PAPER REVIEW By M.Karthikeyan 
A Comparison of Nepalese and American Children’s Concepts of Free Will Nadia Chernyak (nc98@cornell.edu), Tamar Kushnir (tk397@cornell.edu), Katherine M. Sullivan (kms278@cornell.edu), & Qi Wang (qw33 @cornell.edu) Department of Human Development, Martha Van Rensselaer Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 USA . The main focus of the authors is to bring out the the cultural,social,moral and developmental differences in the concept of free will ,if any ,in American and Nepalese children and to analyse the results obtained. An individual is doing what he or she is doing because they fall along his/her desires , and it is human nature to do what one desires.I could have done otherwise if I wanted to .( Baer, Kaufman, & Baumeister, 2008) .Such an idea of free will is being put forth by the authors.The concept of free will is something that is engrained into every individual by birth and certain aspects of free will are highly suscep?ble to fluctuate with ?me,upbringing and external influences while some stand the test of ?me,societal and moral factors. Free will knowingly or unknowingly is being implemented by us in our day to day ac?ons. (Nichols & Knobe, 2007; Phillips & Knobe, 2009; Pizarro & Helzer, 2010; Vohs & Schooler, 2008).The authors have carried out their experiments on 4-11 year old children from the collec?vis?c(constraint driven decisions) socie?es of Nepal and the individualis?c(choice driven decisions) socie?es of America.The author’s work also has certain essence from the works of (Sarkissian, Cha?erjee, De Brigard, Knobe, Nichols, & Sirker, in press) on the universal similarity of basic free will thoughts.I commend their choice of American and Nepalese children due to the wide differences in familial,social ,moral and cultural obligaitons between people these two na?ons.Nepalese have a strong belief in constraints,respect for tradi?on and have deep oriental thinking , whereas their American counterparts construe even mundane daily simple ac?ons as choice driven.The wide age range of children taken is jus?fied by the fact that cultural differences increase with ?me(Miller, 1984; Wang 2004). Pre Experimental analysis The authors divided decision making situa?ons, encountered by children into three categories. 1. Simple Unconstrained Ac?ons 2. Physically and Mentally constrained ac?ons 3. Socially constrained ac?ons Based on the above points the authors hypothesised the following : 1. Grassroot level,fundamental early developing no?ons of the complementarity of freedom and constraint will be intrinsic to both American and Nepalese children.That unconstrained ac?ons are freely chosen while physically and mentally constrained ac?ons are not. 2. A clear demarca?on should be seen in choices with increasing social , cultural influences and with age. 3. The authors are basically trying to prove that there is some commonality between Nepalese and American children regarding simple unconstrained ac?ons.And as the children grow up Nepalese children tend to abstain from devia?ng from the rules and regula?ons dictated by the family and culture whereas in the case of Americans there is an increase in the rebellious a?tude , tendency to ques?on conven?ons and to lay more emphasis on freedom of choice. Experimental Procedure The authors used a real clever approach of developing a ques?onnaire of 9 ques?ons that tackled all aspects of free will that they wanted to test and was also highly appealing to ?ny tots aged 4-11. Every ques?on tested two opinions , one was whether a person can do an act and the second was whether the person will do the act. Fi?y-two Nepalese children aged 4-11 (M = 8.02, SD = 1.94) par?cipated and 32 American children aged 4-11 (M = 7.06, SD = 1.83) were used.All the children were interviewed in a peaceful environment with no external influence on results involved.Americans were tested in English and the Nepalese in their na?ve language.Given below are the 9 categories and one ques?on in each of them.The first three are universal whereas the remaining six are age and culture dependent no?on based ques?ons. Descrip?on: D:\Academics\CogSci\fw1.JPG Logically speaking the ques?on evokes two responses , one is the decision making process (Free will judgement) and the other is the decision implementa?on process (Ac?on Predic?on). DECISION MADE 1 DECISION IMPLEMENTED yes(1) or no(0) 0 DECISION IMPLEMENTED yes(1) or no(0) A?er the experiment was performed these were the results noted: Results 1. Analysis of results for the first three ques?ons that focussed on basic universal and common no?ons of free will. Descrip?on: D:\Academics\CogSci\fw2.JPG (Nadia Chenyak,Tamar Kushnir,Katherine M.Sullivan,Qi Wang) It is pre?y obvious from the above figure that both Nepalese and American children share the intui?ve idea that simple free ac?ons are free and truly constrained ac?ons are not. American (29/32; 91%) and Nepalese children (46/52; 88%) answered that the characters had the Free Will in performing simple unconstrained ac?ons, Binomial p’s < .001. In contrast, the majority of both American