Free Will and Determinism Flashcards
The free will-determinsim debate
Behaviour a matter of free will or the product of internal and/or external influences
Most approaches in psychology are deterministic but disagree on the causes of human behaviour
Free will
Self-determining
The notion of free will suggests humans are free to make choices
There are biological and environmental influences on our behaviour but free will implies we reject them
This is the view of the humanistic approach
Evaluation: Free Will + Face validity
+ Everyday experience gives the impression that we are constantly exercising free will through the choices we make on any given day
+ This makes cognitive sense
Evaluation: Free Will + ILOC
+ 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 a significantly greater risk of developing depression
+ This suggests that even if we do not have free will the fact that we think we do may have a positive impact on mind and behaviour
Evaluation: Free Will - Evidence against
- Neurological studies of decision making have revealed evidence against free will
- Libet (1958) and Soon et al. (2008) have shown that the brain activity that demonstrates the outcome of simple choices may predate our knowledge of having made such a choice. The researchers found that the activity related to whether to press a button with the left or right hand occurs in the brain up to ten seconds before participants report being consciously aware of making such a decision
- Our most basic experiences of free will are decided and determined by our brain before we become aware of them
Counterpoint +
The fact that people consciously become aware of decisions milliseconds after they had begun to enact the decision still means they may have made the decision to act. Our consciousness of the decision is a ‘read-out’ of our sometimes unconscious decision-making
This suggests this evidence is not appropriate as a challenge to free will
Hard determinism
The view that forces outside of our control (eg.biology or past experience) shape our behaviour
Incompatible with free will - suggets that all human actions have a cause, and it should possible to identify these causes
Fatalism
Soft determinism
An alternative position favoured by many psychologists.
According to soft determinism, behaviour is constrained by the environment or biological make-up, but only to a certain extent
Biological determinism
Refers to the idea that all human behaviour is innate and determined by genes
Enviornmental determinism
The view that behaviour is determined or caused by forces outside the individual
Environmental determinism posits that our behaviour is caused by previous experience learned through classical and operant conditioning
Psychic determinism
Claims that human behaviour is the result of childhood experiences and innate drives (id, ego and superego), as in Fred’s model of psychological development
Evaluation: Determinism + Consistent with the aims of science
+ The notion that human behaviour is orderly and obeys laws places psychology on equal footing with other more established sciences
+ In addition, the value of such research is that the prediction and control of human behaviour has led to the development of treatments, therapies and behavioural interventions that have benefitted many, for instance, psychotherapeutic drug treatment in controlling and managing SZ
AO3 - role of responsibility in law
The hard determinist stance is not consistent with the way in which our legal system operates. In court, offenders are held responsible for their actions
Indeed, the main principle of our legal system is that the defendant exercised their free will in committing the crime
This suggests that, in the real world, determinist arguments do not work
