- Free will is the idea that we are self-determining
- Humans are free to choose thoughts/actions
- Biological/environmental influences on behaviour but we can reject them
- Behaviour has no cause/is unpredictable
- View of the humanistic approach
- Determinism: behaviour is shaped/controlled by internal and external forces
- Hard determinism
- Behaviour is completely out of our control
- All human behaviour has a cause that should be possible to identify
- All behaviour is predictable
- Compatible with the aims of science
- Soft determinism
- All behaviour has a cause
- People have conscious mental control over behaviour (James 1890)
- Behaviour is predictable to an extent
- Some free will to make choices
- Hard determinism
- Biological determinism
- The biological approach
- Control from internal biological factors
- Physiological processes are not under conscious control
- g. influence of the ANS on stress/anxiety
- Genetic factors may determine many behaviours/characteristics
- g. mental disorders
- Hormones may determine behaviour
- g. role of testosterone in aggressive behaviour
- Physiological processes are not under conscious control
- Environmental determinism
- Popularised by behaviourist approach
- Skinner: all behaviour is the result of conditioning
- Experience of choice is just the total sum of reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us during our lives
- Illusion of free will but behaviour is shaped by environmental events/agents of socialisation
- g. parents, teachers, institutions
- Psychic determinism
- Freud: emphasis on biological drives/instincts underpinning psychological responses
- Determined/directed by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood
- g. even a ‘slip of the tongue’ can be determined by the unconscious
- Science seeks causal explanations
- Basic principle: every event has a cause that can explained with general laws
- Allows scientists to predict/control events
- One thing is determined by another
- Lab experiments
- Researchers remove extraneous variables to demonstrate a causal effect
- Basic principle: every event has a cause that can explained with general laws
- Determinism: consistent with aims of science
- Human behaviour is orderly/obeys laws
- Greater scientific credibility
- Prediction/control of human behaviour has led to the development of treatments/therapies
- g. psychoactive drugs to manage schizophrenia
- Experience of schizophrenia suggests some behaviours are determined
- Loss of control over thoughts/behaviour
- No one chooses to have schizophrenia
- Human behaviour is orderly/obeys laws
- Hard determinism: not consistent with legal system
- Offenders held morally accountable for their actions
- Only instructed to act with leniency in extreme circumstances
- g. Law of Diminished Responsibility in cases of mental illness
- Determinism is not falsifiable
- Based on the idea that causes of behaviour will always exist, even though they may not have been found yet
- Impossible to disprove
- Not as scientific as it first appears
- Free will: we make choices in everyday life
- Everyday experience gives us the impression that we are constantly making choices
- Gives free will face validity
- It makes logical sense
- Even if we do not have free will, thinking we do might have a positive impact on the mind/behaviour
- g. Roberts et al (2000)
- Adolescents with strong beliefs in in fatalism were more at risk from depression
- g. Roberts et al (2000)