ReviewFrontiers in psychology2026
Measuring beliefs about free will: a critical review of the Free Will Inventory.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
This review critically evaluates the Free Will Inventory (FWI), a 29-item self-report instrument assessing beliefs about free will, determinism, and dualism, by situating it within broader philosophical and psychological frameworks and prior attempts to measure free will beliefs. To identify relevant peer-reviewed studies, a structured literature search using systematic principles was conducted to locate research that has validated or critiqued the FWI. The review also considers how free will belief is conceptualised and operationalised within the FWI, and the implications this has for interpreting its scores. The reviewed evidence indicates generally acceptable internal reliability across multiple international samples, although no published studies have assessed test-retest reliability. Existing findings support aspects of construct, face, and content validity, while criterion validity remains largely unexplored, and several methodological considerations - including the potential influence of social desirability, demand characteristics, and cultural context - have been noted. Overall, the literature suggests that the FWI is a conceptually grounded and moderately reliable measure of free will beliefs, but further research is needed to clarify its temporal stability, cross-cultural robustness, practical applications, and the conceptual interpretation of its scores.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.