Is FREE WILL an ILLUSION? | The Free will & Determinism Debate in Psychology

some psychologists think that you have no free will your behavior is entirely determined that is the sound of inevitability you think you're making free choices but you're actually completely unaware of all the factors that are causing your behavior in fact was it your choice to click on this video or has some other Force LED you here hey everyone welcome back to Bear it in mind this video is the fourth in the series on the topic of issues and debates previously we've explored the three issues of gender bias cultural bias and ethical implications in Psychology this video is the first of the debates exploring Free Will and determinism in psychology as you adequately put the problem is Choice determinism is the view that our behavior is caused by internal or external forces outside of our control whereas Free Will is the view that our behavior is due to our own choices so which side of the debate are you on do you believe behaviors caused by factors outside of your control and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff free will is the view that our behavior is due to our own choices we are active agents which means things do not just happen to us we're not passive but can act and make things happen we have a choice in how we behave putting it another way we Act of our own valtion when you do something of your own valtion you do it voluntarily I volunteer as tribute for example in Psychology one of the biggest Advocates of the Free Will position is the humanistic approach with the work of Abraham maslo and Kyle Rogers they believed in personal growth and for them Free Will is necessary if we are to become fully functional human beings to self-actualize you cannot grow change and improve if you do not accept responsibility and make choices you can also see free will in Rogers client centered therapy which emphasizes the freedom of the individual to solve their own problems and the power of the individual to direct their lives according to their self-chosen goals Rogers referred to those in therapy as a client rather than patients as he saw the individual as the expert on their own condition the client is encouraged towards the discovery of their own solution within a warm supportive and non-judgmental atmosphere [Music] now we come to determinism and in general there are two types hard determinism and soft determinism hard determinism is the view that all behavior is caused by internal or external forces that are entirely out of a person's control hear that Mr Anderson that is the sound of inevitability in contrast soft determinism is the view that behaviors are to some extent caused by internal or external forces but not by coercion rather by by our own conscious choices for example consider the famous marshmallow experiments by Walter michell marshmallow for you you can either wait and I'll give you another one if you wait or you can eat it now when I come back I'll give you another one so then you'll have to hard determinism would take the view that whether or not the child eats the marshmallow is entirely caused by a force outside of their control like their biology for example this would view self-control as being hardwired meaning which children can wait is the result of their genetics soft determinism on the other hand would acknowledge the influence of internal and external forces on eating or not eating the marshmallow but would also include our own conscious thoughts for example in one version of the marshmallow experiments one group thought about how a marshmallow tastes and smells whilst they waited whilst the other group imagined the marshmallow being like a cloud or something similar when the child thought about how enticing the marshmallow was they were much more like to ring the bell and have the one marshmallow the children who thought about the marshmallow as a cloud waited and had the two this demonstrated how what you choose to consciously think about can influence your level of self-control in the approaches Topic in Psychology social learning theory demonstrates soft determinism where to some extent the environment does cause our behavior in terms of who we observe in our environment who the role models are and how they behave however social learning theory also takes into account our mediating cognitive processes our conscious thoughts where we are free to decide who or what we pay attention to just because we observe someone doesn't mean we will imitate them now within hard determinism there are three types of determinism biological environmental and psychic and for each we'll consider an example from psychology biological determinism is the idea that behaviors are caused by internal bi biological factors like genes neurochemistry and brain structure and function in other words biology is Destiny George mcfi I'm your density for example let's consider the topic of Psychopathology and specifically OCD one explanation for OCD is a biological one that focuses on the role of genetics and the mutation of the Compton search Gene the cause of OCD is therefore inheriting these particular set of genes evidence for this comes from Twin study research if one twin has OCD the likelihood that the other twin develops OCD should be higher for monozygotic who share 100% DNA than for dyotics who share 50% in their review of OCD and the role of genetics Nest Italian 2010 showed that of all the twin study research published to date the concordance rates in MZ Twins were higher than DZ twins mzs had a 68% concordance rate for OCD if one twin had it and dzs had a 31% concordance rate for OCD this would suggest that OCD can be biologically determined environmental determinism is the idea that behaviors are caused by external forces that could include such things as experiences upbringing learning schools parents and peers for example let's consider another section from the topic of Psychopathology phobias one environmental explanation for phobias is classical conditioning whereby a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an unconditional stimulus evidence for this can be seen with Watson and rer in 1920 who conditioned a baby known as little Albert to fear a white rat at first when Albert was presented with the white rat he showed no fear response and was intrigued by the creature but later each time little Albert was presented with the white rat a loud noise was made behind little Albert that frightened him eventually after numerous pairings of the loud noise and the white rat little Albert became afraid when only the white rat was presented this would suggest that phobias can be environmentally determined and in fact if we think about it a little more many people who have a phobia would love to choose not to have that fear but they can't which is one argument put forward for why we don't have free will and how our behavior is determined by forces outside of our control psychic determinism is the idea that behaviors are caused by internal forces that include unconscious instincts and drives including childhood experiences for example examp as part of the psychodynamic approach Sigman Freud put the emphasis on the role of the unconscious as the driving motivating force behind our behavior and personality this includes the psychosexual stages of development in which each child progresses through a series of stages and conflicts which if left unresolved would determine adult behaviors for example at the phallic stage boys need to resolve the edus complex and girls the Electra complex however if the edius or electr complex are not successfully resolved by which mean they do not identify with their same-sex parent Freud suggested in later adult life this can be seen in men always looking for a mother figure and women for a father figure in other words being overly dependent on their mother or father relationship and having confusion with gender identity this illustrates how According to Freud our behaviors may be psychically determined