Final answer:
Positivist thinkers believed that the environment and social influences strongly promote specific behaviors in individuals, which aligns with the concept of determinism. Humanistic psychologists challenge this by emphasizing free will and self-actualization, pointing to personal choice.
Step-by-step explanation:
Positivist thinkers, such as Emile Durkheim, believed that strong influences, such as the environment, promote people to act in specific ways that are often predictable. They held that the social atmosphere, including societal norms, roles, and scripts, provided cues for appropriate behavior and influenced individual actions. This view supports the idea of external factors having a significant impact on one's behavior and decisions, a concept often referred to as determinism.
For instance, one might believe that growing up in a particular social and physical environment significantly shapes their political personality, despite individual variances. A person's tendency to embrace information in line with their existing beliefs, known as motivated reasoning, also plays a role in how they interpret influences and make decisions. Humanistic psychologists, however, like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, challenged this notion by focusing on free will and the individual's potential for self-actualization, which acknowledges the role of personal choice and intrinsic motivation.