PSYC A333F

Current Issues in Psychology

Lecture 7
Free will and determinism
 The debate about free will and determinism has
been a central topic of western philosophy
 Given psychology’s historical roots in philosophy, it
would be surprising if psychologists were not
interested in this issue
Many people believe that we have free will
 In the International Social Survey Programme
Introduction (Jones, 2011) which asked the question “Do we
make our own fate?” to around 40,000 people from
34 countries, over 70% said “yes”
If a person’s actions are completely
determined, can the person still be responsible
for what he/she is doing?
 The answer to this question has been difficult to
find throughout the history 2
Why are psychologists interested?

3
 A fundamental part of classical science is
to identify the causes of phenomena, as
part of the attempt to explain them
These include “everything that exists”
(Taylor, 1963), which include people and
their thought and behaviour
To understand
the causes of Having free will depends upon having “a
behaviour mind”:
→ The mind supports us to decide and agree
on different events around us
However, while it may be necessary to “have
a mind” in order to be able to decide and
agree, etc. (i.e. free will implies having a
mind), having a mind does not imply free will 4
 In the most extreme form of behaviourism
(as represented by Watson), the existence
of mind is denied
To investigate E.g. to some behaviourists, thinking is
the influence nothing but a series of vocal or sub-vocal
of mental and verbal responses
events on  → “Mind is reduced to behaviour
behaviour Therefore, if we reject mind (as Watson
does), we consequently reject free will too
 Without a mind, there can be no deciding and
choosing etc.

5
Skinner’s radical behaviourism does not deny the
existence of mental processes; he reject the common-
sense explanation of the role of mental events in
relation to behaviour
Mental events are seen as the “by-products” of
behaviour”, totally lacking any influence over behaviour
 → By denying the influence of mental events over behaviour,
Skinner also rejected the notion of free will
While not denying that people believe they make choices,
he argued that this belief is an illusion