by unconscious forces for Freud the case study of little hands will provide evidence for the edus complex and thus psychic determinism in fact this brings us to a strange partnership in which the behaviorist BF Skinner and Sigman Freud agree that Free Will is an illusion everything begins with choice no wrong choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without in BF Skinner's case he argues that we think we're making choices we think we have free will but we are unaware of what he called our reinforcement histories in other words words all the ways in the past our behaviors have been conditioned through various forms of reinforcement in Sigman Freud's case he argues that we think we're making choices we think we have free will but we are unaware of how our unconscious drives and instincts are influencing our Behavior so here we've seen different types of determinism including evidence to support that view but there are few other important points to consider in our discussion of Free Will and determinism [Music] firstly one of the problems with adopting a deterministic view of behavior relates to moral responsibility this is because if for example someone adopted a biologically deterministic view this would mean that their behavior is not their fault a murderer could stand up in court before the judge and argue that their brain made them do it or it was the fault of the genetics they inherited from their parents now sometimes there are extreme situations where mitigating circumstances need to be taken into account but even if there are the judge says you are responsible for your actions and so you will bear the consequences in other words a purely deterministic view is at odds with the justice system and society's understanding of [Music] responsibility however some have argue that we do have free will and that it is vitally important for our own mental health there is a term in Psychology known as Locust of control which refers to the amount of control we perceive to have over situations in our lives research by Roberts ital in 2000 investigated the relationship between fatalism which is a belief that external forces control our life chances in other words determinism and how it related to depression in teenagers they found that teenagers who demonstrated greater fatalism had a higher risk for depression therefore this research provides a compelling argument for the importance of what called an internal locus of control in our lives which is the belief that we are mostly in control and responsible for what happens to us and that we can succeed in difficult and challenging situations it could be argued that Free Will is necessary for good mental health finally one of the arguments for determinism is that in contrast to Free Will it fits with the scientific method this is because Science is based on finding the causes of Behavior whereas Free Will implies that behaviors and thinking are non-deterministic determinism is fundamental to science because it focuses on investigating causes of behavior and being able to predict behaviors through hypotheses it is the only real truce causality action reaction cause and effect the behaviorist approach social learning theory cognitive and biological approaches are all deterministic because they all adopt the scientific me method for example the behaviorist approach argues that behaviors caused by external factors such as rewards and punishments and so are predict that a behavior that is positively reinforced is more likely to be repeated in the future now just before we finish there is one final section to this debate that is connected to what we've just been discussing about science and it sometimes causes students a few problems on the specification it's called this first of all please note that it does not say casual but causal the word causal I hope you can see is related to the word cause so the scientific emphasis on causal explanations wants you to understand how determinism is related to science I'll explain this a little further and then I'll give you an example from behaviorism and then we'll look at an example from an exam paper to see how this works too the scientific method often involves the use of experiments and in experiment something is measured known as the dependent variable and something is changed or manipulated known as the independent variable what they want to see is the impact of the independent variable the cause on the dependent variable the effect notice the determinism language the IV is what is determining the effect one final piece to the puzzle in order to be able to establish cause and effect in order to be deterministic you need to have control control of the other variables known as extraneous variables this is because you can then say that it was that one cause the independent variable that caused the effect on the dependent variable and not some other variable as an example from behaviorism BF Skinner studied Operate conditioning using the Skinner box note that this is a highly controlled setting in fact you couldn't be more controlled if you tried he wanted the rats to learn the behavior of pushing a lever in one condition if the rat pushed the lever a food pallet would be released into the cage one of the things he measured was how quickly the rat learned to push the lever again notice the independent Vari the cause was whether the rat received a reward or not the food pallet and the behavior being measured was the pressing of the lever cause and effect and this was made possible by the high level of control now for that exam question a researcher studied the effect of light intensity on visual memory he carried out a controlled experiment participants in group one feuded a drawing in extra bright light for 60 seconds then had to recall the details participants in group two viewed the same drawing in normal light for 60 seconds then had to recall the details the researcher recorded the number of details correctly recalled in the two conditions referring to the item above explain what he's meant by the scientific emphasis on causal explanations three marks pause the video and see if you can work out the answer to this question based on what we've just talked about hopefully you can see that the independent variable was light intensity and the dependent variable what was being measured was the number of details they could correctly recall from the drawing cause equals liting intensity effect equals how much could be recalled but notice that importantly in the scenario it stated that he carried out a controlled experiment control of the variables enables cause and effect to be established so putting all that together you could write causal explanations are about establishing cause and effect but this can only happen in a controlled setting in this scenario the researcher carried out a controlled experiment which meant that all the variables are controlled for except for the like conditions because this was the independent variable that was manipulated this means that any change in the number of details that were correctly recalled from the drawing must therefore be caused by the manipulation of the light intensity the independent variable the use of control enables the researcher to infer cause and effect so whether you think you watch this video of your own free will or determined by forces outside of your control I hope you found this video thought-provoking and informative you can exercise your own free will choice right now by clicking on the screen to watch the next video in the issues and debates topic or by clicking in the link in the description below I hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Bear it in MIND

Views: 1,174

Keywords: psychology revision, issues and debates psychology, aqa psychology, free will and determinism, free illusion, environmental determinism, biological determinism, psychic determinism, scientific emphasis on causal explanations

Id: 2Od-SoKRZq0

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024