Issues and debates - definitions

nature/nurture, free will/ determinism, holism/reductionism, idiographic/nomothetic

Nature

refers to inherited influences or hereditary

Nurture

refers to the influences of experience and the environment

Free will

humans can make choices and their behaviour/thoughts are not determined by biological/external factors

Determinism

individual behaviours are shaped by internal/external forces

Hard determinism

all behaviour is caused by something

free will is an illusion

Soft determinism

behaviour may be predictable

theres room for personal choice

Holism

looks at the individual as a whole

Reductionism

human behaviour is best understood by studying the smaller constituent parts

Biological reductionism

attempts to explain behaviour at the lowest biological level

genes/hormones

Environmental reductionism

attempts to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus-response links that have been learned through experience

Idiographic

focuses more on the individual to understand behaviour

Nomothetic

studying human behaviour through general principles and universal law

Biological determinism

behaviour is caused by biological influences we cannot control

genetic/hormonal

Environmental determinism

behaviour is caused by features of the environment that we cannot control

reward/punishment systems

Psychic determinism

behaviour is caused by unconscious psychodynamic conflicts that we cannot control