Title:
The Free Will-Determinism Scale.
Author(s):
Stroessner and Green.
Variable:
Belief in free will or determinism.
Description:
The Free Will-Determinism Scale (Stroessner & Green, 1990) is a 17-item self-report scale with some items adapted from earlier work by Viney, Waldman, and Barchilon (1982). It measures the degree to which an individual believes in free will or determinism. The items are presented in a Likert-type format with responses ranging from (1) Strongly agree to (9) Strongly disagree, so that possible scores on the scale can range between 17 and 153. The scale yields three scores philosophical determinism, Psychosocial determinism and Libertarianism. The score on Religious-philosophical determinism is obtained by summing the responses to items 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, and 17. The score on Psychosocial determinism is the sum of responses on items 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 16. The Libertarianism score is determined by summing the responses to items 3, 4, 9, and 10. The score on the belief in determinism is calculated by reverse scoring and summing the Libertarianism items 3, 4, 9, and 10. Sample items include ‘My choices are limited by God's plan for my life’ (Religious-philosophical determinism item-6), ‘I will have free will all of my life’ (Psychosocial determinism item-3), and ‘My exercise of free will is limited by my upbringing’ (Libertarianism item-1).
Sample
The Free Will-Determinism Scale was developed for use among both clinical and non-clinical samples. For example, Stroessner and Green (1990) administered the scale to USA College students. Navrátil, McGuckin, Shevlin and Lewis (2000) employed the scale among a sample of Northern Irish University students.
Reliability
Internal Consistency: Stroessner and Green (1990) initially constructed a 19-item scale with some items adapted from earlier work by Viney et al. (1982). These items were subsequently factor analysed using Principal Axes with Varimax rotation to determine the internal validity of the scale among data from 507 American University students. Three distinct factors emerged accounting for 34% of the variance, each conforming to one of the predicted dimensions: seven items on a
Libertarianism. The internal consistency of the three sub-scales constructed on the basis of loadings in the factor analysis were .69 for the four items regarding Libertarianism, .64 for the seven items relating to Psychosocial determinism and .87 for the six Religious-philosophical determinism items. However, Navrátil, et al. (2000) failed to replicate the three-factor solution found by Stroessner and Green (1990) among a sample of Northern Irish students, using
confirmatory factor analysis.
Validity
Stroessner and Green (1990) provide tentative evidence of the validity of the final 17-item scale. First, with respect to the relationship between free will and an attitudes toward punishment measure (Stroessner & Green, 1990) containing two sub-scales, that of Rehabilitation and Punitiveness. There was no significant association between scores on the three Free Will Determinism sub-scales and Rehabilitation scores. However, there were significant associations between Punitiveness scores and the sub-scales scores of Religious-philosophical determinism (r=-.14, p=.002), Psychosocial determinism (r=-.06, p=.10) and Libertarianism (r=.08, p=.04). Moreover, respondents with higher scores on Psychosocial determinism or Religious-philosophical determinism or Libertarianism were found to be more Punitive than those with lower scores. Second, concerning the relationship between the Free Will-Determinism Scale and a Locus of Control Scale (James, 1973), a significant association was found between Locus of Control scores and Religious-philosophical determinism scores (r=.09, p=.03) and Psychosocial determinism scores (r=.40, p=.001). However, no significant association was found between Locus of Control scores and Libertarianism scores (r=.03, p=.28). In addition high scores on either type of
determinism were associated with more external Locus of Control scores.
Location
Stroessner, S. J., & Green, C. W. (1990). Effects of belief in free will or determinism on attitudes toward punishment and locus of control. Journal of Social Psychology, 130, 789-799.
