Research on the folk psychology of free will suggests that people believe free will is incompatible with determinism and that human decision-making cannot be exhaustively characterized by physical processes. Some suggest that certain elements of Western cultural history, especially Christianity, have helped to entrench these beliefs in the folk conceptual economy. Thus, on the basis of this explanation, one should expect to find three things: (1) a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, (2) that people with predominantly incompatibilist commitments are likely to exhibit stronger dualist beliefs than people with predominantly compatibilist commitments, and (3) people who self-identify as Christians are more likely to be dualists and incompatibilists than people who do not self-identify as Christians. We present the results of two studies (n = 378) that challenge two of these expectations. While we do find a significant correlation between belief in dualism and belief in free will, we found no significant difference in dualist tendencies between compatibilists and incompatibilists. Moreover, we found that self-identifying as Christian did not significantly predict preference for a particular metaphysical conception of free will. This calls into question assumptions about the relationship between beliefs about free will, dualism, and Christianity.

对自由意志的民间心理学的研究表明，人们相信自由意志与决定论不相容，人类决策不能完全由物理过程表征。一些人认为，西方文化史的某些元素，尤其是基督教，有助于在民间概念经济中巩固这些信仰。因此，基于这一解释，人们应该期待发现三件事：（1）二元论的信仰与自由意志的信仰之间存在显着相关性，（2）主要是不相容承诺的人可能表现出比二元论更强的二元论信念。以相容论为主的人，以及 (3) 自我认同为基督徒的人更有可能是二元论者和不相容的人比不自我认同为基督徒的人。我们展示了挑战其中两项预期的两项研究 ( n = 378)的结果。虽然我们确实发现二元论信仰与自由意志信仰之间存在显着相关性，但我们发现相容论者和不相容论者之间的二元论倾向没有显着差异。此外，我们发现自我认同为基督徒并没有显着预测对自由意志的特定形而上学概念的偏好。这对关于自由意志、二元论和基督教信仰之间关系的假设提出了质疑。