and Nepalese children felt that the characters did not have the Free Will to act against Physical Laws (American: 30/32 (94%); Nepalese: 35/52 (67%)), or against Mental Constraints (American: 22/32 (69%); Nepalese: 34/52 (65%)), Binomial p’s ≤ .05. Thus, children in both cultures share the complementary intui?ons that some ac?ons are freely willed and some are not free. 2. The results of ques?ons that targeted social and culturally constrained opinions were then analysed. A regression analysis was performed with free will judgement score (0-6) as the dependent variable and culture , age and age x culture interac?on as predictor varibales. Each child had an over all score between 0-6 for free will judgements and the values had a reliability of 0.80. As expected there was a significant effect of both culture and age as shown below. There was a significant main effect of culture (β = 9.39, SE = 1.70), t(79) = 5.51, p < .001, a significant main effect of age (β = .86, SE = .18), t(79) = 4.67, p < .001, and a significant culture x age interac?on (β = -1.26, SE = .23), t(79) = -5.60, p < .001. We can easily observe that there is a tendency to value free will amongst Americans while it was the opposite in the case of Nepalese. (Nadia Chenyak,Tamar Kushnir,Katherine M.Sullivan,Qi Wang) Similarly a regression analysis was performed in the case of ac?on predic?on scores.That is how does age, culture and agexculture predictor values affect what children think about whether an ac?on must be done or not. For the American children, age posi?vely predicted Ac?on predic?on scores (β = .58, SE = .19), t(29) = 3.13, p < .01.Cronbach value = 0.71.This indicates that with increase in age Americans children’s respect for social values kept decreasing whereas it almost remained the same(ini?al stage value) for the Nepalese. (Nadia Chenyak,Tamar Kushnir,Katherine M.Sullivan,Qi Wang) Interpreting the results 1. The analysis pin points the fact that there is some intrinsic basic concept of free will that is present in every individual by birth.Children in both US and Nepal state that simple acts like choosing a pen instead of a pencil are free and acts viola?ng physical and mental acts are not. 2. The authors also proved that younger Nepali children were more likely to break social norms , conven?ons and rules compared to the older ones. 3. American children naturally acted on their preferences compared to Their Nepali counterparts and this tendency increased with age (Liu, Wellman, & Tardif, & Sabbagh, 2006; Wellman & Miller, 2006). 4. A no?on that is common between both cultures is that with ?me we realise that responsibility and obliga?on are the mo?vators of ac?on even if they contradict with our preferences. Some drawbacks of the analysis in my opinion would be the very small sample used and the immaturity involved.Second the decision making processes that the children were subjected to were highly simple whereas in reality we deal with bigger problems that involve free will.There is a lot of difference between free will decisions made though?ully and free will decisions made in seconds!! But I do appreciate the fact that the authors brought out the concepts of culture,society and age as factors for free will ac?on determinism in a highly succinct and simple manner. References cited by the authors Baer, J., Kaufman, J. C., & Baumeister, R. F. (Eds.) (2008). Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Chernyak, N., Kushnir, T., & Wellman, H. M. (2010). Developing notions of free will: Preschoolers’ understanding of how intangible constraints bind their freedom of choice. Proceedings of theThirty-Second Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2602-2606. Haggard, P. & Tsakiris, M. (2009). The experience of agency: Feeling, judgment and responsibility. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 242-246.Kushnir, T., Wellman, H. M., & Chernyak, N. (2009). Preschoolers’ understanding of freedom of choice. Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 87-92. Liu, D., Wellman, H. 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Moral judgments and intuitions about freedom. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 30-36.Pizarro, D. A. & Helzer, E. (2010). Freedom of the will and stubborn moralism. In R. F. Baumeister, A.R. Mele, & K. D. Vohs (Eds.) Free Will and Consciousness: How Might They Work? New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sarkissian, H., Chatterjee, A.,De Brigard, F., Knobe, J., Nichols, S., & Sirker, S. (in press). Is belief in free will a cultural universal? Mind & Language.Savani, K., Markus, H. R., Naidu, N. V. R., Kumar, S., & Berlia, V. (2010). What counts as a choice? U.S. Americans are more likely than Indians to construe actions as choices. Psychological Science, 21, 391-398. Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W.(2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19, 49-54. Wang, Q. (2004). The emergence ofcultural self-construct: Autobiographical memory and self-description in American and Chinese children. 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