Voluntarism

Voluntarism is a psychological paradigm that focuses on the importance of voluntary and willful acts of decision in human behavior. This paradigm emphasizes environmental causes and external experiences as the main motivation for decisive human actions. Voluntarism also recognizes that behaviors can alter in order to accommodate changing external circumstances. Voluntarism makes distinctions between automatic and controlled actions, and perception and apperception. The idea of apperception is much like that of working memory, and involves the abstract synthesis of multiple perceptions and experiences as the basis for creative thought and problem solving. Such voluntary decision-making based on controlled processes is the fundamental basis of volition.

Voluntarism has its roots in the psychological theories of Wilhelm Wundt. His earliest written account of this system was in his book //Ethics//, published in 1901, which emphasized the importance of voluntary acts as they relate to external causality. Wundt thought that the human mind made decisions based on the assimilation of sensations and feelings, which were reactions to sensations. Research questions regarding voluntaristic psychology would most likely involve analysis of human actions and the causations behind them. Wundt studied volition through experiments involving reaction time. Wundt demonstrated that more complex problems would instigate longer reaction times, and speculated that such lengthened response times implied the use of more controlled thought processes. These processes, he believed, exemplified the use of voluntary thought in decision-making

Wundt is considered the founder of voluntaristic psychology, but the works of previous philosophers such as Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant may have influenced him. Descartes could have influenced Wundt because of the way he viewed reflection on sensory experiences as key to individual decision-making. Kant’s idea of perception may have inspired Wundt because it fell somewhere between the views of empiricists and rationalists. Kant focused on the importance of human reason in decision-making but did not discount the role of experience in influencing such decisions. Both of these philosophers made noteworthy contributions to the analysis of perception and their ideas may have influenced Wundt in his creation of Voluntarism.

References Boeree, G. (2000). //Wilhelm Wundt and William James//. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/wundtjames.html Danziger, K. & Ballantyne, P. (1997). [|Psychological Experiments]. In W. Bringmann et al. (Eds.). Pictorial History of Psychology, pp. 233-239. Chicago: Quintessence. Millis, K. (n.d.). //Wilhelm Wundt: father of experimental psychology//. http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2002/wundt.htm King, D., Viney, & W., Woody, W. (2008). //A history of psychology: ideas and context//. Boston, MA. Pearson Education, Inc.