6
 When psychologists discuss abnormality,
they often make judgments about free
will and determinism, either implicitly and
explicitly
In a general sense, mental disorders can be
seen as the partial or complete breakdown
To diagnose of the control a person normally has over
mental his/her behaviour, emotion and thinking,
disorders e.g.:
1. Compulsive behaviour is behaviour that the
person cannot help but is “compelled” to do
(such as repeated hand-washing)
2. People are obsessed by thoughts of germs or
other sources of contamination
3. People are “attacked” by panic 7
 4. People become the victims of thoughts that are inserted into
their minds from external influences, such as microwave
(representing a kind thought disturbance in schizophrenia)
5. Memories of traumatic experience in PTSD
 Repeated, intense images are accompanied by distressing
dreams
 Flashbacks and dreams force their way into the person’s
consciousness beyond his/her control
In these examples, things are “happening” to the person
(rather than the person “doing” them)
 Klein (1999) argues that mental disorders are best understood as
dyscontrolled (i.e. involuntary) impairments in psychological
functioning
 A normal person has adequate self-control to alter or adjust to avoid these
impairments if he/she wishes to do so 8
“… To the extent that a person wilfully, intentionally, freely,
or voluntarily engages in harmful sexual acts, drug usage,
gambling, or child abuse, the person would be not
considered to have a mental disorder. Those who seek
professional intervention do so in large part to obtain the
insights, techniques, skills, or other tools (e.g. medication)
that would increase their ability to better control their mood,
thoughts, or behaviour.” (Widiger, 2012)
Widiger claims that dyscontrol as a component of mental
disorder does not imply that a normal person has a free will
 He claims that including the concept of dyscontrol within a
definition of mental disorder would provide a fundamental
distinction between mental and physical disorder:
 (Dyscontrol has no meaning in relation to physical disorder)
9
 Being judged to have lost control (either
temporarily or permanently) is a legally
acceptable defence in cases of criminal
offences
 Forensic psychologists can play an important role
in advising the court about (Gelder et al., 1989):
To discuss
 Fitness to plead
moral  Mental state at the time of offence
accountability  Diminished criminal responsibility
 Some court cases are showing that, despite being
diagnosed with a mental disorder, one can still be
judged to be criminally responsible for the actions
 Rather than the respective mental disorders causing the
crimes, people were considered to have freely chosen
to act as they did
10
Underlying the whole question of legal and moral
responsibility is the presupposition that people are
able to control their behaviour and to choose between
different courses of action
If not, how could we be held responsible for any of our
actions?
But other than legal situations that we need expert
witnesses (e.g. psychologists) to help juries decide
whether or not the accused person was suffering from
mental abnormality, we assume responsibility of our
actions in most everyday situations
11
Descartes’s philosophical dualism may help to make sense of
the distinction between conscious/purposeful/voluntary
actions and mechanical/unintentional/involuntary actions:
 “… At the most general level, the moral idiom assumes that people
are capable of controlling their actions… ‘Ought’, after all, seems
to imply ‘can’, therefore, by employing a moral vocabulary filled
with words like ‘ought’ and ‘should’, we assume that humans are
capable of rising above the causal pressures presented by the
material world, and in assuming this we appear to be operating
with some conception of freedom, some notion of free will.”
(Flanagan, 1984)
This may seem to describe the common-sense understanding
of how moral responsibility and free will are related:
 → Because we believe people have free will, we attribute them
with moral responsibility for their actions
 But is it necessarily the only possible view? 12
Skinner (1971), who believes that free will is an illusion, claims
that all the practical sense of distributing rewards and
punishments and speaking in moral terms would still be
maintained even if we gave up our belief that human nature
is free
 We simply use them to shape, control and maintain behaviours
 In other words, the fact that we usually attribute responsibilities to
people does not mean that we have to
… Perhaps we need to distinguish between a purely
philosophical position (based on logical analysis and
concepts etc.) and a more practical position (based on
everyday, intuitive experience)
 As Koestler (1967) says, whatever one’s philosophical convictions,
“in everyday life it is impossible to carry on without the implicit
belief in personal responsibility; and responsibility implies freedom 13
of choice.”
 While believing in free will represents a
kind of human “default option”, it is
interesting to ask what would happen if
we do not
To understand Vohs and Schooler (2008) asked participants
the to read an excerpt from Crick’s “The
behavioural Astonishing Hypothesis”
effects of  The passage claims that “you are nothing but a
belief in free pack of neurons” – free will is a mere illusion,
however persistent
will  Results: Compared to participants who did not
read the passage, those who had read it
reported weaker belief in free will
 When given the chance to cheat on a math test,
those whose belief in free will had been weakened 14
were more likely to do so
 In another study by Baumeister et al. (2009), participants read either
statements that reinforced their belief in free will or statements that
undermined it:
i. “I am able to override the genetic and environmental factors that
sometimes influence my behaviour” (reinforced)
ii. “A belief in free will contradicts the known fact that the universe is
governed by lawful principles of science” (undermined)
 Participants were then asked how likely they would help another person in
different scenarios, e.g.:
 Giving money to a homeless person
 Letting someone use their mobile phone
 Results showed that those whose belief in free will had been challenged were
less altruistic
 Also, priming participants with anti-free will statements made them behave more
aggressively towards strangers

 People not only believe they have free will, they also believe they have
more of it than others (Jones, 2011) 15
  Most major theorists in psychology
have addressed the issue of free will
and determinism
 Including James, Freud, Skinner, Kelly,
and Rogers
 To fully understand these major figures,
we must understand their position
To understand regarding this fundamentally important
the theories of feature of human beings
major figures  According to Morea (1990), the “story”
in psychology of Adam and Eve losing their innocence
in the Garden of Eden when they chose
to eat the forbidden fruit is a myth
suggesting that humans are free
 Morea believes that any adequate
explanation of human personality must
confront these age-old puzzles of free
will, morality and mind 16
What do we mean by free will?

