Some have argued that advances in the science of human decision-making, particularly research on automaticity and unconscious priming, would ultimately thwart our commonsense understanding of free will and moral responsibility. Do people interpret this research as a threat to their self-understanding as free and responsible agents? We approached this question by seeing how feelings of surprise mediate the relationship between personal sense of control and third-personal attributions of free will and responsibility. Across three studies (N = 1,516) we found that people with a greater sense of personal control were more surprised at the results of experiments showing effects of unconscious priming on moral behavior. Surprise differentially mediated the relationship between personal control and attributions of free will and responsibility: people attributed less free will and more responsibility as they were more surprised. This suggests that people exhibit defensive thinking with respect to responsibility, but not free will.

一些人认为，人类决策科学的进步，特别是对自动性和无意识启动的研究，最终会阻碍我们对自由意志和道德责任的常识性理解。人们是否将这项研究视为对他们作为自由和负责任的代理人的自我理解的威胁？我们通过观察惊讶感如何调节个人控制感与自由意志和责任的第三人称归因之间的关系来解决这个问题。在三项研究中（N = 1,516）我们发现，个人控制感更强的人对显示无意识启动对道德行为影响的实验结果更加惊讶。惊讶在个人控制与自由意志和责任归因之间的关系中起着不同的中介作用：人们越惊讶，自由意志就越少，责任就越多。这表明人们在责任方面表现出防御性思维，而不是自由意志。