Freewill Vs Determinism

The free will/determinism debate revolves around the extent to which our behaviour
is the result of forces over which we have no control or whether people are able to
decide for themselves whether to act or behave in a certain way.

Free will suggests that we all have a choice and can control and choose our own behaviour. This approach is all about personal responsibility and plays a central role in Humanist Psychology.

Levels of Determinism

Hard Determinism: forces outside of our control shape our behaviour. Hard determinism is seen as incompatible with free will.

Freud (1909) assumes that all behaviour is caused by innate drives and unconscious processing. He suggests that all individuals progress through the psychosexual stages and that behaviour in childhood is predictable. There is no consideration of freewill, as it suggests that our behaviour is governed by the unconscious mind, a part of the mind which we have no awareness or control of. Freud believes that the only way to access the unconscious is through therapy, as it cannot be easily accessed alone.

Sperry (1968) argued that different functions are located within certain areas of the brain and that these cause behaviour. Like many biological researchers, he suggests that the performance of tasks is due to the activation in the different brain structures.

Soft Determinism: behaviour is can be determined by the environment or biological make-up, but only to a certain extent, you have some free will.

Hazan & Shaver (1987) – The Love Quiz: found a strong relationship between childhood attachment type and adult attachment type. Those with secure attachments as babies tended to be in happy and trusting relationships and believed in long lasting love. Whereas people with insecure attachments tended to feel jealous, possessive and afraid of abandonment. However, not all participants followed this pattern which implies individual differences, and therefore choice.

Bandura et al (1961) believes that our learning from the environment determines our behaviour and that we can predict future behaviour based on influences such as aggressive models. However, SLT does account for mediational processes and therefore there is an element of cognitive processing and therefore an opportunity for thinking anf reflection which is more freewill.

Atkinson & Shiffrin and the Multi-store model of memory suggests that although we select what to pay attention to in our environment (sensory register) we are only able to process a certain amount using our short term memory e.g. 5-9 items due to the restricted capacity of our memory.

Types of Determinism

Environmental Determinism: This is the idea that our behaviour is caused by some sort of outside influence e.g. parental influence. Skinner (1971) argued that freedom is an illusion. We may think we have freewill but the probability of any behaviour occurring is determined by past experiences. Skinner claimed that free will was an illusion – we think we are free, but this is because we are not aware of how our behaviour is determined by reinforcement.

Biological Determinism: Our biological systems, such as genetics, the nervous
system, brain activity govern our behaviour. For example, Nestadt et al. (2000) found that people with first-degree relatives who suffer from OCD are five times more likely to suffer from OCD at some point in their lives.

Psychic Determinism: Freud believed childhood experiences and innate unconscious motivations governed behaviour. Freud thought that free will was an illusion, because he felt that the causes of our behaviour is unconscious and still predictable.

Exam Question:

“Research suggests that depression runs in the family. However, many depressed people also have other issues, including social problems, or problems with drink or drugs. Despite these challenges, many depressed people overcome their depression and find ways to resolve their issues.” With reference to the extract above, explain what is meant by ‘determinism’. Refer to at least two types of determinism in your answer. [6 marks]

DEFINE: Determinism is the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control. DEFINE: Biological determinism is the idea that behaviour is controlled by aspects of biology. APPLY: The extract states that ‘depression runs in the family’ which implies that depression may be biologically determined and the result of genetics.

APPLY & DEFINE: However, the extract also suggests that many people who suffer from depression also have ‘other issues, including social problems’ which suggests that behaviour might be determined by external influences such as their parents or society, which implies that environmental determinism may also play a role.

Model Answer:

Dancho is a talented and famous musician. He was taught to play the piano by his father who was a concert pianist. From the age of four years Dancho attended a specialist music school where he spent many hours each day practising the piano. In a recent TV interview Dancho said, ‘My earliest memories are of notes and melodies, so music is a part of me. To hear the applause in the concert hall is what I live for. Even if I wanted to stop playing, I could not.’ Discuss two or more types of determinism. Refer to the case of Dancho as part of your discussion. [16 marks]

Determinism believes that our actions and behaviours are pre-decided due to our thoughts, biology and past experiences. They believe that free will does not exist and we have no choice in any behaviour we conduct. One type of determinism is biological determinism. This believes that all our actions are due to chromosomes and hormones and so is pre-determined by genetics. Examples of this can be seen in areas such as forensics where having low MAOA led to an increased chance of committing offending behaviour. Also, Dabbs found that high levels of testosterone were associated with those who had committed violent crimes. This therefore shows that hormones and genes can determine criminal behaviour.

In terms of Dancho, his father was a concert pianist, which may mean that the phenotype of being musical is in his genes, which he gained from his father. Perhaps this is due to a diathesis model, where a gene for musical talent was ‘switched on’ for his father when he learned how to play the piano, and this was passed down to Dancho. Even though biology does appear to play a factor in Dancho’s music ability, it is highly unlikely that it is solely down to biology. This can be seen with many twin studies where MZ twins don’t have a 100% concordance even though they all share the same genes. This is therefore a limitation of biological determinism as there must be a third factor, for example environment.

