Issues and Debates

• what is free will?

  - the perspective that humans have the ability to make choices and are not determined / forced to act according to biological or external factors

  - argues humans are self-determining - free to choose how to think and act

  - accepts we are influenced by biological + external forces but assumes we can choose to reject the influence of these forces

  - the principle that we get to choose our own destiny / fate
• what is determinism?


  - the perspective that human behaviour is controlled by internal and external forces rather than a person's desire to do something
• what is hard determinism?

  - the fatalist perspective that suggests all human behaviour has an internal or external cause that we cannot control, and that free will is not possible

  - this position is compatible with science -- aims to establish general causal laws that control or determine our behaviour. Hard determinists argue that if all human behaviour is the product of an internal or external causation force, we should be able to identify and explain these causes to explain behaviour
• what is soft determinism?

  - the perspective that all human behaviour has causes but humans do also have the ability to make some conscious choices not pre-determined

  - put forward by philosopher James. Scientists must explain the many determining forces that influence us, but it does not take away from the freedom we have to make rational conscious choices in everyday life

  - it is in contrast with hard determinism -- suggests we have an element of free will
• what is environmental determinism?

  - the perspective that behaviour is caused by external forces within the environment that we cannot control

  - includes reward + punishment (conditioning), upbringing, family influences

  - Skinner thought free will was an illusion + Watson thought all behaviour is due to conditioning

  - feeling of choice is merely a consequence of reinforcement throughout our lives

  - we think we are acting independently but instead behaviour is completely decided by environmental forces
• what is psychic determinism?

  - the perspective that behaviour is controlled by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood that we have no control over

  - free will is seen as an illusion -- biological drives + instincts we are unaware of determine behaviour

  - no such thing as an accident : paraphraxes can be explained through the unconscious
• what is the scientific position?

  - one of the basic assumptions of science is causality, everything has a cause (cause-effect)

  - scientists love causality because it allows general laws to be established and phenomena to be predicted or controlled

  - this is the same in psychology - lab experiments are used to control extraneous variables to allow cause-effect relationships between the IV and DV to be discovered. This leads to general laws predicting human behaviour + ultimately control future events

  - determinism assumes that behaviour has a cause - it is determined by someone else. Free will is much harder to measure and control. Scientists favour determinism
• what are arguments for determinism?

  - consistent with scientific aims + places psychology in greater esteem with other science

  - practical application : scientific research that suggests we can predict + control human behaviour has value -- led to treatments + behaviour modification hat has had a large positive impact

  - experiential support : experience of mental disorders can support determinism e.g. in schizophrenia people experience a loss of control over their thoughts

  -- equally, no one would choose to have a mental disorder so supports the idea behaviour is pre-determined
• what are arguments against determinism?

  - not consistent with our legal system as offenders are held accountable regardless of biological / environmental factors. Lacks face validity

  -- law of diminished responsibility only applies in cases of self-defence, temporary insanity + if a person is not of sound mind

  - determinism as a perspective is unfalsifiable despite being the perspective that aligns with science. You can never disprove the idea that there are causes of behaviour - you may just not know those causes yet. May not be as scientific as it looks to be
• What are the arguments for free will?

  Face validity: it fits with our everyday experience that makes us feel like we have a choice in our behaviour

  Research support from social influence: those with a high internal locus of control more mentally healthy. Those with fatalist views (determinist /high external locus of control) at significantly greater risk of developing depression even if we do not have free will, acting as if we do has a positive impact on behaviour
• what are arguments against free will?

  - contradictory evidence : Chun Siong Soon et al found activity related to deciding whether to press a button with right or left hand occurs in brain up to 10 seconds before p.s report being consciously aware of such a decision -- have we really got free will
• what is interactionism?


  - soft determinism may be the best compromise

  - agreement that although internal / external forces are key, we choose who or what to pay attention to and when to perform behaviours
• what is the holism vs reductionism debate?


  - holistic explanations look at the whole person and all influences on them to explain behaviour

  - reductionist explanations aim to break down human behaviour into its constituent (smaller) parts

  - unlike nature vs nature this one is not on a continuum -- as soon as you break down a holistic approach it is no longer holistic

  - reductionism falls on a continuum due to levels of explanations

  - the debate is looking at a preference for reductionism or holism and which approaches take what side
• what is holism?


  - the holistic approach comes from the Gestalt psychologists working in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. This group declared hat 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'

  - this sums up the holistic view i.e. that it is only meaningful to look at the whole person and all the things that influence behaviour

  - knowing parts of the person does not understand the essence of that person and their individual experience

  - favour qualitative methods -- interpretivist themes analysed

  - humanistic approach - argues that human react to stem;li as an organised whole, rather than a set of stimulus-response links. As an approach, it used qualitative methods to investigate all aspects of the individual, as well as the interactions between people
• what is reductionism?


  - reductionists look at individual explanations. This involves breaking human behaviour down into component parts and finding the simplest (lowest) level of explanation

  - there are different ways to explain behaviour - some are more reductionist than others
• what is biological reductionism?

  - this is the idea that all behaviour can be explained by physiological, neural, biochemical, evolutionary and genetic influences (the biological approach)

  - assumes we are all biological organisms -- all behaviour must be at some level biological

  - this approach has certainly gone some way to explaining a variety of behaviours, including the biochemical basis of some mental disorders

  - often works backwards - SSRIs have been effective at treating OCD so assume low serotonin caused OCD

  - key assumption of the biological approach
• what is environmental reductionism?

  - key assumption of the behaviourist approach - all behaviour is due to learning and can be traced back to simple stimulus-response links we can measure in the lab

  - extreme behaviourism ignores cognitive processes (thoughts). It sees the mind as a 'black box' -- irrelevant to the understanding of behaviour so only focuses on observable behaviour
• what are arguments for holism?

  - holistic treatments have been created e.g. client centred therapies that have been developed through view of whole person

  - gives more complete understanding of behaviour + understands wider social context
• what are arguments against holism?

  - not scientific

  - cannot be used in all areas of psychology e.g. it is impossible to find a genetic cause without taking a reductionist approach + cannot understand the relative importance of a factor of behaviour
• what are arguments for reductionism?


  - scientific : reductionism is a more scientific approach - means theories / hypotheses can be tested allowing for psychology to be seen as more credible due to rigorous methods

  -- also allows causes for mental illnesses to be discovered + treatments to be created
• what are arguments against reductionism?

  - oversimplified : ignore wider influences on an individuals behaviour as the social context that gives behaviour meaning

  -- can be accused of pointing a finger - what are the different causes of behaviour rather than understand whole context
• what is interactionism?


  - the interactionist approach considers how different levels of explanation may combine and interact

  - taking a reductionist approach helps us study the individual influences on behaviour - we need to combine these influences and how they interact to gain a fuller understanding
• what is gender bias?

  - when considering human behaviour, bias is a tendency to treat one individual or group in a different way from others

  - in the context of gender bias, psychological research or theory may offer a view that does not justifiably represent the experience and behaviour of men or women
• what is universality?


  - any underlying characteristic of human beings that is capable of being applied to all, despite differences of experience of upbringing

  - gender bias and culture bias threaten the universality of findings in psychology
• what is androcentricism?


  - male-centred ; when 'normal' behaviour is judged according to a male standard

  - (meaning that female behaviour is often judged to be 'abnormal' or 'deficient' by comparison)
• what is alpha gender bias?

  - exaggerates or overestimates differences between the sexes

  - differences are typically presented as real and enduring ; fixed and inevitable

  - although these differences may occasionally heighten the value of women, they are more likely to devalue females in relation to their male counterparts
• what is beta gender bias?

  - ignores, minimises or underestimates differences between women

  - this often occurs when female participants are not included as part of the research process and then it is assumed that research findings apply equally to both sexes
• how is androcentricism a consequence of beta bias?

  - if our understanding of what counts as 'normal' behaviour is being drawn from research that involves all-male samples, then any behaviour that deviates from this standard is likely to be judged as 'abnormal', 'inferior' or 'deficient' by comparison

  - at best, this leads to female behaviour being misunderstood, and at worst, pathologies - that is, taken as a sign of psychological instability disorder
• what are implications of gender bias?

  - may created misleading assumptions about female behaviour, fail to challenge negative stereotypes and validate discriminatory practices

  - it may provide a scientific 'justification' to deny women opportunities within the workplace or in wider society

  - in any domain in which men set the standard for normalcy, as Tavris puts it, 'it becomes normal for women to feel abnormal'

  - so gender bias in research is not just a methodological problem but may have damaging consequences which affect the lives and prospects of women
• what is sexism within the research process?

