•  10
    Direct and indirect freedom in addiction: Folk free will and blame judgments are sensitive to the choice history of drug users
    with Matthew Taylor, Heather M. Maranges, and Susan K. Chen
    Consciousness and Cognition 94 (C): 103170. 2021.
  •  14
    Unjustifiably Irresponsible: The Effects of Social Roles on Attributions of Intent
    Social Psychological and Personality Science 12 (8): 1446-1456. 2021.
    How do people’s social roles change others’ perceptions of their intentions to cause harm? Three preregistered vignette-based experiments (N = 788) manipulated the social role of someone causing harm and measured how intentional people thought the harm was. Results indicate that people judge harmful consequences as intentional when they think the actor unjustifiably caused harm. Social roles were shown to alter intention judgments by making people responsible for preventing harm (thereby enderin…Read more
  •  5
    The science of consciousness must include its more advanced forms
    with E. J. Masicampo and Roy F. Baumeister
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39. 2016.
    Morsella et al. argue that science should not focus on high forms of consciousness. We disagree. An understanding of high forms of consciousness is invaluable to the scientific study of consciousness. Moreover, it poses challenges to the passive frame theory. Specifically, it challenges the notions that conscious thoughts are not connected and that consciousness serves skeletomotor conflict only.
  •  17
    Unjustified side effects were strongly intended: Taboo tradeoffs and the side-effect effect
    with Roy Baumeister
    Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 68 83-92. 2017.
    The side-effect effect is the seemingly irrational tendency for people to say harmful side effects were more intentional than helpful side effects of the same action. But the tendency may not be irrational. According to the Tradeoffs Justification Model, judgments of a person's intentions to cause harm depend on how that person decided to act, and on whether the reasons for acting justified causing the harmful consequences. Across three experiments (N = 660), unjustified harms were viewed as mor…Read more
  •  12
    Self-Organization as Conceptual Key to Understanding Free Will
    with Roy F. Baumeister
    American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 2 (3): 44-46. 2011.
  •  50
    Ordinary people think free will is a lack of constraint, not the presence of a soul
    with Roy F. Baumeister and Alfred R. Mele
    Consciousness and Cognition 60 133-151. 2018.
    Four experiments supported the hypothesis that ordinary people understand free will as meaning unconstrained choice, not having a soul. People consistently rated free will as being high unless reduced by internal constraints (i.e., things that impaired people’s mental abilities to make choices) or external constraints (i.e., situations that hampered people’s abilities to choose and act as they desired). Scientific paradigms that have been argued to disprove free will were seen as reducing, but u…Read more