Cards (12)

  • free will
    high external validity as it has real-life application, Robert et al found teenagers with an internal LOC (resp for their own actions) are more likely to have better mental health than those with external LOC, supporting the idea that free will can help us determine what controls our life and like humanists suggest, we have the freedom to reject forces that are out of our control
  • free will
    even if humans do not have free will, the fact we think we do has many implications for behaviour eg Rotter proposed people who believe external forces control their behaviour suffer more from the effects of stress
  • free will
    introspection upon our decisions seems to indicate free choice which gives face validity to the concept of freewill 
  • free will
    does not explain other mental health disorders eg OCD, internal factors such as low levels of serotonin can have a bigger influence on our behaviour and we cannot simply choose to 'reject' other influences such as symptoms
  • free will
    candidate genes that make us more prone to develop a disorder cannot be explained by free will, only by biological determinism
  • determinism
    inconsistent with society's ideas of self-control and responsibility that underlie all our moral and legal assumptions
  • determinism
    serves as an excuse for those trying to justify a crime they may have committed eg criminal may be claiming to suffer from mental disorders by faking symptoms such as hallucinations or delusions (schizophrenia symptoms)
  • determinism
    Berkowitz, is an American serial killer who pretended to hear voices which 'demanded him to kill' and later on confessed he used it as an excuse to get a lighter sentence, showing determinism can contradict law principles which believe every individual should take responsibility for their actions
  • determinism
    biological determinism gives dangerous individuals who deviate from the norms an alabi and it has proven to cause ethical implications
  • determinism
    illusion of freewill is shattered very easily by mental disorders eg OCD (lose control of their thoughts and actions) and psychoactive drugs (these produce hallucinations)
  • determinism
    psychology can be described as deterministic as we are constantly attempting to create general laws of behaviour through controlling it (manipulating IV) and predicting it (measuring effect of DV) in labs. This means we have the chance to establish cause and effect whilst controlling extraneous variables, making psychology more credible and scientific, and has also lead to development of treatments and therapies 
  • free will
    Humanistic is the only approach that explicitly states we have free will but its position on the topic is somewhat incoherent. On one hand it argues we are in control of our actions but on the other our behaviour is determined by the way other people treat us (whether we feel we are valued and respected without reservation by those around us)