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Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters Brain Correlates of Preconscious Motor Preparation: The Brain
Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not
Davide Rigoni, Simone Kühn, Giuseppe Sartori and Marcel Brass
Psychological Science 2011 22: 613 originally published online 22 April 2011
DOI: 10.1177/0956797611405680

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Research Report

Psychological Science

Inducing Disbelief in Free Will Alters 22(5) 613­–618

© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797611405680

Preparation: The Brain Minds Whether We http://pss.sagepub.com

Believe in Free Will or Not

Davide Rigoni1,2, Simone Kühn1,3, Giuseppe Sartori4,

and Marcel Brass1
1
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Gent; 2Department of Developmental Psychology
and Socialization, University of Padova; 3Charité University Medicine, St. Hedwig Krankenhaus, Clinic for
Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Berlin, Germany; and 4Department of General Psychology, University of Padova

Abstract
The feeling of being in control of one’s own actions is a strong subjective experience. However, discoveries in psychology
and neuroscience challenge the validity of this experience and suggest that free will is just an illusion. This raises a question:
What would happen if people started to disbelieve in free will? Previous research has shown that low control beliefs affect
performance and motivation. Recently, it has been shown that undermining free-will beliefs influences social behavior. In the
study reported here, we investigated whether undermining beliefs in free will affects brain correlates of voluntary motor
preparation. Our results showed that the readiness potential was reduced in individuals induced to disbelieve in free will. This
effect was evident more than 1 s before participants consciously decided to move, a finding that suggests that the manipulation
influenced intentional actions at preconscious stages. Our findings indicate that abstract belief systems might have a much more
fundamental effect than previously thought.

Keywords
motor processes, electrophysiology, consciousness, cognitive neuroscience, free will
Received 9/6/10; Revision accepted 1/22/11

Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience suggest
that the perception of free will is illusory (Wegner, 2002) and
just arises from unconscious brain activity (Hallett, 2007;
Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983; Soon, Brass, Heinze, &
Haynes, 2008). Despite the scientific and philosophical rele-
vance of these findings, people seem to naturally believe in
free will (Baumeister, Masicampo, & DeWall, 2009). Further-
more, this belief seems to be essential for people’s well-being
(Leotti, Iyengar, & Ochsner, 2010). But how would people
behave if free will really turned out to be an illusion? Previous
research has demonstrated that control and agency beliefs
affect people’s intention to act, their motivations, and their
behavior (e.g., Ajzen, 2002; Bandura, 1982). For instance,
when people believe that they cannot exercise control over
their behavior and the events that affect their lives, they per-
form poorly, even though they have the skills to do better
(Bandura, 1989). In addition, recent studies in social psychol-
ogy have shown that believing in free will also has implica-
tions for social behavior: Weakening beliefs in free will
increases cheating (Vohs & Schooler, 2008) and aggressive-
ness, and reduces prosocial behavior (Baumeister et al., 2009).
Although this research shows that undermining beliefs in
free will influences performance and social behavior, the ques-
tion arises whether such an influence can be demonstrated on
a basic motor level as well. In the study reported here, we
investigated whether inducing the idea that people do not have
free will changes the brain correlates of voluntary motor prep-
aration. Our hypothesis was that denying free will would
deplete participants’ intentional involvement in the prepara-
tion of voluntary motor actions. Specifically, we predicted that
a disbelief in free will affects brain correlates of volitional pro-
cesses at the earliest stages of voluntary actions.
We recorded event-related potentials while participants
were performing the Libet task (Libet et al., 1983). In this task,
participants execute voluntary movements and then report the
time at which the intention to move occurred to them (W judg-
ment). It has been demonstrated that voluntary movements are
Corresponding Author:
Davide Rigoni, Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization,
University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 – Padova, Italy
E-mail: davide.rigoni@unipd.it

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614 Rigoni et al.