17
 Valentine (1992) identifies a number of
different definitions in which the term
“free will” is used:
1. Having a choice
2. Not being coerced or constrained
Having a 3. Voluntary
choice 4. Deliberate control
The common-sense understanding of the
term is that the actor could have behaved
differently given the same circumstances
This is what “having a read choice” means
18
 If behaviour is caused (i.e. determined), then it
cannot be free
 However, “free” and “determined” are not
opposites:
 The opposite of “determined” is “random”
 Clearly, when we speak of human actions being “free”,
Not being we certainly do not mean that they are “random”
coerced or  The opposite of “free” is “coerced” or “constrained”
constrained  E.g. if someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to
undress, your behaviour is obviously done against your
will, and is not freely chosen
As proposed by James (1890), the view that all
acts are caused, but only those that are not
coerced or constrained are free, is called “soft
determinism” 19
 In one sense, the opposite of voluntary is
“reflex” (e.g. eye-blink reflex)
Reflex is difficult to prevent from happening
Clearly, when you undress at gunpoint,
your behaviour is not involuntary in this
Voluntary sense, but it is involuntary in the sense
that you are forced into it (against your
will)
So if behaviour is neither a reflex response to
a specific stimulus (eye-blink) nor coerced,
then it is free
20
Valentine (1992) observes some phenomenological
evidence for the distinction between voluntary and
involuntary:
Penfield (1958) stimulated the motor cortex of patients
undergoing brain surgery while they were fully awake
 Even though the region stimulated was the same as that involved
when they move their limbs normally, the patients reported feeling
that their limbs were being moved passively, and was a quite
different experience from initiating the movement themselves
 This demonstrates that the subjective experience
(“phenomenology”) of voluntary movement of limbs cannot be
reduced to the stimulation of the appropriate region of the brain
 (Otherwise, the patients would not have reported a difference)
 → Doing things voluntarily simply feels different from the “same”
things just “happening” 21
One demonstration of people’s belief in their free will
is psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm &
Brehm, 1981)
Refers to a common response to the feeling that our
freedom is being threatened, and we attempt to regain or
reassert our freedom
Many contrary (resistant) behaviour seems to reflect this
process (Carver & Scheier, 1992)
 E.g. “Don’t tell me what to do”

22
 In the context of divided attention, Norman and
Shallice (1986) proposed 3 levels of functioning:
1. Fully automatic processing
 Controlled by organised plans (schemata) that occur
with very little conscious awareness of the processes
involved
2. Partially automatic processing
Deliberate  Involves “contention scheduling” (a way of resolving
control conflicts between competing schemata)
 Generally involves more conscious awareness but occurs
without deliberate direction or conscious control
3. Deliberate control
 Controlled by a supervisory attentional system, involved
in decision making and trouble-shooting, and allows
flexible responding in novel situations
 → This corresponds to free will 23
Driving a car is a sensorimotor skill performed
automatically (if you are an experienced driver), which
does not require deliberate, conscious control
(Unless some unexpected event happens, such as putting
your foot on the brake pedal when there is an obstacle ahead)
 But on an icy road, this can be risky
 The steering wheel has a different feel, and the strategy of driving must be
changed
 However, after doing it many times, this may become semi-automatic too
 Koestler (1967): “But let a little dog amble across the icy road in front
of the driver, and he will have to make a ‘top-level decision’ whether
to slam down the brake, risking the safety of his passengers, or run
over the dog. And if, instead of a dog, the jaywalker is child, he will
probably resort to the brake, whatever the outcome. It is at this level,
when the pros and cons are equally balanced, that the subjective
experience of freedom and moral responsibility arises.” 24
As we move downwards from conscious control, the
subjective experience of freedom diminishes:
 “Habit is the enemy of freedom… Machines cannot become like
men, but men can become like machines.” (Koestler, 1967)
Koestler goes on to say that the second enemy of freedom is
very powerful emotions (especially negative ones):
 “When they are aroused, the control of decision is taken over by
those primitive levels of the hierarchy… which are in fact
correlated to phylogenetically older structures in the nervous
system… It’s the arousal of these structures that results in
‘diminished responsibility’ and ‘I couldn’t help it.’”

