Читать книгу Methods in Psychological Research - Annabel Ness Evans - Страница 29

Determinism is a doctrine of belief that events have natural causes. For psychologists, the events we are interested in are behaviors of humans. When we apply this doctrine to psychology, then, we assume that human behavior is determined or caused by natural phenomena, not supernatural events. In other words, we believe that behavior is neither random nor under the control of nonnatural events. Many people confuse this doctrine with another, predeterminism. They are not the same. To say that behavior is determined by natural events is not to say that our behavior is somehow predetermined or predestined. Some religious approaches do have a predeterministic bent, but psychology does not.

To say that human behavior is determined is to say that humans behave for reasons that can be understood in terms of natural laws of the universe. We may not know what those laws are in any particular case, but we assume that those laws are operating nonetheless.