Is Disbelief in Free Will Bad for Society?

The June issue of Scientific American contains an article by Azim Shariff and Kathleen Vohs about the social impact of skepticism about free will (if you can't pay $5.99 for the issue, you can read the full article for free at Learned Citizen). Based on some surveys and studies that have been done, it seems two things could happen to people when they doubt free will - they could want less prison time for criminals, but they could also put too much hot sauce in the food of people they don't like. In other words, they could get less vengeful in theory but more vengeful in action.

The authors write that as more people loose belief in free will, one of three social effects could result from this: we could get a more merciful justice system that emphasizes crime prevention over retribution; we could descend into anarchy; or, as Voltaire said about God, we might feel we have to re-invent belief in free will.

The third possibility sounds a little fascinating and reminds me of Kant's philosophy of religion during his critical period; but I question whether it's best to promote belief in an idea that the scientific community supports less and less.

I grant that ideas can rightly be weighed in part by their social effect. But I wonder if there are long-term costs, including opportunity costs, to keeping foundational beliefs that science increasingly puts into question. The social benefit of having lots of free will believers who are individual responsibility, law and order types might be outweighed by the social cost of not basing our justice system on an accurate view of human nature. These social costs could include higher rates of recidivism, the costs born by the victims of that recidivism, and the public costs of pursuing, trying, and imprisoning re-offenders.