Free will vs determinism

• Determinism


  The belief that behaviour is controlled by external or internal factors acting upon the individual and beyond their control
• Types of determinism


  • Biological determinism
  • Environmental determinism
  • Psychic determination
• 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, resulting in unconscious conflicts over which we have no control
• Free will


  Each individual has the power to make choices about their behaviour, without being determined by internal or external forces beyond their control
• Hard determinism


  The view that all behaviour can be predicted, according to the action of internal and external forces beyond our control, and so there can be no free will
• Conscious conflicts


  Conflicts over which we have no control
• Freud's psychosexual stages of development

  Each stage is characterised by a conflict which, if unresolved, leads to fixation in adulthood
• Anal expulsive personalities


  Result of fixation at the anal stage
• Humanistic approach


  Common feature is the belief in free will
• Behaviourism


  Suggests that all behaviour is the product of classical and operant conditioning
• Biological approach


  Sees behaviour as the product of genes and neurochemistry
• Social learning theory


  Suggests that behaviour is the product of vicarious reinforcement and mediational processes
• Soft determinism


  A version of determinism that allows for some element of free will and suggests that all events, including human behaviour, has a cause
• Cognitive approach


  Suggests that individuals can reason and make decisions within the limits of their cognitive system
• Scientific research


  Based on the belief that all events have a cause, where an independent variable is manipulated to have an effect on the dependent variable
• 100% genetic determinism is unlikely to be found for any behaviour
• Studies that compare monozygotic twins have found 80% similarity for intelligence and 40% for depression
• Concordance rates for MZ twins are often higher than for siblings, despite both sharing 50% of genes, may be due to MZ twins being more likely to share the same environment
• Determinism simplifies human behaviour
• A determinist position may be used for people to try and justify behaviours if they have committed a crime
• 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
• A person may choose to do something but these choices are determined by previous reinforcement contingencies, as suggested by the behaviourist approach
• Benjamin Libet et al (1983) recorded activity in motor areas of the brain before the person had a conscious awareness to move their finger
• Chun Soon et al (2008) found activity in the prefrontal cortex up to 10 seconds before a person was aware of their decision to act
• This suggests that the motor activity preceding movement occurred before the conscious decision was made, and so implies that all behaviour is pre-determined by up to 10 seconds
• In everyday scenarios, we appear to be making our own decisions, so the idea of free will has good face validity
• Robert et al. found that adolescents with an internal locus of control are less likely to develop depression and are more likely to have better mental health, compared to those with an external locus of control