preceded by a readiness potential (RP), a slow negative-going
wave that can be divided into an early component (early RP),
which reflects movement preparation, and a late component
(late RP), which is involved in the specific programming for
movement execution (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965; Shibasaki &
Hallett, 2006). The early RP starts up to 2,000 ms before move-
ment execution, and it has been proposed that the early RP is
generated by the pre-supplementary motor area. The late RP
begins around 500 ms before movement onset and has been
associated with the activity of the primary motor cortex and
supplementary motor area proper (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006).
The early RP is modulated by the level of intentional involve-
ment (Keller & Heckhausen, 1990; Kornhuber, 1984; Libet,
Wright, & Gleason, 1982), and it is restricted to movements that
are executed with the “introspective feelings of the willful real-
ization of the intention to move at a particular time” (Lang,
2003, p. 20). Conversely, the late RP is influenced by factors
concerning motor execution (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006).
Our hypothesis was that inducing disbelief in free will
would lead to a reduction of early-RP amplitude. Prior to the
task, participants were randomly assigned to one of two
groups: The no-free-will group read a text claiming that scien-
tists now recognize that free will is an illusion; the control
group read a text on consciousness that did not mention free
will at all. This procedure has been shown to affect people’s
belief about free will (Vohs & Schooler, 2008).
Method
Participants
Data were recorded from 30 participants (20 females, 10
males; age range = 18–24 years). All participants were right-
handed according to the Edinburgh inventory (Oldfield, 1997),
had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, provided informed
consent, and were paid €15. The study was conducted accord-
ing to the Declaration of Helsinki, and approval of the local
ethical committee was obtained.
Experimental design
Participants read one of two passages from Crick’s book The
Astonishing Hypothesis (1994; see the Supplemental Material
available online for the excerpts): The no-free-will group read
a passage claiming that scientists now recognize that free will
is an illusion; the control group read a passage on conscious-
ness that did not mention free will. To encourage participants
to read the material carefully, the instructor stated that a com-
prehension test would be administered at the end of the
experiment.
After reading the text, participants performed a variant of
the Libet task (Fig. 1; Banks & Isham, 2009; Libet et al., 1983;
Rigoni, Brass, & Sartori, 2010). In this task, participants sat in
front of a monitor and decided when to press a button. At the
start of each trial, a “clock” appeared on screen. After 500 ms,
a red cursor appeared at a random position on the clock and
started to rotate clockwise. Participants were instructed to
press the button with their right index finger whenever they
chose, after at least one rotation of the cursor. Auditory feed-
back followed each button press. The feedback could be deliv-
ered simultaneously or delayed by 20 ms, 40 ms, or 60 ms.
(The rationale behind the feedback manipulation is outlined in
the Supplemental Material.) After a random interval of 800 ms
to 1,500 ms after the button press, the cursor stopped. Partici-
pants were then asked to report the position of the cursor at the
time they initially decided to press the button.
Participants first practiced the task and then started the
experimental session (120 trials administered in two blocks).

0 ms 500 ms > 2,560 ms 800–1,500 ms Response-Dependent Interval

0–60 ms

Trial Starts Intention to Press Button Press Cursor Stops Intention Judgment
Fig. 1.  Illustration of the task. At the start of each trial, a “clock” appeared. After 500 ms, a red cursor appeared at a random position on
the clock and started to rotate clockwise. Participants were instructed to press a button with their right index finger at a time of their
own choosing, after at least one rotation of the cursor (i.e., > 2,560 ms). Auditory feedback followed each button press. The feedback was
delivered simultaneously or delayed by 20 ms, 40 ms, or 60 ms. After a random interval of 800 ms to 1,500 ms after the button was pressed,
the cursor stopped. Participants then used a mouse to position the cursor where it had been located when they initially decided to press
the button.

