Is there a relationship between how one views free will – a concept related to issues of moral responsibility and agency – and one’s political opinions? To answer this question, I constructed a survey based on questions from the SOM Institute’s opinion polls and the FAD-Plus index for measuring free will beliefs. The survey asked a sample of 348 Swedish speakers about their views on free will, political ideology, party preferences, and policy preferences regarding punishment and redistribution. Responses were analyzed through a series of regression models. The results show that a stronger belief in free will is positively correlated with party preference and ideology, with right-leaning voters having a generally stronger sense of free will. Furthermore, the study also finds that stronger belief in free is positively correlated with retributive views on punishment, support for harsher sentencing, and support for capital punishment, while negatively correlated with support for a proposal that the state should increase its efforts to reduce income inequality. The adjusted R2 values of the regression models illustrate that views on free will explain a greater deal of variance in self-assigned ideological placement and party preference than common demographic variables often used to predict political leanings, such as gender, age, income, and education level. The study concludes by pointing out possible directions for future research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-444065 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Östervall, Albin |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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