25
Free will and consciousness:
Libet’s experiments on consciousness and free will

26
 According to Blackmore (2005), if you hold
out your hand in front of you and then flex
What happens your wrist whenever you want (and of your
when we do own free will), then whether you did it or
something not, you made a decision:
voluntarily? Either you flip your hand at a certain point of
How does this time or you didn’t
something The question is: who or what made the
happen? decision or initiated the action?
Was it your inner self? Was it the power of
consciousness?
27
It certainly feels that it is our self (“I”) that is making the
decision, and the decision to flex the wrist is what makes the
wrist flex
 However, if inner self exists, we have no idea how if could make
the action happen
So Blackmore suggests, perhaps there are just a lot of brain
processes, that determined whether and when you flexed
your wrist
 This fits with the anatomical evidence:
 When any voluntary act is carried out (e.g. flexing the wrist), many brain
areas are involved
 Activity begins in prefrontal cortex, which sends signals to premotor cortex, which
programmes the actions and sends signals to the primary motor cortex; and the
motor cortex sends out the instructions that cause the muscles to move
 Other evidence also reveals that the dorsolateral PFC is
associated with the subjective experience of deciding when and
28
how to act
 From the philosophical viewpoint, the
problem is that the existence of free will
implies that it is “I” who decides to
perform the action, not the brain
→ The sequence of brain activities is a direct
So what’s the result of the decision
problem?
But what if it could be shown that the
brain begins to become activated before I
have made the (conscious) decision?
Would this be a strong argument against the
belief in free will?
29
Libet et al. (1983) asked participants to flex their finger/wrist
at least 40 times, at times they chose, and measured:
1. The time at which the action occurred (M)
 This can be easily detected using electrodes placed on the wrist (EMG)
2. The beginning of brain activity in motor cortex (“readiness
potential”, RP)
 This can be detected through electrodes placed on the scalp (EEG)
3. The time at which the participant consciously decided to act
(the moment of willing) (W)
 This is the most difficult to determine
 Libet asked participants to note the position of a spot of light moving
around the circumference of the circular screen, at the moment they
decided to act
 After the action was over, they say where the spot had been at that critical
moment
30
The key question is: which comes first?
 Libet found that the will (W) came about 200 ms before the action
(M)
 (Consistent with the concept of free will)
 But the brain activity in motor cortex began about 300-500 ms
before that
 i.e. 500-700 ms before the action
 (Contrary to what the belief in free will would predict)
 In other words, there was activity in the brain at least 0.5 sec
before people were subjectively aware of having made the decision
 → Consciousness lagged behind brain activity
 While these findings seem to contradict the idea of free will, are
they really surprising?
 To Blackmore (2005), the findings would mean that consciousness could
“come out of nowhere” and influence physical events in the brain (as
proposed by dualists such as Descartes) 31
Nevertheless, Libet’s results caused a storm of debate:
 As Banks and Pockett (2007) put it:
 “… Libet’s clear-cut finding was that his subjects consciously and freely
‘decided’ to initiate an action only after the neurological preparation to
act was well under way. This implies that the conscious decision was not
the cause of the action… If conscious decisions are not the cause of
actions, it follows that we do not have conscious free will… The
implication is that we, our conscious selves, are not free actors with
control over our choice in life. We are only conduits for unconsciously
made decisions. Libet’s one simple experiment has slipped our entire self-
concept from its moorings.”
 But no matter how compelling these conclusions may be, they are
also counter-intuitive, leading Libet himself refusing to draw them
 He concluded that, although consciousness clearly couldn’t have initiated
the participants’ movement, it was still capable of stepping in and vetoing
it before it was performed (Libet, 1985, 1999)
 (This explanation rescues the concept of free will, but seriously restricting its role)
32
 Much of the research stimulated by Libet’s
experiments was aimed at examining the
possibility that his results were flawed in
some way
Questions about his findings fall intro 3
Criticisms of categories:
Libet’s i. Does the basic finding hold up from a technical
experiments point of view?
 Were there any methodological problems?
ii. Can the movement he studied legitimately be
considered as an example of free will?
iii. What exactly were the participants reporting
on when they say they decided at a particular
moment to make their movement? 33
Regarding (i), results have been repeated in 3
independent laboratories
However, all these studies share the same assumption
that precise timing of conscious event actually makes
sense
 Penrose (1994) argues that, is there really an “actual time” at
which a conscious experience takes place, where that time
must precede the time of a “free-willed response”?
 He believes that it is possible that there is no such clear-cut time at
which conscious event occurs
 Nahmias (2002) agrees that there is the difficulty of picking out
the phenomenology and timing of “willing”, and to time it
precisely
34
Regarding (ii), it may be argued the act studied in Libet’s
research (simple finger/wrist movement) was very different
from the many decisions we make in everyday lives
 A finger movement has no consequences and carries no credit or
blame or risk
 While it can be considered as a free action as one could think of, it
is trivial and may not be counted as representative of willed
actions in our everyday life
Indeed, evidence showed that there are some differences in
brain activity between consequential and inconsequential
decisions
 When the decision is inconsequential (choosing to move the L or R
hand), neither W nor M was affected (Haggard & Eimer, 1999)
 But when coming to the relation between a more complex or
personally-involving decision with the brain activity, Libet (2003)
35
acknowledges that it has not been addressed in his experiments
Regarding (iii), Libet’s participants could only choose
when to act, not which action to perform
Deciding to flex the finger/wrist is different from making
decisions in daily life (e.g. to get out of bed or not, or to
accept a job offer)
 All decisions about how to make the movement were
determined before any measurements were made
 The experiment thus was only measuring the timing of volition