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The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not 615
Afterward, we administered the Free Will and Determinism
(FWD) scale (Rakos, Laurene, Skala, & Slane, 2008) to assess
whether the reading manipulation affected beliefs about free
will. Fourteen items of the FWD scale assess beliefs about
whether other people have free will (e.g., “Human beings
actively choose their actions and are responsible for the conse-
quences of those actions”); these items form the General FWD
subscale. The other eight items assess the free-will beliefs of
the individual taking the assessment (e.g., “My decisions are
influenced by a higher power”); these items form the Personal
FWD subscale. Participants also completed the Tangney Self-
Control scale (Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004) and the
Marlow-Crowne Social Desirability scale (Tatman, Swogger,
Love, & Cook, 2009).
EEG recordings
EEGs were recorded using a 30-channel elastic electrode cap
(Easycap, Herrsching, Germany), on which electrodes are
placed according to a modified 10-20 setting. The activity of
left and right mastoids was also recorded. Electrode imped-
ance was kept below 5 kΩ. Amplified voltages were sampled
at 512 Hz. Electrooculograms were recorded with bipolar
montage. Continuous EEG data were analyzed off-line using
Brain Vision Analyzer software (Brain Products, Munich,
Germany). The signal was rereferenced to the average signal
of the mastoids and filtered (notch filter of 50 Hz, band-pass
filter from 0.016 to 70 Hz, 24 dB/octave attenuation), and
epochs were time-locked to participants’ button press (using a
time window between 2,500 ms prior and 500 ms after the but-
ton press, with the interval between –2,500 ms and –2,300 ms
as a baseline).
Ocular movement artifacts were corrected using a
semiautomatic blink-detection algorithm (Gratton, Coles, &
Donchin, 1983). Epochs containing artifacts were rejected on
the basis of visual inspection and automatic artifact detection
(peak to peak < 100 µV). On average, there were 101 artifact-
free trials per participant (SD = 16.62; no-free-will group: M =
104 trials, SD = 13.26; control group: M = 98 trials, SD =
19.06). Data from 1 participant in the no-free-will group was
excluded from further analysis because it did not show a clear
negativity prior to the actual movement.
Results
Self-report scales
Scores on the Personal FWD subscale revealed a significant
difference between the two groups (no-free-will group: M =
29.79, SD = 3.95; control group: M = 33.6, SD = 3.22), t(27) =
–2.86, p < .01 (Fig. 2); this indicates that the manipulation
was effective in weakening beliefs in free will related to one-
self in the no-free-will group. Conversely, scores on the Gen-
eral FWD subscale did not differ between the two groups, p =
.26; the no-free-will group scored lower on this scale than the
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40 p < .01
Personal FWD Score
30
20
10
0
Control No Free Will
Group
Fig. 2.  Mean score on the Personal subscale of the Free Will and Determinism
scale (FWD; Rakos, Laurene, Skala, & Slane, 2008) as a function of group. Error
bars show standard deviations.
control group did, but the effect was only marginally signifi-
cant (control group: M = 80.93, SD = 10.13; no-free-will
group: M = 86.13, SD = 9.27), t(27) = –1.45, p = .08. Scores on
the Tangney Self-Control and the Marlow-Crowne Social
Desirability scales were not significantly different between the
two groups, all ps > .1.
Reported time of intentions (W judgments)
To test whether the experimental manipulation had an effect
on the reported time of intentions to respond, we performed an
ANOVA with group (control, no free will) as the independent
variable and W judgment as the dependent variable. The anal-
ysis revealed no significant effect, p = .41, W judgments—
control group: –242 ms before button press; no-free-will
group: –223 ms before button press; thus, it appears that the
free-will manipulation did not influence the reported time
of conscious intention to move (see the Supplemental
Material available online for the analysis of action-monitoring
processes).
EEG data
In a first analysis, the epoch from –2,300 to –100 ms before
the participant pressed the button was divided into 11 non-
overlapping 200-ms windows. The mean amplitude across all
time points in each window was then entered into a mixed
ANOVA with a 2 (group: control, no free will) × 11 (time
window) × 3 laterality (3, z, 4) × 3 region (centro-parietal,
central, fronto-central) design. When appropriate, Green-
house-Geisser correction was used.
The RP differed between the two groups, as revealed by the
Time × Group interaction, F(1, 10) = 2.353, p = .011, ηp2 =
.086; the RP had a larger amplitude in the control group than
in the no-free-will group. The analysis revealed a main effect
of time, F(10, 270) = 47.834, p < .0001, ηp2 = .639; this effect
reflected the slow negative-going increase in the amplitude of
the RP prior to the motor response. The increase of the RP was
not uniform across the scalp, as reflected by the interactions
between time and laterality, F(20, 540) = 8.029, p < .0001,
ηp2 = .229, and between time and region, F(20, 540) = 3.551,
616 Rigoni et al.

