free will vs determinism

• (1)Free will refers to the belief that people have the power to make decisions on how to behave
• s determinism is the view that human behaviour is shaped by either internal forces e.g innate biology or genes, or environmental factors both of which we have no control over
• Most psychological research is determinism as it allows them to study cause and effect by isolating variables and looking for patterns, however they all consider free will to a certain extent.
• Hard determinism completely rules out the idea of free will e.g the biological approach
• Soft determinism suggests that we have control over choices.
• Biological determinism is the idea that behaviour is determined by genetic inheritance, neurotransmitters or neural structures, e.g aggression is caused by the MAOA gene.
• Skinner suggest that behaviour is determined by environmental factors and is the result of conditioning processes, this is called the environmental determinism.
• Psychic determinism- that adult behaviour is determined by innate biological drives and early life experiences i.e internal and external forces shape behaviour
• It is doubtful that 100% genetic determinism will ever be found for any behaviour as studies investigating similarity in behaviours of twins have never found complete similarity
• concordance rates between MZ twins for aggression is only 35%, and drops to 12% in DZ twins. This suggest that genes influence behaviour, however concordance rates are not 100% despite MZ twins sharing the same genetic information.
• Concordance rates are not 100 percent in twins most likely because its likely the environment also influences behaviour
• deterministic behaviours often oversimplify human behaviour. It implies that behaviour is out of our control and we cannot change it, which is not the case for most people
• Deterministic approach- may be appropriate for explaining animals that act more instinctively but human behaviour is governed more by conscious decision making
• law practitioners and psychologists being against a deterministic explanation for behaviour as it could act as a defence against criminal convictions. Because it implies that the behaviour was out of the individual's control.
• Humanistic psychologists like Rogers and Maslow believe that taking responsibility for behaviour is a necessary part of human behaviour and without it personal growth and improvement cant occur
• Rogers and marslow- idea is that in order to improve you must take moral responsibility for your actions regardless of internal or external forces.
• Skinner argued that simply choosing between different courses of action may not be free will but could give the illusion of being free will
• skinner- point was that we might choose a particular car to buy, however these choices were determined by previous reinforcement factors outside of our control.
• The free will side of the debate suffered a significant blow after research using brain imaging techniques found activity in the brain before the behaviour even occurred
• Although other psychologists have argued that this brain activity is simply a readiness to act rather than an intention to move.