The existence of free will has been the subject of debate for centuries among scholars (Libet et al., 1999; Kane, 2005; Baer et al., 2008). Meanwhile, laypersons also have different opinions about free will (Paulhus and Carey, 2011). The present study seeks not to find the ultimate answer in the debate on free will but to explore the practical consequences of individual differences in the belief in free will among laypersons.

In the past decade, psychology has begun to demonstrate the effect of laypersons’ belief in free will on their behavior using correlational or/and experimental methods (for a review, see Baumeister and Monroe, 2014). In correlational investigations, researchers have often used self-reported questionnaires to measure laypersons’ belief in free will (e.g., the FAD-Plus; Paulhus and Carey, 2011) and then correlate it with other measures. These studies have found that a stronger belief in free will is associated with better work performance (Stillman et al., 2010), better academic achievement (Feldman et al., 2016), less conformity (Alquist et al., 2013), and less cheating behavior (Vohs and Schooler, 2008). In experimental investigations, researchers often ask participants to read texts that encourage disbelief in free will and then observe the changes in participants’ behavior. These studies have found that participants induced to disbelieve in free will are more likely to cheat (Vohs and Schooler, 2008), help less and have higher aggression (Baumeister et al., 2009), have less self-control (Rigoni et al., 2012), and present higher conformity (Alquist et al., 2013). In summary, the belief in free will generally predicts positive outcomes and personality traits (Crescioni et al., 2016).

An important research direction regarding the practical consequences of the belief in free will is to investigate the relationship between this belief and happiness. Happiness, also referred to as subjective well-being (SWB) in academic psychology, is necessary for good individual lives and a good society, and research on it is fundamentally essential to behavioral sciences (Diener et al., 2003). If simply believing in free will could help people pursue happiness and be happier, psychologists may develop training programs to increase SWB by facilitating laypersons’ belief in free will. Theoretically, believing in free will means believing that people can freely act to accomplish personal goals and improve life quality. This belief may have benefits on SWB in two aspects. First, the belief in free will may cause an individual to have an increased level of perceived autonomy, which further yielded enhanced SWB (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Second, previous studies suggested that the belief in free will may make an individual more willing to exert self-control (Rigoni et al., 2012) and perform better (Stillman et al., 2010; Feldman et al., 2016). For example, if an individual believes that s/he can freely act to achieve her/his desire, there might be more incentive for self-control and deliberate effort, which further lead to success. Given that both self-control and success are vital predictors of the SWB (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Hofmann et al., 2014), the belief in free will may associated with enhanced SWB.

Until now, only three empirical studies have reported the association between the belief in free will and SWB. Two of these studies indicated that the belief in free will was positively correlated with life satisfaction among college students (r = 0.17, N = 234; Bergner and Ramon, 2013) and adult employees (r = 0.32, N = 65; Stillman et al., 2010), although testing this association was not the main purpose of their studies. The third study purposefully tested this association (Crescioni et al., 2016). The study indicated that the belief in free will was positively correlated with global subjective happiness (r = 0.56) and life satisfaction (r = 0.59) among adults (N = 44). Additionally, regression analyses conducted on another independent sample of adults (N = 77) indicated that the belief in free will still predicted life satisfaction, even after controlling for two other agency-related variables (i.e., locus of control and implicit theory). Altogether, these studies provide valuable evidence to support the link between the belief in free will and SWB.

However, all three of the abovementioned studies that tested the relationship between the belief in free will and SWB were conducted with US participants (Stillman et al., 2010; Bergner and Ramon, 2013; Crescioni et al., 2016). Therefore, it is worth examining whether this effect is fundamental to human nature or specific to contemporary Western culture. Prior research has revealed that individuals from the West and those from Eastern Asia have some different core ideas and conceptualizations of free will. Specifically, compared with Eastern Asians, Westerners attribute more value to individual freedom (vs. society rule), personal choice (vs. group goals), and independence (vs. interdependence) (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Kashima et al., 1995; Nisbett, 2003). Accordingly, the behavioral outcomes of the belief in free will might be also different across cultures. Therefore, it is intriguing to ask whether the laypersons’ belief in free will has a positive influence on SWB among individuals from collectivistic cultures, such as China.

