Free will is the idea that we are self-determining . There are biological & environmental; influences on our behaviour - but free will implies we can reject them. This is the view of the humanistic approach
Hard determinism (fatalism): all human action has a cause. What we do is dictated by internal or external forces that we can’t control
Soft determinism: all human action has a cause but people have conscious mental control over behaviour.
Biological determinism = control from physiological, genetic & hormonal processes.
The biological approach:
↳ Physiological processes aren’t under conscious control, (e.g. influence of autonomic nervous system on anxiety)
↳ Genetic factors may determine many behaviours & characteristics (e.g. mental disorders)
↳ Hormones may determine behaviour (e.g. the role of testosterone in aggressive behaviour)
Environmental determinism = we are determined by conditioning.
The behaviourist approach popularised the idea of environmental determinism - Skinner said free will is ‘an illusion’ and argued all behaviour is the result of conditioning. Our experience of ‘choice’ is just the sum total of reinforcement contingencies that have acted upon us throughout our lives. Our behaviour has been shaped by environmental events & agents of socialisation (parents, teachers, etc)
Psych determinism = we are directed by unconscious conflicts.
Freud thought free will is an illusion but placed emphasis on biological drives & instincts underpinning psychological responses rather than conditioning. Freud’s psychic determinism sees behaviour as determined & directed by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood. For example, even a seemingly random ‘slip of the tongue’ is determined by the unconscious
Science seeks to find causal explanations where one thing is determined by another:
A basic principle of science is that every event has a cause & these can be explained with general laws. Knowledge of these allows scientists to predict & control events.
The behaviour of Z is determined by X and Y.
In psychology, the laboratory experiment lets researchers simulate the conditions of the test tube & remove all other extraneous variables to demonstrate a causal effect.
Strength is that determinism is consistent with the aims of science: The notion that human behaviour is orderly & obeys laws places psychology on equal footing with other more established sciences, increasing its credibility. Another strength is that the prediction & control of human behaviour has led to the development of treatments & therapies (e.g. drug treatments to manage schizophrenia). The experience of schizophrenia suggests some behaviours are determined
Limitation is that it’s not consistent with the legal system: Offenders are morally accountable for their actions in law. Only in extreme circumstances are juries instructed to act with leniency. Another limitation is that determinism as an approach to scientific enquiry is not falsifiable. It is based on the idea that causes of behaviour will always exist, even though they may not yet have been found
Strength is a compromise in the middle-ground position: Approaches in psychology that have a cognitive element (e.g. social learning theory) are those which tend to adopt a soft determinist position. Bandura argued that although environmental factors in learning are key, we are free to choose who or what to attend to & when to perform certain behaviours. This middle-ground approach is helpful in understanding aspects of human behaviour which aren’t a straightforward choice between free will & determinism (e.g. learning)