–12 Button Press

–10 Control Group

No-Free-Will Group
Voltage (µV)

–8

–6

–4

–2

–0

–2,500 –2,000 –1,500 –1,000 –500 0 500

3.5 µV –1,500 –1,300 –1,100 –900 –700 –500 –300

Time (ms)
0 µV

–3.5 µV
Fig. 3.  Average event-related potential (ERP) amplitude across all electrodes as a function of time and group. The gray area indicates
the time range during which the two groups started to differ significantly and the late readiness potential began. The red and the blue
circles in the ERP signals indicate the average times at which the intention to respond occurred in the two groups. The topographical
maps beneath the graph show the difference between the two groups in premovement brain activity.

p < .019, ηp2 = .116. The RP amplitude was larger over the
midline and over the sites contralateral to the hand movement
than over the ipsilateral sites, and it was more pronounced
over the central and fronto-central scalp locations than over
the centro-parietal scalp locations. These results are consistent
with findings reported in the literature on RPs (Shibasaki &
Hallett, 2006). The lack of significant Time × Laterality ×
Group and Time × Region × Group interactions revealed that
the RP had a similar scalp distribution in the two groups. No
other effects reached or approached significance, all ps > .1.
To determine the time at which RPs in the two groups
started to differ, we performed t tests on the 11 time windows
averaged over the electrodes in which the RP was maximal
(FCz, FC3, Cz, and C3). This analysis revealed that smaller
RP amplitudes in the no-free-will group than in the control
group appeared around –1,300 ms before button press (see the
topographical maps in Fig. 3), t(27) = 2.45, p = .01. The early
RP was then obtained by defining a window of interest from
–1,300 ms to –600 ms prior to the button press; this range
captured the activity reflecting only early motor preparatory
stages (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006). As predicted, the amplitude
of the early RP was lower in the no-free-will group than in the
control group (Fig. 3), F(1, 28) = 4.43, p < .05, ηp2 = .136.
To test whether the disbelief in free will was associated
with changes in the earlier stages of motor preparation, we
separately correlated the Personal FWD score with the early-
RP amplitude and the late-RP amplitude, which was measured
as the peak amplitude in the time window from –600 ms to
–100 ms (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006). Our hypothesis was that
disbelief in free will was associated with the amplitude of the
early RP, but not with that of the late RP. The analysis across
all participants confirmed this hypothesis: The Personal FWD
score correlated negatively with the early-RP amplitude,
r(29) = –.404, p < .05, but showed no correlation with the late
RP, p = .173.
Discussion
In the study reported here, we demonstrated that weakening
the belief in free will affects brain processes underlying early
stages of motor preparation. In particular, the early-RP ampli-
tude was lower in the no-free-will group than in the control
group (Fig. 3). Furthermore, the no-free-will group scored
lower on the Personal FWD subscale than the control group
did (Fig. 2). The degree of disbelief in free will correlated with
the amplitude of the early RPs—a finding indicating that RP
amplitudes were smaller for participants with weaker beliefs
in free will—but the degree of disbelief in free will showed no
correlation with late-RP amplitudes. This suggests that beliefs
in free will are related to early motor preparation rather than to
processes associated with motor execution. Furthermore, we
excluded the possibility that other brain processes unrelated
to volition and preparation to action, such as sensory pro-
cesses, were attenuated in the no-free-will group (see the