In the investigation reported here, we examined the association between the belief in free will and SWB in two studies. In Study 1, we used a self-reported questionnaire to measure the belief in free will and to correlate it with cognitive well-being (life satisfaction) and affective well-being (positive and negative affect). In Study 2, we used a two-alternative forced choice philosophical question regarding the existence of free will to directly classify the participants into two categories: free will believers and determinism believers. Then, we compared their scores on the aforementioned SWB measures.

The main goal of Study 1 was to perform an initial test of the hypothesis that the belief in free will is associated with SWB by assessing its association with life satisfaction and positive and negative affect.

Moreover, if the belief in free will and one or all indicators of SWB were correlated, we would further test whether these associations held when the Big Five personality traits (Costa and McCrae, 1992) were controlled. It is well established that Big Five personality traits are powerful predictors of SWB. For instance, a meta-analysis revealed that all of the Big Five personality traits are correlated with SWB (r: 0.11 ∼ 0.22) (DeNeve and Cooper, 1998). Another meta-analysis estimated that the Big Five personality traits may account for as much as 39% (or 63%, disattenuated of measurement error) of SWB variance (Steel et al., 2008). Two studies reported associations between the belief in free will and Big Five personality traits (Stillman et al., 2010; Paulhus and Carey, 2011). Specifically, Paulhus and Carey (2011) found that the belief in free will, measured by the FAD-Plus, was positively correlated with extraversion and agreeableness, and Stillman et al. (2010) reported that the belief in free will, measured by the FAD (a previous version of the FAD-Plus), was positively correlated with the other three Big Five facets, i.e., openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Taken together, the Big Five personality traits simultaneously correlate with the belief in free will and SWB. Thus, if we observe the association between the belief in free will and SWB, we cannot exclude a simple possibility: the measure of the belief in free will itself contains items overlapping with Big Five personality traits. Therefore, to strictly examine the association between the belief in free will and SWB, it is necessary to control for the Big Five personality traits.

One important limitation of Study 1 is that the FAD-Plus may measure psychological traits other than the belief in free will, and these traits may also correlate with the SWB. For example, one FAD-Plus item (i.e., “Criminals are totally responsible for the bad things they do”) seemingly overlaps with moral responsibility. Another FAD-Plus item (i.e., “Strength of mind can always overcome the body’s desires”) seemingly reflects the self-control. Thus, although Study 1 ruled out the influence of the Big Five personality traits, the observed association between the belief in free will and SWB may still due to the “unpurified” nature of the FAD-Plus.

Therefore, it is necessary to measure the belief in free will in a direct and pure way that excludes any possibly confounding factors. To fulfill this goal, Study 2 followed the method developed by Nichols and Knobe (2007) to measure the belief in free will. That is, we used one two-alternative forced choice philosophical question regarding the existence of free will to directly classify the participants into two categories: free will believers and determinism believers. Importantly, this question did not use abstract philosophical terms but created concrete scenarios to facilitate laypersons’ understanding. Then, we directly compare the SWB levels of free will believers and determinism believers.

In this investigation, we explored the association between the belief in free will and SWB, including cognitive well-being (life satisfaction) and affective well-being (positive and negative affect), among two large independent cohorts of Chinese adolescents in high school. In Study 1, the belief in free will, measured by the FAD-Plus, was associated with higher life satisfaction and PA, controlling for the Big Five personality traits. In Study 2, we directly classified participants as free will believers (85%) and determinism believers (15%) based on a single philosophical question regarding the existence of free will. We found that free will believers had higher life satisfaction and PA, but lower NA than determinism believers. Admittedly, the association pattern between the belief in free will and SWB was not totally consistent across Studies 1 and 2, which may have been caused by different measures of the belief in free will and other methodological issues (e.g., different participant groups or sampling errors). However, both studies consistently revealed that the belief in free will was associated with higher life satisfaction and PA among Chinese adolescents.

