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

Matthew Taylor; Heather M Maranges; Susan K Chen; Andrew J Vonasch

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103170

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

Conscious Cogn. 2021 Sep:94:103170. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103170. Epub 2021 Jul 25.

Authors

Matthew Taylor¹, Heather M Maranges², Susan K Chen³, Andrew J Vonasch⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States. Electronic address: mct15@my.fsu.edu.
² Department of Psychology and Social Justice Centre, Concordia University, Canada.
³ Department of Psychology, York University, Canada.
⁴ School of Psychology, Speech, and Hearing, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

PMID: 34320424
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103170

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Addiction; Blame; Free will; Moral judgments.

MeSH terms

Drug Users*
Freedom
Humans
Judgment*
Morals
Personal Autonomy