Does belief in free will influence biological motion perception?

ABSTRACT: Previous research suggests that belief in free will correlates with intentionality attribution. However, whether belief in free will is also related to more basic social processes is unknown. Based on evidence that biological motion contains intentionality cues that observers spontaneously extract, we investigate whether people who believe more in free will, or in related constructs, such as dualism and determinism, would be better at picking up such cues and therefore at detecting biological agents hidden in noise, or would be more inclined to detect intentionality cues and therefore to detect biological agents even when there are none. Signal detection theory was used to measure participants' ability to detect biological motion from scrambled background noise (d') and their response bias

SUBMITTER: Peng W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9281248 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature