free will & determinism

• Free will - assumes humans are free to choose their behaviour and that influences (biological or environmental) can be rejected at will.
• Hard determinism - behaviour is caused by events outside an individual’s control
• Soft determinism - all events including human behaviour have causes but behaviour can also be determined by our conscious choices in the absence of coercion
• Biological determinism - behaviour is caused by internal biological factors e.g genetics, neurochemistry, brain structure and hormones
• Psychic determinism - unconscious forces and innate drives control behaviour.
• Social/environmental determinism - behaviour is controlled by social factors such as cultural norms, group pressures and expectations.
• The notion that human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws is consistent with the aims of science
• the value of deterministic research is that the prediction and control of human behaviours has led to the developments of treatments, therapies and behavioural interventions that have benefited many e.g psychotherapeutic drug treatments in controlling and managing sz.
• The hard determinist stance - that individual choice is not the cause of behaviour - is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. Offenders are held responsible for their actions.
• despite its scientific credentials, determinism as an approach is unfalsifiable. It is based on the idea that causes of behaviour will always exist, even though they may not have been found out yet, which is impossible to prove wrong.
• Research suggests people who have internal LOC, believing they have a high degree of influence over events and their behaviour, tend to be more mentally healthy
• Roberts et al (2000) demonstrated that adolescents with a strong belief in fatalism were at greater risk to developing depression
• Roberts and research into LOC suggest that even if we do not have free will, the fact we think we do may have a positive impact.
• everyday experiences implies we constantly exercise free will which gives validity to the concept.
• An argument against free will comes from neurological studies. Libet (1985) and Chun Siong Soon et al (2008) have demonstrated that the brain activity that determines the outcome of simple choices may predate our knowledge of having made such a choice.
• Researchers found the activity related to whether to press a button with the left or right hand occurs in the brain up to 10 seconds before pps report being consciously aware of making the decision.
• Bandura argued that although environmental factors in learning are key, we are free to choose who or what to attend to and when to perform certain behaviours.