Determinism Free Will and Religiosity
Introduction: Free will as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the ability to choose how to act, or the ability to make choices that are not controlled by fate or God. While determinism is a theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are casually determined by preceding events or natural laws, or as a belief in predestination. Another word worth defining is religiosity which is the quality of being religious, piety, or devoutness. The purpose of this study was to see if there was a correlation with participants who were primed with determinism or free will and their responses to questions about their own religiosity. There are many debates …show more content…
Some believe that free will involves souls with supernatural powers to get involved with the physical world, but to others it involves the lack of all casual processes. (Baumeister et al., 2010) Baumeister et al. (2010) states there are four types of free will, the first of which is self-control. Self-control is the ability to control or restrain one’s feelings or actions, for example wanting to eat fifteen Christmas cookies but not doing so because even though you feel as if you need them deep down you know that you do not. More seriously self-control allows a person to ring behavior into line with laws, social norms, standards of the culture, rules, expectations, and anything else of that nature. The second type of free will that Baumeister et. al (2010) states is rational choice which allows humans the ability to find out what the best choice is and then going through with it. The third type of free will is what Baumeister et al (2010) call planful behavior, this means making and following plans. This relates closely to rational choice because it sets out a series of mental steps that must be taken to reach a goal of some sort, this forces the person to be able to alter their behavior to adapt to the plan. The fourth type of free will that they discuss is initiative, which Baumesiter et al (2010) say is very important and is also typically neglected in psychology. Initiative is the starting of a course of action instead of just going passively along with events. Initiative is very important as it is what likely allowed people to create new surroundings in a way that would accommodate their needs and
Introduction: Free will as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the ability to choose how to act, or the ability to make choices that are not controlled by fate or God. While determinism is a theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are casually determined by preceding events or natural laws, or as a belief in predestination. Another word worth defining is religiosity which is the quality of being religious, piety, or devoutness. The purpose of this study was to see if there was a correlation with participants who were primed with determinism or free will and their responses to questions about their own religiosity. There are many debates …show more content…
Some believe that free will involves souls with supernatural powers to get involved with the physical world, but to others it involves the lack of all casual processes. (Baumeister et al., 2010) Baumeister et al. (2010) states there are four types of free will, the first of which is self-control. Self-control is the ability to control or restrain one’s feelings or actions, for example wanting to eat fifteen Christmas cookies but not doing so because even though you feel as if you need them deep down you know that you do not. More seriously self-control allows a person to ring behavior into line with laws, social norms, standards of the culture, rules, expectations, and anything else of that nature. The second type of free will that Baumeister et. al (2010) states is rational choice which allows humans the ability to find out what the best choice is and then going through with it. The third type of free will is what Baumeister et al (2010) call planful behavior, this means making and following plans. This relates closely to rational choice because it sets out a series of mental steps that must be taken to reach a goal of some sort, this forces the person to be able to alter their behavior to adapt to the plan. The fourth type of free will that they discuss is initiative, which Baumesiter et al (2010) say is very important and is also typically neglected in psychology. Initiative is the starting of a course of action instead of just going passively along with events. Initiative is very important as it is what likely allowed people to create new surroundings in a way that would accommodate their needs and