2.5 Holism And Reductionism

Question 1

define holism

Answer 1

with respect to a behaviour such as memory or mental disorder, perceiving the whole experience rather than the individual features and/or the relations between them

Question 2

define reductionism

Answer 2

an approach that breaks complex phenomena into more simple components, implying that this is desirable because complex phenomena are best understood in terms of simpler level of explenation

Question 3

summarise holism

Answer 3

cannot predict behaviour of whole system from individual parts
gestalt psychology - concerned with perception; the whole does not equal the sum of the part
humanistic psychology - we react as a whole rather than a set of S-R links
cognitive psychology - connectionist networks for memory behave as a whole

Question 4

summarise reductionism

Answer 4

levels of explanation - highest = cultural/social, middle = psychological, lowest = biological
biological reductionism - behaviour explained in terms of hormones, neurotransmitters, brain (e.g. dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia)
environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism - behaviour such as attachment explained in terms of a stimulus (food/mother) causing a response (pleasure)
experimental reductionism - use of operationalised variables in experimental research

Question 5

evaluate holism and reductionism

Answer 5

danger of lower levels of explanation - the real meaning behaviour may be overlooked, e.g. prescribing drugs for hyperactivity which might be due to family problems
biological reductionism - drug therapies have only had partial success and may block possibility of more successful psychological therapies
environmental reductionism - may be appropriate for non-human animals but ignores influence from higher levels, e.g. emotion
experimental reductionism has been productive but may not represent real life, e.g. research on eyewitness testimony by Yuille and Cutshall didn’t support experimental research
the mind-body problem - materialism assumes that physical states (e.g. REM electrical activity) cause mental events (dreams); alternatively dualists suggest mind and body interact in both directions; the mind can cause physical changes