Issues And Debates Flashcards
Define determinism
The belief that behaviour is controlled by forces outside your control, so it is predictable and controllable
Define free will
Free will assumes a person has control over their behaviour, is responsible for their own actions, and so behaviour is not predictable
Describe criteria for free will behaviour
- Behaviour is hard to define
- Cause of behaviour can be difficult to test
- An individual is responsible for their own behaviour
- “The sum of the whole is greater than the parts”
- Can’t predict behaviour
Describe criteria for determinism behaviour
- Behaviour can be reduced to cause and effect
- Can collect objective data
- Behaviour can be investigated scientifically
- We can predict behaviour accurately
- Behaviour can be changed and improved
A study to be deterministic has to be:
- Looks at cause and effect
- Can collect objective data
- Very scientific
- Reductionist
- Isolates variables clearly
What are the 6 different types of determinism
1) Determinism
2) Hard determinism
3) Soft determinism
4) Biological determinism
5) Psychic determinism
6) Environmental determinism
Define hard determinism
Implies free will is not possible as our behaviour is always caused by internal and external events beyond our control
Define soft determinism
All events, including human behaviour, have causes, but behaviour is not inevitable. Our behaviour can also be determined by our conscious choices
Define biological determinism
The belief that behaviour is caused by biological (genetic, hormonal, evolutionary) influences that we cannot control
Define psychic determinism
The belief that behaviour is caused by unconscious conflicts that we cannot control
Define environmental determinism
The belief that behaviour is caused by features of the environment (such as systems of reward and punishment) that we cannot control
What approach favours free will as an explanation
- Humanistic approach (one of its assumptions)
Use maslows hierarchy of needs
What approach favours determinism
- Psychodynamic approach (psychosexual stages determine adult relationships)
Strength and a weakness of free will
Strength= -Shows individual responsibility (persons chosen that behaviour and is responsible for it, good for crime)
Weakness= -Difficult to to scientifically test it (as it’s difficult to operationalise free will as a process)
Strength and weakness of determinism
Strength= -Helps to predict and test behaviour (Person has chosen their behaviour and is responsible for it)
Weakness= -Lets off people and does not blame them for their behaviour (meaning behaviour was already pre-determined, therefore not responsible for their behaviour)
E.g. Limbardo study
What does the term nomothetic mean
- “nomos” in Ancient Greek, meaning Law
- There are general rules that apply to all people
What does the term idiographic mean
- “idio” in Anncient Greek, meaning own/private
- Every individual is unique and complex
What are the 3 types of nomothetic laws by Radford and Kerby (1975)
1) Classifying people into groups
E.g. Type A, B, C attachment types or the DSM-V
2) Establishing principles of behaviour (what we expect people to do in certain situations)
E.g. Schaffer’s stage of development
3) Establishing dimensions (placing people on a scale)
E.g. IQ bell curve, locus of control
How nomothetic researchers do there work
- Large scale data is collected from representative samples
- Under highly controlled conditions
- Quantitative data will be collected, summarised and compared
- More scientific because of the use of quantitative data and large, representative samples
- Generalisations are made from the data to create universal laws of human behaviour
- Data from nomothetic research tend to have high reliability, however at the expense of validity
How idiographic do their work
- High quality data specific to the individual
- Collected in depth by methods like case studies, content analysis and unstructured interviews
- Qualitative data will be collected, which is content rich data but difficult to summarise and analyse
- Unscientific
- No attempt to generalise findings into laws, so unrepresentative
- Low Reliability, as 2 case studies may be different, but data is more valid, which is a better reflection of ‘real’ life
Which approaches use nomothetic techniques
- SLT
- Biological approach
- Cognitive approach (memory experiments)
Which approaches use idiographic techniques
- Humanistic approach (Main one due to the complete rejection of scientists way of studying humans)
- Psychodynamic
- Memory (heavy use of case studies like Clive Wearing, for brain damage)
Simple evaluation for nomothetic research
Positives= -Uses scientific method
- Can generalise to wider population
- Methods are objective
Negatives= -May not apply to an individual
Simple evaluation for idiographic evaluation
Positives= -High detail
-Focus on an individual
Negatives= -Not scientific
- Relies on self-report
- Time-consuming