forget the Folk: Moral Responsibility Preservation Motives and Other Conditions for Compatibilism

For years, experimental philosophers have attempted to discern whether laypeople find free will compatible with a scientifically deterministic understanding of the universe, yet no consensus has emerged. The present work provides one potential explanation for these discrepant findings: People are strongly motivated to preserve free will and moral responsibility, and thus do not have stable, logically rigorous notions of free will. Seven studies support this hypothesis by demonstrating that a variety of logically irrelevant (but motivationally relevant) features influence compatibilist judgments. In Study 1, participants who were asked to consider the possibility that our universe is deterministic were more compatibilist than those not asked to consider this possibility, suggesting that determinism poses a threat to moral responsibility, which increases compatibilist responding (thus reducing the threat). In Study 2, participants who considered concrete instances of moral behavior found compatibilist free will more sufficient for moral responsibility than participants who were asked about moral responsibility more generally. In Study 3a, the order in which participants read free will and determinism descriptions influenced their compatibilist judgments-and only when the descriptions had moral significance: Participants were more likely to report that determinism was compatible with free will than that free will was compatible with determinism. In Study 3b, participants who read the free will description first (the more compatibilist group) were particularly likely to confess that their beliefs in free will and moral responsibility and their disbelief in determinism influenced their conclusion. In Study 4, participants reduced their compatibilist beliefs after reading a passage that argued that moral responsibility could be preserved even in the absence of free will. Participants also reported that immaterial souls were compatible with scientific determinism, most strongly among immaterial soul believers (Study 5), and evaluated information about the capacities of primates in a biased manner favoring the existence of human free will (Study 6). These results suggest that people do not have one intuition about whether free will is compatible with determinism. Instead, people report that free will is compatible with determinism when desiring to uphold moral responsibility. Recommendations for future work are discussed.

Laypersons' Beliefs and Intuitions About Free Will and Determinism: New Insights Linking the Social Psychology and Experimental Philosophy Paradigms

We linked between the social psychology and experimental philosophy paradigms for the study of folk intuitions and beliefs regarding the concept of free will to answer three questions: (1) What intuitions do people have about free will and determinism? (2) Do free will beliefs predict differences in free will and determinism intuitions? and (3) Is there more to free will and determinism than experiencing certainty or uncertainty about the nature of the universe? Overall, laypersons viewed the universe as allowing for human indeterminism, and they did so with certainty. Examining intuitions of prosociality, future orientation, learning, meaningfulness, human uniqueness, and well-being, ratings were highest in the indeterministic universe condition and lowest in the deterministic universe condition, both significantly different from the uncertain universe condition. Participants' free will beliefs had only weak impact on realism, happiness, and learning intuitions but did not reverse the general intuition favoring indeterminism and showed no impact on other intuitions.

Are morally good actions ever free?

Research has shown that people ascribe more responsibility to morally bad actions than both morally good and neutral ones, suggesting that people do not attribute responsibility to morally good actions. The present work demonstrates that this is not so: People ascribe more free will to morally good than neutral actions (Studies 1a-1b, Mini Meta). Studies 2a-2b distinguished the underlying motives for ascribing freedom to morally good and bad actions. Free will ascriptions for immoral actions were driven predominantly by affective responses (i.e., punitive desires, moral outrage, and perceived severity of the crime). Free will judgments for morally good actions were similarly driven by affective responses (i.e., reward desires, moral uplift, and perceived generosity), but also more pragmatic considerations (perceived utility of reward, counternormativity of the action, and required willpower). Morally good actions may be more carefully considered, leading to generally weaker, but more contextually sensitive free will judgments.

Agency Beliefs Over Time and Across Cultures: Free Will Beliefs Predict Higher Job Satisfaction

In three studies, we examined the relationship between free will beliefs and job satisfaction over time and across cultures. Study 1 examined 252 Taiwanese real-estate agents over a 3-months period. Study 2 examined job satisfaction for 137 American workers on an online labor market over a 6-months period. Study 3 extended to a large sample of 14,062 employees from 16 countries and examined country-level moderators. We found a consistent positive relationship between the belief in free will and job satisfaction. The relationship was above and beyond other agency constructs (Study 2), mediated by perceived autonomy (Studies 2-3), and stronger in countries with a higher national endorsement of the belief in free will (Study 3). We conclude that free-will beliefs predict outcomes over time and across cultures beyond other agency constructs. We call for more cross-cultural and longitudinal studies examining free-will beliefs as predictors of real-life outcomes.