Free will and determinism

• free will - the idea that we are self determining and free to choose our thoughts and actions
• determinism - no free will in human behaviour
• hard determinism - fatalism - suggests all human behaviour has identifiable causes, assuming all behaviour is pre determined by internal and external forces we cannot control
• soft determinism - people have some free will and conscious of mental control over the way they behave even if there is a cause
• Biological determinism - emphasises unconscious physiological/neurological brain processes eg the autonomic nervous system during stress and anxiety.

  • emphasises genes and hormones which we cannot control
• environmental determinism - skinner argues all behaviour is the result of conditioning and our experiences of choice is due to reinforcement

  • behaviour is shaped by the environment and agents of socialisation eg parents and teachers
• psychic determinism - freud argues behaviour is determined by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood, there is no such ting as an accident as everything can be explained by the underlying authority of the unconscious
• what do we mean by scientific emphasis on causal explanations?

  • the laboratory experiment enables researchers to simulate to conditions of a certain environment and remove all other extraneous variables in an attempt to precisely control and predict human behaviour
  • allows us to control all variables except IV which helps establish cause and effect
  • any changes to the DV must therefore be due to the IV
• free will strengths:

  + face validity - we exercise free will making choices every day

  + research support - people have an internal locus of control. Roberts found that teenagers with a strong belief in fatalism believed their lives were determined by external causes
• free will limitations:

  • some research shows that basic experiences of free will are decided and determined by the brain before we become aware of them
• determinism strengths:

  + highly scientific therefore objective, provides reliable results

  + real life application - development of therapies, treatments eg psychotherapeutic drug treatment for schiziophrenia
• determinism limitations:

  • not consistent with the legal system, in our of law offenders are held morally accountable for their actions
  • unfalsifiable - other causes of behaviour may not have been found yet, difficult to test and measure free will