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"A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance."

The free will vs 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.
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. Consequently, our behaviour is viewed as predictable. The causal laws of determinism form the basis of science.
Free Will is the idea that we can play an active role and have choice in how we behave. The assumption is that individuals are free to choose their behaviour and are self-determined. For example, people can make a free choice as to whether to commit a crime or not. Therefore, a person is responsible for their own actions, and it is impossible to predict human behaviour with any precision.

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The determinist approach proposes that all behaviour has a cause and is thus predictable. Free will is an illusion, and our behaviour is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control. There are multiple explanations of determinism:
- Biological determinism suggests that genes influence brain structure and neurotransmitters which has a large effect on our behaviour which we cannot control. According to sociobiology evolution governs the behaviour of a species and genetic inheritance that of each individual within it. For example, Bowlby (1969) states a child has an innate (i.e. inborn) need to attach to one main attachment figure (i.e. monotropy).

-Environmental determinism explains that behaviour is caused by previous experience through classical and operant conditioning.
-Physic Determinism was introduced based on Freud psychoanalytic theory of personality. It suggests that behaviour is determined by a mix of innate drives and early experiences.
-Scientific Determinism (casual explanation) argues that all events in our life have a cause. The IV is manipulated to have an effect on the DV

Approaches which adopt this position include Behaviorism and social learning theory. For example, Bandura (1961) showed that children become aggressive through observation and imitation of their violent parents.

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Free will is the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour, in other words, we are self-determined.
- The humanistic approach explains that self-determinism is a necessary part of human behaviour. As long as an individual remains controlled by other factors, they cannot take responsibility for their actions. Only when an individual acknowledges and takes responsibility for their action, will personal growth be possible.
- Moral responsibility explains that an individual is responsible for their own actions. In our society, the norm entails that adult behaviour is self-determined. Only children and mentally ill do not have this responsibility.

Mental illnesses appear to undermine the concept of freewill. For example, individuals with OCD lose control of their thoughts and actions and people with depression lose control over their emotions.

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Psychologists who take the free will view suggest that determinism removes freedom and dignity, and devalues human behaviour. By creating general laws of behaviour, deterministic psychology underestimates the uniqueness of human beings and their freedom to choose their own destiny.

Deterministic explanations for behaviour reduce individual responsibility. A person arrested for a violent attack, for example, might plead that they were not responsible for their behaviour – it was due to their upbringing, a bang on the head they received earlier in life, recent relationship stresses, or a psychiatric problem. An example of this occurs within the case of Stephen Mobley, who killed a pizza shop manager in 1981, claimed this happened because he was ‘born to kill’, as evidenced by a family history of violence. The family’s violent behaviour followed a pattern that Brunner was able to trace to a single gene. He found that the pattern was being genetically transmitted on the X chromosome. However, the offer to dismiss his execution was rejected.

An additional limitation concerns the facts that psychologists cannot predict a person's behaviour with 100% accuracy due to the complex interaction of variables which can influence behaviour.

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Behaviourist B.F Skinner proposed the idea that a person might ‘choose’ to buy a particular car, but in fact, these choices are determined by previous reinforcement experiences. This suggests that even though we believe that we are making a conscious decision, there is always something causing us to chose this.

Libet et al. asked volunteers to tap their fingers at will, freely choosing the time of each action. EEG revealed an electrical potential occurring “several hundred milliseconds” before people reported a conscious decision to perform each tap.

This “Readiness Potential” threatened to debunk the very existence of human volition. Libet’s results suggested that decisions were made, unconsciously, by the brain, and only later made it into consciousness, once the decision signal had become strong enough. Therefore, Libet's experiment makes us question Free will.

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The Libet Experiment: Is Free Will Just an Illusion?

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A pure deterministic or free will approach does not seem appropriate when studying human behaviour. Like many other concepts in psychology, our behaviour cannot be purely based on one or the other and is rather a mix of both.

The term soft determinism is often used to describe this position, whereby people do have a choice, but their behaviour is always subject to some form of biological or environmental pressure. For example, being poor doesn’t make you steal, but it may make you more likely to take that route through desperation.