AO1

• Determinism is the view that an individual's behaviour is controlled by either internal or external forces, meaning behaviour should be predictable
• Free will is the belief that individuals have control over their own actions
• Hard determination is the view that all behaviour can be predicted and there is no free will. The two are incompatible
• Soft determinism allows some elements of free will
• Types of Determinism:

  • Biological determinism
  • Environmental determinism
  • psychic determinism
  • scientific determinsin
• Biological determinism — The view that behaviour is always caused by internal biological forces beyond our control, such as the influence of genes.
• Environmental determinism — The belief that behaviour is caused by previous experience through classical and operant conditioning.
• Psychic determination — Freud’s theory of personality suggests that adult behaviour is determined by a mix of innate drives and early experience.
• The importance of scientific research — scientific research is based on the belief that all events have a cause. An independent variable is manipulated to have an effect on the dependent variable. Through repeating the research under controlled conditions
• The Humanistic Approach — Humanistic psychologists argue that self-determinism is a necessary part of human behaviour. Rogers (1959) claimed that as long as an individual remains controlled by other people or other things they cannot take responsibility for their own behaviour and therefore cannot change it.
• Moral responsibility — The basis is that an individual is in charge of their own actions. The law states that children and those who are mentally ill do not have this responsibility but other than this, there is an assumption that normal adult behaviour is self determined. www.pmt.education Therefore, humans are accountable for their behaviour regardless of innate factors or early experience.