The Forces that Motivate Behavior Hard Determinis Essays

The Forces that Motivate Behavior: Hard Determinism Vs. Free Will Cheyenne Tuggle and Gina Campagnini The University of Valley Forge PSY 313 1.Hard Determinism: Gina Defining Determinism A simple definition of determinism is that it is the theory that all events are caused and therefore can be predicted. It is a simple cause and effect relationship only it is applied to human behavior. Therefore, making moral responsibility meaningless. A more specific definition is a definition of hard determinism; "Human behavior is completely determined by various factors outside the person" (Sappington, A. 1990). This is also known as environmental determinism (McLeod, S. 2013) and still supports the idea that moral behavior is meaningless. Let's look at an example of a man who grew up in a low income home, surrounded by drugs and crime, it can be predicted that he will commit some kind of crime. B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) The first person that is going to be address is B.F. Skinner, he is a well known advocate for determinism (McLeod, S. 2013). Some back ground information is that Skinner received his BA in English from Hamilton College because his first desire was to pursue writing as a career. Later Skinner received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University in 1931 and stayed there to do research until 1936 (Hall, W. 2017). For a while Skinner did pursue his first passion as a writer but failed in this career after his poetry and short stories resorted to newspaper articles. Since this writing career was not a success and after he received his Ph. D. he began to teach at University of Minnesota in 1936 and in 1945 became the chairman at Indiana University for Psychology. Shortly after becoming the chairman of Indiana he was invited back to Harvard where he stayed until his retirement in 1975 (Hall, W. 2017). Someone Skinner was influenced by was John B. Watson's philosophy of psychology called behaviorism (Clarik, K. 1998). Every notion of internal factors such as the mind was pushed aside and focused on the idea that the "goal of scientific psychology is to predict and control an organisms' behavior" (Hall, W. 2107). B. F. Skinner died in 1990 from Leukemia and became one of the most celebrated psychologists after Sigmund Freud (McLeod, S. 2015). Radical Behaviorism Radical Behaviorism "Argued that people's behavior is determined by their reinforcement histories; they behave as their reinforcement histories have programmed them to behave." (Sappington, A. 1990). Meaning that every behavior is an individual is determined based off the pattern of reinforcements and punishments in an individual's life (Craik, K. 1998). Operant Conditioning (Law and Effect-Reinforcement) One of Skinners well known theories is called Operant Conditioning which is intentional actions that have affects on the environment around them (McLeod, S. 2015). Operant Conditioning goes hand in hand with Skinner's theory of the Law-and-Effect- Reinforcement. Which can be defined as "Behavior which is reinforced, tends to be repeated" (McLeod, S. 2015). There are three types of respinses, the first is; Neutral Operant which are responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behavior being repeated. The second are Reinforces which are responses from the environment that increases the probability of a behavior being repeated. Reinforces can either be positive or negative (McLeod, S. 2105). A positive reinforce can be exemplified through Skinner's invention of the "Skinner's box". This box is an invention that helps reinforce pigeons to preform a certain behavior to receive food such as turning in 360-degree circle to the left, reading, or even pecking a certain point on the box. When the behavior was preformed the pigeon was given access to food and in order to receive more they would have to repeat their behavior. An example of a negative reinforce is to avoid being fired from a job, the person will have to get up on time to go to work. In other words a negative reinforce is the removal of an unpleasant reinforcement by something else that is looked at as a negative. The last response is a punisher which is a response from the environment that weakens behavior, it only tells you what not to do. Punished behavior isn't forgotten its suppressed and can cause aggression, fear, anxiety and so forth. When the punishment is