Self-Esteem and Free will

There is a great web site called Barking Up The Wrong Tree. The author now writes for the weird magazine.

Positive Thinking:

“Believe in yourself” may be a cliché, but there’s a growing mass of scientific evidence showing us just how much of a difference it can make. In studying negotiation, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley concluded that those who strongly believed they could improve their skills had better results across the board.

Of course, it’s not as simple as saying, “I believe X ”. A University of Waterloo paper found : “Two experiments showed that among participants with low self-esteem, those who repeated a positive self-statement (‘I’m a lovable person’) felt worse than those who did not repeat the statement.”

So, your belief must be sincere.

Here is an article from a great site called Mind Hacks:

A delightful study just published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that belief in free will predicted job performance better than conscientiousness, belief in influence over life events and a commitment to a ‘Protestant work ethic’ where diligent labor is seen as a benefit in itself.

Seems like a pattern. Does the belief in free will also need to be sincere? In there a link with the belief in free will and positive self-esteem?