One critical and novel finding of the current study is that the belief in free will still predicts SWB (at least life satisfaction and PA) in the Chinese culture. The Chinese culture is often labeled as a collectivistic culture that does not emphasize the concepts related to the belief in free will, such as freedom, personal choice, and independence (Markus and Kitayama, 1991; Kashima et al., 1995). Moreover, unlike Western philosophy, traditional Chinese philosophy seldom directly studies the concept of free will (Feng, 1990). For instance, there is almost no mention of free will or freedom in one of the famous classic describing the history of Chinese philosophy, A History of Chinese Philosophy by the widely recognized Chinese Philosophers Feng (1983). However, consistent with a previous study conducted on Chinese undergraduate students (Sarkissian et al., 2010), Study 2 of the current investigation suggested that most Chinese adolescents do believe in free will. Moreover, our study revealed that this belief still has a positive effect on SWB in Chinese and implied the possibility of the cultural generality of the effect. This evidence further implies that the belief in free will and its benefit might be a universal human nature. Future studies could test these hypotheses with different cultures.

Moreover, the methodology of our study differs from previous investigations in three other distinct ways. First, compared with previous investigations, we used relatively comprehensive measures to index the belief in free will. It is worth mentioning that no previous studies have directly compared the SWB of free will and determinism believers, which was performed in Study 2 of the current investigation. Therefore, this result provides converging evidence to support the previous observation of the association between the belief in free will measured by the FAD-Plus and SWB (Stillman et al., 2010; Bergner and Ramon, 2013; Crescioni et al., 2016).

Second, compared with previous investigations, we used relatively comprehensive measures to index SWB (Diener et al., 2003), including both cognitive (life satisfaction) and affective well-being (positive and negative affect) simultaneously. As Diener et al. (1999) recommended, major components of SWB should be assessed separately, and this could help in understanding the different relationships among predictor variables and the components of SWB. Interestingly, we indeed found that the belief in free will had different influences on these different indices in both Study 1 and Study 2. These results are not surprising because it is known that these indicators are relatively independent components (e.g., Watson et al., 1988). However, future studies are needed to explain the mechanisms underlying these dissociations.

Third, the present investigation extended the previous findings from the adult population to the adolescent population. Although the philosophical concept of free will might be difficult for adolescents to understand, they may also possess opinions about free will, at least on the layperson level. For example, high school students may have different understandings of and attitudes towards the statement “People have complete control over the decisions they make,” an item designed to measure laypersons’ belief in free will from the FAD-Plus (Paulhus and Carey, 2011), and they could also understand the differences between two concrete scenarios in Study 2. Thus, our study invites a broader investigation of whether adolescents’ beliefs in free will have similar behavioral consequences as adults’ beliefs in free will, such as academic performance (Feldman et al., 2016), moral behavior (Vohs and Schooler, 2008), and self-control (Rigoni et al., 2012).

Finally, the current investigation has one major limitation that deserves consideration. That is, we did not provide evidence¹ that can support the causal relationship between the belief in free will and SWB. Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that SWB causes an increased belief in free will. Future investigations may consider using experimental or longitudinal designs to explore the causal direction in this association.

Free will is not only an abstract concept for philosophers; it also plays a vital role in laypersons’ daily life. In the present study, we found that a stronger belief in free will was associated with increased life satisfaction and PA in two independent large samples of Chinese adolescents. Our investigation provides evidence supporting the cultural generality of the positive effects of believing in free will on SWB.

The Medical Ethics Committee of Dali University approved the study. Prior to testing, we obtained written consent from all participants and their parents.

JL conceived of and designed the study; SW, YZ, FK, and JL contributed to data collection; CL, SW, and JL analyzed data and wrote the paper. All authors reviewed and approved the manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.