This leads into environmental determinism, which is favoured by behaviourists, and this is where our past experiences shape our future behaviour through aspects such as reinforcement. This would explain why MZ (identical) twins aren’t 100% concordant, as environment would have an influence too on shaping the individuals differently. A strength of environmental determinism is that there is evidence to support it with examples such as phobias, for example in the Little Albert study a young child heard a loud crash whenever he saw a white rat, and as this was repeated he began to associate the fear with the noise with the rat. This meant that this past experience led to the phobia of rats, supporting environmental determinism.

In Dancho’s case he attended a school from a young age, where music was taught and practice encouraged. By being in this environment it would have shaped his behaviour so that he continues to play the piano as he associates it with experiences from the school, perhaps even from the positive reinforcement (both direct and indirect) he and his peers received from playing the music they made. However, by removing free will from this it suggests that Dancho had no choice in how his future work occurred and so may be a limitation as it removes any form of free will from our lives.

Psychic determinism is the third form of determinism and this is where the concept of free will is only an illusion and all choices are made by our unconscious. In Dancho’s case this would be from his id, which works on the selfish principle, wanting the applause in the concert hall and so demanding that he continues to receive this. The biggest limitation of all forms of determinism is that it is socially sensitive, for example if there was found to be a ‘criminal gene’, this would pose huge issues for the criminal justice system as rehabilitation would be difficult and poses the question of what should society do with people with a gene that predisposes them to crime. Therefore, determinism is a difficult factor within psychology and may have wider negative impacts.

This essay was awarded 16/16 marks by an examiner.

Evaluation Determinism:

The predictive stance of determinism is very useful when trying to develop treatments such as SSRI’s or anti-psychotics.
Determinism has the danger of causing psychological harm due to the implications research by suggesting direct causes of behaviour e.g. genetic causes of behaviour or poor upbringing. This can lead to labelling and discrimination.
Deterministic explanations remove personal responsibility which has issues when applied to societies views towards criminals.
Due to isolating variables to establish cause and effect, this leads to a reductionist approach which strips away the complexity of human behaviour by ignoring the complex interaction of multiple variables.
Determinism utilises many scientific methods and is focused on using experiments which isolate and identify cause and effect.
Determinism can never lead to perfect predictions due to the complexity of human behaviour and the difficulty isolating variables completely.
Determinism is scientific and allows cause and effect relationships to be established.
It gives plausible explanations for behaviour backed up by evidence.

Evaluation Freewill

Useful applications have led to the development of client centered therapy. For example in Client centred therapy, Carl Rogers showed that helping someone to feel unconditional positive regard and guiding them to be more self-determined helped them to achieve congruence. This is a strength because freewill has helped people to understand that they as an individual have the power to get better rather than expecting the therapist to cure them. Consequently, the use of freewill in therapy would improve long term effects as it encourages the individual to be self-determined and therefore, further treatment may not be needed.
Studies that take a free will perspective tend to collect qualitative data and use case studies in order to understand an individuals behaviour. For example, Carl Rogers collected a lot of data on individuals to understand what made them self-actualizers. He came up with numerous characteristics such as being in complete acceptance of others and themselves, self-reliant and an appreciation of life. This is a strength because it provides and in-depth understanding of behaviour. Consequently, it could be argued that taking more of a freewill approach is more valid. This is because it may reveal things that would not be apparent in deterministic experimental methods where only cause and effect relationships are considered.
Research that focuses on freewill tends to be less scientific, for example use of case studies which can lack reliability. Qualitative methods such as interviews which are more subjective. It is difficult to scientifically test the concept of free will due to it’s subjectivity and use of qualitative data and case studies. For example in research within the humanistic approach, it is difficult to measure freewill as this is based on decisions which are internal mental processes. What people decide to do with their behaviour, may not actually reflect the decisions they have made internally. This is a weaknesses because it is then difficult to establish cause and effect. As a consequence this reduces the support of the freewill debate because it lacks empirical and tangible evidence to back up it’s claims.
Promotes a sense of taking responsibility and this is inline with our societies views – punishment legal system. For example if you break the law or commit a crime, the legal system will provide a sentence which punishes you for an immoral or bad decision that you have made. This is a strength because this debate is more accurate when generalising to real life situations. As a consequence the freewill debate could be argued to provide a more accurate understanding of behaviour.
Associating freewill as the cause of mental health can create a blame culture and be harmful in some cases. For example, in explaining mental illness, it would believe that the person has chosen to be unwell. For illnesses such as schizophrenia has a lot of research to suggest a biological cause. You can’t chose your biological makeup. This blame culture works in terms of committing crimes, but does not sit well in terms of mental health. Consequently, the freewill perspective may not be accurate when generalising to all examples of behaviour.
Promotes a positive mindset by recognising freewill supports the success of therapies such as CBT.
Freewill ignores the determinism argument and is limited as a consequence. Not all behaviour is driven by conscious choice. The behaviourist approach supports the idea that we are determined by learned associations e.g. skinners rat learned how to pull a leaver by being positively reinforced with food which was seen as a reward. This is a problem for the freewill debate as this evidence refutes it’s role in behaviour and argues that freewill is an illusion. As a consequence it may be better to take a soft deterministic perspective as this argues that we have some level of free will, but we can also be determined by some factors too.