What is Free Will?

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What is free will?

To have free will we must be able to choose our behaviour- it is not determined by either the environment or our genetic inheritance or some form of soft determinism such as the Cognitive Perspective in Psychology would argue.

 

Behaviourist argue that we do NOT have free will because our behaviour is determined by the environment, current or previous environmental experiences which will determine how we behave- we do not have a choice.

 

To illustrate the behaviourist ideas we can consider the work or studies of firstly Pavlov. Pavlov showed how reflex behaviours could be conditioned by various neutral stimuli to become associated with an unconditioned stimulus to evoke a conditioned response such as salivation.

  

This work was further supported by Watson's study on Little Albert which showed that humans could be conditioned to fear a previously ‘un-scary’ object which as a white rat. This study showed that Albert did not have free will, he was conditioned by the environment to fear the rat i.e. His behaviour was determined by the environment. However, often researchers such as Minoke found that it is easier to condition a fear in animals of snakes rather than flowers or guns... but this behaviour is still not free will rather it is genetic or biologically determined behaviour.

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In contrast to classical conditioning which appears to refute the idea of free will, we can consider Skinner's operant conditioning theory. Skinner argued that learning occurred from positive and negative reinforcement and punishment and he denied the possibility of free will in humans. He believed our behaviour was determined by the application by reinforcers and the pattern or schedule of reinforcement used.

 

 

Tolman's work contradicts some of Skinner's ideas. Tolman found that rats demonstrated latent learning i.e. They were able to "remember" which arm of the maze had food and which had water (by a cognitive map perhaps) ...

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The Quality of Written Communication is consistently good throughout. Though not spectacularly interesting in it's choice of words and sentence syntax, that candidate's ideas about free will and determinism are very clear. This is due to an evident adherence to the rules of Standard English (grammar, spelling, and punctuation are all accurate). The candidate also succeeds form a psychology perspective, using important key words and terminology where appropriate to help fortify the answer and show the examiner they are confident to discuss psychology using the language of the professionals.

The Level of Analysis shown here is very good were the question orientated around hard and soft determinism, as the candidate form a very good description of the features of this argument - there is also ample description of the features of free will but these are more sporadic, and dotted about the main body of the essay, which revolves around the psychological studies the candidate uses in order to validate the existence of the determinism argument in influencing human behaviour. This latter feature about the essay is where the candidate make their mistake, because the question requires more focus on free will than determinism. It is always important to consider all parts of the free will-determinism spectrum when analysing human behaviour, but more information must be represented to enforce the idea of free will rather than determinism in this question. I recommend concerning yourself with the Humanistic Approach to psychology - arguably the most supportive of free will, and will aid you in writing more informed answers about free will by itself, rather than in relation to a bias on determinism.

This is a very nicely concise answer which covers a good level of detail with regard what free will is and it's role in human behaviour. One may argue that the candidate should first give a much more expansive description of what free will is, and it's role in influencing behaviour, maybe referencing the work of prolific free will-supporting psychologists like Rogers or Maslow, mainly because, after the introduction, this answer dives into an explanation more of determinism and soft determinism rather than free will. There is some effort to draw comparisons between the practises of free will and how free will is studied but only in conjunction with a more profound description about early behaviourist theories of classical and operant conditioning, and then later behaviourist theories like Bandura's Social Learning Theory. As a result, the use of studies is not appropriate because studies like Rogers' interviews of "Gloria" and Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" would've been more appropriate feature, with perhaps a hard determinist study like Watson & Raynor to contrast, rather than have most of the analysis weighted on free will's counter-argument.