Free, connected, and meaningful: Free will beliefs promote meaningfulness through belongingness

Previous research suggests that belief in free will helps to inhibit anti-social impulses. As a result, belief in free will enables the creation of and participation in society. Consistently, we propose that belief in free will is associated with a sense of belongingness. As previous research indicates that belongingness is a source of meaning in life, we predicted that belief in free will in turn facilitates increased meaningfulness via feelings of belongingness. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two preliminary, small-scale studies and a large-scale study using individual difference data. As expected, in Study 1, the positive association between free will beliefs and meaningfulness was mediated by feelings of belongingness. In Study 2, this effect emerged using alternative measures of free will belief and belongingness, adding to the findings’ reliability and validity. In Study 3, these effects were again replicated with a large sample of participants using separate and composite measures of free will belief and belongingness. Finally, we conducted multiple group comparisons and meta-analyses. These confirmed that the proposed correlations and indirect effects were significant and consistent across studies. Our findings provide important understandings of the functions and consequences of free will beliefs.