What exactly is determinism?

Determinism is the opposite to having free will over your behaviour, so you have no free will/ no control over your behaviour, and your behaviour is therefore caused by other external factors.

There are two types of determinism- hard determinism and soft determinism.

Hard determinism- behaviour is completely controlled by an external factor and you have no control or free will youself at all.

e.g.

1. Environmental determinism- behaviour is completely controlled by your environment (link with behaviourism- classical/opernant conditioning)

2. Biological determinism- behaviour is completely controlled by your biology (link with biological approach- genes, hormones, evolution)

3. Psychic determinism- behaviour is completely controlled by your unconscious thoughts (link to psychodynamic approach, Freud's ideas)

Soft determinism- behaviour is controlled by external factors but you still have some degree of free will to manipulate how much these external factors affect your behaviour.

e.g.

Social Learning Theory- Behaviour is controlled by what you see others doing and their modelling of behaviours, but you have some free will over whether you carry out that behaviour or not.