  - a lack of women appointed at senior research level means that female concerns may not be reflected in the research questions asked

  - male researchers are more likely to have their work published and studies which find evidence of gender differences are more likely to appear in journal articles than those that do not

  - also, the lab experiment - seen as the cornerstone of 'scientific' enquiry in psychology - may further disadvantage women

  - female participants are placed in an inequitable relationship with a (usually male) researcher who has the power to label them unreasonable, irrational and unable to complete complex tasks

  - this means that psychology may be guilty of supporting a form of institutional sexism that creates bias in theory and research
• what is reflexivity in gender bias?

  - many modern researchers are beginning to recognise the effect their own values and assumptions have on the nature of their work

  - rather than seeing such bias as a problem that may threaten the objective status of their work, they embrace it as a crucial and critical aspect of the research process in general

  - for instance, in their study of the lack of women in executive positions in accountancy firms, Dambrin and Lambert include reflection on how their gender-related experiences influence their reading of events

  - such as reflexivity is an important development in psychology and may lead to greater awareness of the role of personal biases in shaping research in the future
• what is feminist psychology?

  - feminist commentators such as Worrell and Remer have put forward a number of criteria that should be adhered to in order to avoid gender bias in research

  - women should be studied within meaningful real life contexts and genuinely participate in real life contexts, and genuinely participate in research rather than comparison made between men and women

  - there should be greater emphasis placed on collaborative research methods that collect qualitative data, as opposed to numerical, data
• what is essentialism?


  - many of the gender differences reported by psychologists over the years are based on an essentialist perspective : that the gender difference in question is inevitable and 'fixed' in nature

  - Walkerdine reports how, in the 1930s, 'scientific' research revealed how intellectual activity - such as attending university - would shrivel a women's ovaries and harm her chances of giving birth

  - such essentialist accounts in psychology are often politically motivated arguments disguised as biological 'facts'

  - this often creates a 'double standard' in the way that the same behaviour is viewed from a male and female perspective
• what is the nature nurture debate?


  - looks at the relative importance of a nature approach vs a nurture approach

  - more recently psychologists understand it is the interaction between nature vs nurture that is important, but how do they interact?

  - it is almost impossible to determine the relative importance of each factor - impossible to disentangle

  -- even in the womb, environmental influences are interacting with biological processes

  -- high concordance rate in identical twins, is it due to shared genetics or shared environment?
• what is the nurture perspective?

  - behaviour is the result of environmental influences

  - nurture can include many environmental influences :

  -- prenatal experiences

  -- postnatal experiences

  -- the cultural and historical context of behaviour

  - empiricism - developed from John Locke 'tabula rasa'

  - key feature of the behaviourist approach
• what is the nature perspective?

  - behaviour is the result of biological influences

  - importance of heredity - inherited innate biological processes

  - e.g. genes, genetic transmission, nervous system, neurotransmitters, brain structure + function

  - nativism - key feature of the biological approach

  - heritability can be measured and represented through a correlation co-efficient - the extent to which a trait is inherited
• what is the interactionist approach?


  - the view that nature and nurture interact, i.e. we are a product of both genetics and environmental influences

  - important thing is to study how the two interact and influence each other - the main component of the debate now

  - examples of this approach include the diathesis stress model and epigenetics
• how does nature affect nurture - constructivism?


  - constructivism suggests that people seek out and construct and environment that suits their 'nature'

  - Plomin calls this 'niche-picking
• how does nurture affect nature - epigenetics?

  - epigenetics is a change in genetic activity brought on by environmental forces

  - environmental events leave epigenetic 'marks' on our DNA. These 'marks' tell our bodies which genes to ignore and which to use -- likely to be passed on to the next generation

  - this may explain why one identical twin may develop schizophrenia and the other doesn't

  - e.g. PKU = rare genetic disorder causing severe learning difficulties if genotype present

  - however, the disorder may not be expressed if these individuals follow a rusticated, low protein diet
• how does nurture affect nature - biopsychology?

  - Maguire et al

  - London taxi drivers had significantly more volume in the posterior hippocampus compared to controls

  - the longer they had been a taxi driver, the larger the hippocampus volume

  - the experience of driving caused physical changes to the brain