Holism and reductionism !!

Question 1

Holism

Answer 1

Perceiving the whole experience rather than individual features of them (with respect behavioiurs such as memory of mental disorders)

Question 2

Reductionism

Answer 2

Breaks complex things into more simple components .

Question 3

Levels of explanation (reductionism)

Answer 3

Highest level: social and cultural explanations of how social groups affect our behaviour. (cultural expectations affect memory)
Middle level: Pychological explanations of behaviour (episodic memory)
Lowest level biological explanations. (hippocampus and temporal lobe store memory)

Question 4

Biological reductionism

Answer 4

Reduce behaviour to the action of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones and so on.
-e.g excessive activity of dopamine causing schizophrenia

Question 5

Environmental reductionism

Answer 5

Reduce behaviour to ‘stimulus- reponse links.

-e.g behaviourist explanations to attachment.

Question 6

Experimental reductionism

Answer 6

Reducing to isolated variables (experimental method)

Question 7

Gesalt psychology (holism)

Answer 7

German for ‘whole’, focused on perception

e.g gestalt visual illusion.

Question 8

Humanistic psychology (holism)

Answer 8

Believe the individual reacts as an organised whole.

-e.g a lack of ‘wholeness and identity leads to mental disorders.

Question 9

Cognitive psychology

Answer 9

Use the idea of a ‘network’, in which each unit (neurons) are linked with each other. The links are strengthened or weakened based on experiance. The network works as a ‘whole’.

Question 10

Weakness, reductionism (Danger of low levels of explanation)

Answer 10

• if low levels are taken into isolation, the meaning of behaviours may be overlooked.
• It may distract us from a more approriate level of explanation
• e.g a study of hyperactive children may just look at the biological causes and overlook the real causes (family or emotional problems.

Question 11

Strength (biological reductionism

Answer 11

• -development of drug therapies, leading to a considerable drop in institutionalisations since the 1950s.
• A more humane approach to treating a mentally ill person as it doesnt blame the patient for it.
• however it has lots of difficulties.
• Have varied sucess rates and only treat symptoms not causes

Question 12

weakness, holism (not scientific)

Answer 12

• It attempts to blend different levels of explanations together providing a realistic understanding on behavior
• However it doesn’t provide a causation as they do not use the experimental method (operationalise, IV and DV)
• Making it unscientific.

Question 13

Strength, reductionism (Favoured by scientists)

Answer 13

• E.g experimental psychologists, say human behaviour can be studied in relatively simple experiments.
• where behaviour is reduced to isolated variables. (experimental reductionism)
• This allows for the study of human behaviour in controlled conditions while establishing casual relationships.