36
Because the decision is an unobservable event whose
meaning is defined by the participants, the instructions given
by the experimenter are important
 Participants were asked to wait until the timing spot had revolved
once and then to “let the urge to act appear on its own at any time
without any preplanning or concentration on when to act”, and
report the earliest appearance of a conscious “urge” to make
particular movements
 “… This suggests that W is more a passive registration of the onset
of a feeling than an act of will… If so, one could argue that this
experiment is a measure of the participant’s self-defined criterion
about where in the RP to report an ‘urge’, not a measure of the
timing of volition…” (Banks & Pockett, 2007)
37
Another possibility is that the assumption that brain
events have a time course that exactly reflects our
experience is mistaken
(Especially since most of our brain’s activity is
unconscious)
A mental event may not be the same as a “thing” (e.g.
physical movement) with a definite beginning and end
In the absence of a scientific account of the relationship
between brain and action, it is difficult to see what
participants’ reports of W actually mean

38
 While Libet rejected various criticisms of
his experiments, he also rejected the
conclusion that free will is merely an
illusion
He conducted another experiment to
measure brain activities when participants
The veto aborted their movement just before it
response happened
 In such cases, the brain activity started
normally, but then disappeared about 200 ms
before the action was due to happen
 From this, he argued for the existence of a
“conscious veto”
 → While consciousness could not initiate the
finger/wrist movement, it could act to prevent it 39
 More generally, our choices of action (e.g. ducking to avoid an
approaching bullet) need to be made faster than could be achieved
consciously
 (That such decisions are made preconsciously)
 However, “… the mechanisms of consciousness do still have a say: they are
able to veto plans that would lead to disadvantage in the long run, and to
permit only beneficial ones to proceed. ‘Free will’ is thus expressed in the
form of selective permission of automatically generated actions, rather than
as the (Cartesian) initiation of action by an independent mind…” (Rose, 2006)
 Libet (2004) gives obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s
syndrome as examples of disorders in which the person is unable to
make the veto response
 Similarly, although we cannot consciously control our dispositions or
impulses, we can consciously stop ourselves acting them our
 E.g. we cannot control our impulses to commit crime (i.e. thinking about committing it),
but our conscious veto should prevent us from actually doing it
40
The views of William James: soft determinism

41
In his classic book The Principles of Psychology (1890), James
discussed “will” in relation to attention
 He described effort, or sensation of effort, as the primary
subjective indication that an act of will has occurred:
 “The most essential achievement of the will… when it is most ‘voluntary’
is to attend to a different object and hold it fast before the mind… Effort
of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.”
 But should psychology recognise the existence of free will? Can a
scientific conception of the mind be compatible with our ordinary
conception of human nature?
 He could not find a simple answer to these questions
 To James, as a science, psychology could only progress by assuming
determinism, but this does not mean that belief in free will must be
abandoned in other contexts
 There is “more to life than science”, and scientific explanation is not the only useful
kind of explanation
 → “… In personal life it was useful to think and behave as if he had free will, while as
a scientist it was useful to accept mechanistic determinism…” (Fancher, 1996) 42
A second “solution to the conflict is what James called
“soft determinism”
According to this idea, the question of free will depends
on the type of cause our behaviour has, not whether it is
caused or not caused
 If our actions have immediate cause, processed by a system
such as conscious mental life, then they count as free, rational,
voluntary, purposive actions
On the other hand, “hard determinism” suggests that
conscious mental life itself is caused, so that the
immediate causes are only part of the total causal chain
that results in the behaviour
 According to this view, if our behaviour is caused, we cannot
say we act freely 43
The views of Sigmund Freud: psychic determinism