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The Brain Minds Whether We Believe in Free Will or Not 617
Supplemental Material available online). Finally, we showed
that inducing disbelief in free will does not affect people’s esti-
mates of when the intention to move entered their awareness.
This result is consistent with our observation that the belief
manipulation affected early-RP amplitudes but not late-RP
amplitudes. Indeed, other studies have reported that the W judg-
ment is associated with late stages of motor preparation, rather
than with the initial preparation for action (Haggard & Eimer,
1999; Haggard, Newman, & Magno, 1999).
Previous research has revealed that weakening beliefs in
self-efficacy, control, and agency influence complex behavior
(Ajzen 2002; Bandura, 1982, 1989). In particular, self-efficacy
beliefs— that is, people’s beliefs about their capabilities to
exercise control over events that affect their lives—determine
people’s level of effort: The stronger their belief in their capa-
bilities, the stronger and more persistent are their efforts (Ban-
dura, 1989). More recent research has tested whether inducing
disbelief in free will also affects how people behave in social
situations. These studies have demonstrated that disbelief in
free will leads to antisocial behavior (Baumeister et al., 2009;
Vohs & Schooler, 2008). The current study extends these find-
ings by showing that manipulating beliefs in free will also
influences low-level brain processes associated with the prepa-
ration of intentional action. Furthermore, our study shows that
disbelief in free will affects intentional action at a preconscious
level of motor preparation, because the effect of our belief
manipulation was evident more than 1 s before participants
consciously decided to act (Fig. 3). Currently, we can only
speculate about the precise mechanisms that mediate the influ-
ence of high-level beliefs on basic motor preparation. Reading
deterministic messages may induce participants to modify their
high-level beliefs on free will because they were swayed by a
rational argument. Alternatively, people may be emotionally
impressed by the rhetoric or by the message conveyed by the
text. In any case, undermining the idea that we are “the masters
of our own houses” (“der Herr im eigenen Haus”; Freud, 1917,
p. 11) presumably reduces the intentional effort we put into
action.
How disbelief in free will affects intentional effort is an
open question. One likely possibility is that this effect is medi-
ated by self-efficacy and perceived control (Ajzen, 2002;
Bandura, 1982, 1989). However, it is crucial to note that self-
efficacy and control beliefs refer to people’s beliefs about the
capability to control their own lives, but the anti-free-will
manipulation concerned a more metaphysical and determinis-
tic idea of control (i.e., people are not free because their genes
and the environment determine their behavior).
It is important to note that the influence of high-level beliefs
on basic motor processes might also help us understand
why such beliefs lead to antisocial and irresponsible behavior
(Baumeister et al., 2009; Vohs & Schooler, 2008). Putting less
effort into an action might weaken our sense of agency for these
actions and lead to a reduced feeling of responsibility. This
reduced feeling of responsibility would very likely result in
more careless and irresponsible behavior. The basic assumption
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of this explanation is that disbelief in free will influences peo-
ple’s sense of agency. It is interesting that authorship indicators
(e.g., action-effect consistency) have been shown to affect self-
reported agency (Ebert & Wegner, 2010). From this perspective,
we could hypothesize that dismissing the idea that people can
control their own actions acts as a nonauthorship indicator,
thereby decreasing people’s sense of authorship.
In sum, our results indicate that beliefs about free will can
change brain processes related to a very basic motor level, and
this suggests that abstract belief systems might have a much
more fundamental effect than most people would expect.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This work was supported by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds of Ghent
University, Belgium, and the Centro Universitario Internazionale,
Monte San Savino, Italy.
Supplemental Material
Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss.sagepub
.com/content/by/supplemental-data
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