Results and Comment
The questions and issues that The Free Will-Determinism Scale raises provide a potentially rich source of future research with issues relating to such diverse aspects of personality as religious experience, locus of control, attribution of responsibility and blame, and the limitations of self-control. However, at present the psychometric properties presented by Stroessner and Green (1990), among a sample of American University students, only offer tentavive support for the reliability and validity of the scale. Notwithstanding this, the findings of Navrátil et al. (2000), among a sample of Northern Irish University student, does question the generalisbility of
new item pool to tap the present three factors. Such work is worthy given the potential value of a reliable and valid measure of free will to researchers.
Publications (chronological)
James, W.H. (1973). Internal versus external control of reinforcement as a basic variable in learning theory. In J.P. Robinson, & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (pp. 237-243). Ann Arbor, MI: Survey Research Center for Social Research.
Navaratil, M. McGuckin, C., Shevlin, M &. Lewis, C.A. (May, 2000.). The Free Will-Determinism Scale: Confirmatory factor analysis. Poster presented at the Annual Conference of the Northern Ireland Branch of the The British Psychological Society, Carrigart, Republic of Ireland.
Stroessner, S. J., & Green, C. W. (1990). Effects of belief in free will or determinism on attitudes toward punishment and locus of control. Journal of Social Psychology, 130, 789-799.
Viney, W., Waldman, D. A., & Barchilon, J. (1982). Attitudes toward punishment in relation to beliefs in free will and determinism. Human Relations, 35, 939-950.
Reviewers
Christopher Alan Lewis, Mark Shevlin, Conor McGuckin, School of Psychology and
Aside from the initial work of Stroessner and Green (1990), there has been no subsequent use of the scale. This is somewhat surprising given the rich potential of hypotheses available for researchers to test. For example, the relationship of free will to various individual differences variables such as religious attitude and experience, personality, political attitude, attribution of responsibility and blame, and self-control. However, before such work is undertaken the psychometric properties of the Free Will-Determinism Scale need to be examined further. A first step in this process is trying to replicate the factor structure of the scale among a different sample.
The aim of the present study was to confirm the three-factor model of the Free Will-Determinism Scale among a sample of Northern Irish University Undergraduate students.
METHOD
Sample
The sample consisted of 106 university undergraduates attending the University of Ulster at Magee College. The mean age of respondents was 29 years with a standard deviation of 9 years. The ages ranged between 19 and 51 years. There were 21 males (20%) and 85 females (80%).
Analysis
To test the dimensionality of the Free Will-Determinism Scale a sample covariance matrix was computed from the sample raw data using PRELIS2.3 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1999a). A three factor confirmatory factor analytic model was specified and estimated using LISREL8.3 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1999b). Each item was specified to load on one factor (Religious-philosophical determinism: 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, and 17; Psychosocial determinism 1, 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 16;
Libertarianism 3, 4, 9, and 10). The factors were specified to be correlated and these correlations were estimated. A path diagram of the model is shown in Figure 1.
The circles represent the latent variables or factors. The boxes denote the observed variables, or items. The arrows connecting the factors and observed variables are factor loadings. The curved arrows connecting the factors denote inter-factor correlations. The unique variance associated with each item is denoted by the symbol .
RESULTS
Among the present sample of Northern Irish University students the mean scores on the three sub-scales of the Free Will-Determinism Scale were calculated: Religious-philosophical determinism (mean=36.95, sd=9.36), Psychosocial determinism (mean=36.70, sd=9.15), and Libertarianism (mean=17.59, sd=6.55). As Stroessner and Green (1990) do not provide any mean scores for their sample of American University students no cross-cultural comparisons can be made.
The fit of the three factor model was assessed using the chi-square (where an associated probability value greater than 0.05 indicates acceptable fit), the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA: Steiger, 1990), and the standardised root mean square residual (SRMR) (where a value less than 0.05 indicates acceptable fit). The fit indices showed that the three factor model was not an acceptable explanation of the sample data (2=221, df=116, p=>0.05; RMSEA=0.093,
SRMR=0.099). These indices clearly indicate that the three-factor solution proposed by Stroessner and Green (1990) is not an adequate description of the sample data from Northern Irish