44
 Although Freud’s and Skinner’s views on human behaviour are
opposed in most aspects, they shared the fundamental view that
belief in free will is an illusion
 According to Sulloway (1979), Freud’s entire life’s work in science was
characterised by the notion that all vital phenomena are rigidly and lawfully
determined by the principle of cause and effect
 Perhaps the most explicit manifestation of his belief in this is the extreme
importance he gave to the technique of “free association” in his clinical work
 Sulloway points out that “free association” is a misleading translation
of the German word “freier Einfall”
 It is a great irony that “free” association should refer to the technique in
psychoanalysis meant to reveal the unconscious causes of behaviour
 According to Freud, the causes of our thoughts, actions, and choices are
unconscious (mostly repressed)
 (And therefore free will is an illusion)
 We believe we have free will because we are unaware of the true, unconscious, causes of
our actions 45
 James, Watson, McDougall and other scholars at the same time as
Freud all assumed the principle of causation
 But they distinguished between:
1. Behaviour for which one or more clear-cut causes were readily known
2. Random events that are the result of many separate causes, which it would be
impossible to analyse
 It was accepted that most psychological events were of the second kind, and
therefore could only be discussed in broad descriptive terms rather than to be
analysed in detail (Brown, 1961)
 Freud took exception to this view
 In his studies of hysterical patients, he showed that the apparently irrational
symptoms were in fact meaningful when seen in terms of painful,
unconscious memories
 They were not random events and their causes could be uncovered by psychoanalysis
 The same reasoning was then applied to other seemingly random, irrational
events such as slips of the tongue and other “Freudian slips”, and to dreams
46
A crucial feature of Freud’s theory is that there are no
accidents in the universe of the mind:
“In his view of the mind, every event, no matter how
accidental its appearance, is as it were a knot in
intertwined causal threads that are too remote in origin,
large in number, and complex in their interaction to be
readily sorted out… Freud’s theory of the mind is,
therefore, strictly and frankly deterministic.” (Gay, 1988)

47
 Freud did not deny that human choices
are real, and one of the aims of his
therapy is to “give the patient’s ego
freedom to decide one way or another”
(Freud, as cited in Gay, 1988)
Some freedom If we become aware of our previously
to change unconscious memories and feelings, we are
freed from their control
The whole of psychoanalysis is based on the
belief that people can change
 However, Freud believed that only very limited
change is possible
48
 Freud’s concept of psychic determinism
does not propose a simple one-to-one
correspondence between cause and effect
Much of our behaviour (as well as thoughts
and feelings) has multiple causes, some
conscious and some unconscious
Multiple
causes of By definition, we only know about the
behaviour conscious causes, and these are normally
taken to be the “reasons”
However, if the causes also include
unconscious factors, then the reasons we
give for our actions can never tell the whole
story
 The unconscious causes may be more important 49
 Freud successfully claimed that he could show
that choices made by patients are not arbitrary
and can be understood as revealing
characteristic manifestation of their personality
 According to Rycroft (1966), what Freud often did
The semantic was to explain patients’ choices, symptoms etc. by
understanding and giving them meaning, not in
argument terms of causes:
 “… much of Freud’s work was really semantic and… he
made a revolutionary discovery in semantics… that
neurotic symptoms are meaningful disguised
communications, but… owing to his scientific training
and allegiance, he formulated his findings in the
conceptual framework of the physical sciences…”
50
The views of B.F. Skinner: free will as an illusion

