Issues & Debates

Question 1

Free will

Answer 1

• the notion that humans can make choices and are not determined by biological or external forces
• we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behaviour
• about personal responsibility –> plays a central role in Humanist Psychology

Question 2

Determinism

Answer 2

• The view that an individual’s behaviour is shaped or controlled by internal or external forces rather than an individuals will to do something

Question 3

Hard Determinism

Answer 3

• referred to as fatalism
• internal or external forces outside of our control (e.g. biology or past experience) shape our behaviour
• all human behaviour has a cause and it should be possible to identify these causes
• sees free will as an illusion
• incompatible with free will
• compatible with science

Question 4

Soft Determinism

Answer 4

• a middle ground
• acknowledges that human behaviour has a cause but also makes room for the idea that people have conscious mental control over the way they behave
• science can explain many determining forces that act upon us but this does not detract from the freedom we have to make conscious choices in every day situations
• e.g. Being poor doesn’t make you steal, but it may make you more likely to take that route through desperation.
• can choose how to behave, but normally we only have a limited number of behaviours to choose from

Question 5

Biological Determinism

Answer 5

• behaviour is caused by biological (genetic, hormonal, evolutionary) influences that we cannot control
• e.g. the influence of our autonomic nervous system during periods of stress and anxiety

Question 6

Environmental Determinism

Answer 6

• The belief that behaviour is caused by features of the environment (such a systems of reward or punishment - conditioning) that we cannot control by agents of socialisation - parents, teachers, etc,
• our experience of ‘choice’ is the sum of reinforcement that have acted upon us throughout our lives

Question 7

Psychic Determinism

Answer 7

• the belief that behaviour is caused by unconscious conflicts repressed in childhood that we cannot control
• Freud believed childhood experiences and unconscious motivations governed behaviour
• everything even a ‘slip of the tongue’ can be explained

Question 8

Evaluation: Determinism

Question 9

Evaluation: Free will

Answer 9

P – evidence support
E - identical twin studies: find an 80% similarity in IQ scores and a 40% concordance rate depression. identical twins share 100% of their genes
- suggests 20% is caused by other (environmental) factors.
C - biological determinism is unable to explain depression and intelligence (in this case) and other behaviours in other cases.

Question 10

Free Will approaches

Answer 10

• Humanist psychologists are against the determinism view, claiming that humans have self-determination and free will and that behaviour is not the result of any single cause.

Question 11

The scientific emphasis on causal explanations

Answer 11

• basic principle of science: every event in the universe has a cause
• causes can be explained using general laws
• knowing the cause and having laws allow scientists to predict and control events
• in the psychology:
• lab experiments allow psychologists to control conditions and remove extraneous variables to attempt to control and predict human behaviour