Problems with Free Will
- The notion of free will is incompatible with Psychology’s status as a science. Science assumes cause and effect.
- There are a range of drugs, illnesses and conditions that will control people’s behaviour
Problems with Determinism
- Determinism is controversial. For instance, if aggression is deterministic, does this mean that aggressive people are not responsible for their own actions?
- Taking a deterministic stance on life is not good for you. When an individual feels that they have no control over their lives they are shown to feel more stress.
- Clearly human beings are very complicated and it is unlikely that there is one determining factor controlling behaviour. Our behaviour is likely to be controlled by a complex relationship between many variables making isolating one variable in a study very difficult.
- The determining factors in a study, where people know their behaviour is being investigated, are likely to be different from real life determining factors. People's behaviour in a laboratory, for instance, is often unnatural and affected by the strange environment.