51
Skinner’s radical behaviourism probably represents
the most extreme expression among psychologists
that people are not free
Radical behaviourists regard their view of behaviour as the
most scientific, because it provides an account in terms of
material causes, all of which can be objectively defined
and measured
 Mentalistic concepts (e.g. free will) are not causes, but effects
Skinner claims that it is because the causes of human
behaviour are often hidden from us in the environment,
we tend to think that we have free will
 So what is the nature of those causes?
52
When what we do is dictated by force or punishment, it is
obvious that we are not acting freely
 E.g. when the possibility of prison stops us from committing a
crime, there is clearly no choice, and we know what the
environmental causes of our behaviour are
 Similarly, it may sometimes be obvious which positive reinforcers
are shaping our behaviour (e.g. a bonus for working extra hours)
However, in most of the time we are unaware of the
environmental causes of our behaviour, so it feels as if we are
behaving freely
 When we believe we are acting freely, sometimes it just means that
we are free of punishments or negative reinforcements
 Our behaviour is still determined by the pursuit of things that we have been
positively reinforced in the past
 We believe we are free because we do what we “want”; but this is simply
doing what we have previously been rewarded for doing 53
But when people act in a law-abiding way, aren’t they
choosing to do so?
 Aren’t those who take the criminal route choosing the rewards of
their crime over the possibility of punishment?
Perhaps Skinner was suggesting that, instead of our
behaviour being determined by rewards and the threat of
punishment, it is merely “shaped” and modified by them
 This allows for some part to be actively played by the actor
 Skinner (1986) stated that “operant behaviour is the field of intention,
purpose, and expectation.”
 Operant behaviour is also purposive
 Its function is to change the environment and produce particular
consequences
 However, according to O’Donohue and Ferguson (2001), purposive
behaviour does not imply that the person has free will (or that the
behaviour is not caused)
54
 E.g. when we unlock the door (purposive) to get out from a house in fire (coerced)
The views of Carl Rogers: freedom and the fully
functioning person

55
As a humanistic psychologist, Rogers stressed the process of
self-actualisation and the necessity of adopting the perspective
of the other person if we are to understand that person
 Every experience is evaluated in terms of our self-concept, and most
human behaviour can be regarded as an attempt to maintain
consistency between our self-image and our actions
 To Rogers, therapy and life are about free human beings struggling to
become more free
 How we react to our experience is something we choose and decide ourselves
 Sometimes, we feel certain experiences, feelings, and behaviours
conflicting (incongruent to) our self-image, and they become
threatening
 As the self-image becomes more and more unrealistic, the incongruent
person becomes more and more confused, vulnerable, and seriously
maladjusted
 → Lack of congruence and an unrealistic self-concept may be seen as a lack of
freedom, which the therapy is designed to restore 56
Roger’s (1982) deep trust in human nature leads him
to believe that humans have voluntary choice on evil
behaviour:
“In my experience, every person has the capacity for evil
behaviour. I, and others, have had murderous and cruel
impulses, desires to hurt, feelings of anger and rage,
desires to impose our wills on others… Whether I, or
anyone, will translate these impulses into behaviour
depends, its seems to me, on two elements: social
conditioning and voluntary choice… I believe that,
theoretically at least, every evil behaviour is brought
about by varying degrees of these elements.”
57
By distinguishing “human nature” and “behaviour”,
Roger is able to retain his optimistic view of human
beings
But he did not exclude the deterministic idea altogether
from his view in his later writings:
 “Yet as we enter this field of psychotherapy with objective
research methods, we are, like any other scientist, committed
to a complete determinism.” (Rogers, 1983)
 He states that it is becoming clear from science that humans
are complex machines and not free
→ So, how can this be reconciled with the ideas of self-
actualisation, psychological growth and the free to
choose?
58
One solution is a version of soft determinism:
Unlike neurotic and incongruent people whose
defensiveness forces them to act in ways they would
prefer not to, the fully-functioning person “not only
experiences, but utilises, the most absolute freedom when
he spontaneously, freely and voluntarily chooses and wills
that which is absolutely determined” (Rogers, 1983)
→ The fully-functioning person chooses to act and be
his/her most fulfilling way

59
  Gross, R. (2014). Themes, issues and debates in psychology
(4th ed.). Hodder Education. (Chapter 7)

References

60