Does belief in free will affect behavior?

Cognitive Daily has a post on research associated with the question here. A recent study by Vohs and Schooler (“The Value of Believing in Free Will” Encouraging Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating,” Psychological Science 19(1) 2008, 49-54) has revealed that students are more likely to cheat when they read determinism statements.

A couple of comments. First, I’d like to see the other 14 “determinism statements” the study used (and compare them against the “free will” and “neutral” statements). The one statement the post cites, “a belief in free will contradicts the known fact that the universe is governed by lawful principles of science,” seems to goad subjects into denying science. I imagine that people are reluctant to do that. The experimental design seems otherwise sound.

Second, mightn’t the study prove that the cheating subjects (“cheaters”) believe in free will? Each of the statements the cheaters read were about determinism. The cheaters took more money than those who had read “free will” or “neutral” statements and self scored the exam, and they received more money than those who had read determinism statements and the experimenter scored the exam. The cheaters could either cheat or not cheat. By not cheating, the cheater could have felt constrained by the outside pressure that they should not cheat. After all, society prescribes such a standard and that’s the standard they know they ought to follow.  They’ve just read determinism statements, and these statements may seem to the cheaters to be inconsistent with the belief in the ability to choose. So, the subject cheats thereby undermining the external constraint.