Willpower or Choice? A Within-Country, Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Free Will Judgments

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Does the language we speak influence how we think about free will? Previous work has often compared free will judgments across linguistic and cultural groups without isolating language from broader cultural differences. More recent work has found cross-cultural variation, but these designs could not determine whether language itself contributed to that variation. Here we report two exploratory studies in which language was varied while culture was held relatively constant. In Study 1, monolingual English- and French-speaking Canadians rated comics depicting choice and willpower on whether they represent free will. The English phrase free will makes will, and so willpower, salient; the French phrase libre arbitre makes choice salient (as in “to arbitrate”). If language shapes the concept, English-speakers should associate free will relatively more with willpower, and French-speakers relatively more with choice. They did not: the two groups showed almost exactly the same preference for choice, and equivalence testing rules out anythingbeyond a small difference. Study 2 asked why choice comics were favored. Participants rated thesame comics on choice, willpower, doing what one wants, and absence of constraints. Across thenine comics, free will judgments closely tracked ratings of doing what one wants and of choice, but tracked absence of constraints less closely. Free will might therefore be associated most closely with choice and doing what one wants.

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Oliver, A., Rimkevičius, P., Cardoso, R. C., Brass, M., & Maoz, U. (2026). Willpower or Choice? A Within-Country, Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Free Will Judgments. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/edth2_v2