Holism and Reductionism Flashcards
Holism
The theory that the parts of any whole cannot exist and cannot be understood except in their relation to the whole
Reductionism
The theory that all complex systems can be completely understood in terms of their components
Biological Reductionism
Biological reductionism is based on the premise that we are biological organisms made up physiological structures and processes.
Thus, all behaviour is at some level biological and so can be explained through neurochemical, evolutionary or genetic influences.
Biological approach has been used to formulate drug treatment due to our understanding of neural processes. Treatment for mental health disorders e.g. OCD, depression & schizophrenia
Environmental Reductionism
The behaviourist approach is built on environmental reductionism. Behaviourists study observable behaviour only and in doing so break complex learning up into simple stimulus response links that can be measurable within a laboratory.
The behaviourists approach does not concern itself with cognitive processes of the mind that occur at the psychological level. The mind is regarded as a ‘black box’ and is irrelevant to our understanding of behaviour.
Levels of Explanation
The lowest level considers biological explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of neurochemicals, genes and brain structure
The middle level considers psychological explanations (e.g. cognitive and behavioural)
The highest level considers social and cultural explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of the influence of social groups.
A03 - Holism FOR
P: One strength of holistic approaches in research is that it addresses an entire group at once.
E: For example, there are aspects of behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood at the level of the individual group members e.g. the effects of conformity to social roles and the deindividuation of prisoners and guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment could not be understood by studying the PPs as individuals, it was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important.
E: This is a strength because holistic/same level explanations provide a more complete and global understanding of behaviour than the more reductionist approaches, which it can be assumed can be more easily generalised to wider societies and larger cultures.
L: As a result this provides support for the use of holistic methods within psychological research.
A03 - Holism AGAINST
P: One weakness of holistic explanations in psychology is that they tend to be more vague and speculative as they become more complex.
E: For example, humanistic psychology which takes a holistic approach to behaviour tends to be criticised for its lack of empirical evidence and is instead seen by many as a rather loose set of concepts.
E: This is an issue because higher level explanations that combine many different perspectives (holism) present researchers with practical dilemmas, such as if they accept that there are many factors that contribute to depression, it becomes difficult to establish which is most influential and which one to use as a basis for therapy.
L: this suggests that when it comes to finding solutions for real-world problems, lower level explanations may be more appropriate.
A03 - Reductionism FOR
P: One strength of the reductionist approach is that it is very scientific.
E: For example, it conducts experiments or records observations (behavioural categories) in a way that is meaningful and reliable as you can operationalise the variables.
E: This is a strength because the reductionist approach allows us to break target behaviours down into constituent parts for the research, meaning we can draw more reliable and therefore arguably more accurate conclusions from the research. For example, the behaviourist approach was able to demonstrate how complex learning could be broken down into simple stimulus-response links within the lab.
L: This therefore gives psychological research deemed reductionist greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences lower down in the reductionist hierarchy.
A03 - Reductionism AGAINST
P: One weakness of the reductionist approach is that it oversimplifies complex phenomena.
E: For example, explanations that operate at the level of the gene, neurotransmitter or neuron do not include and analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs – and this is where the behaviour in question may derive its meaning.
E: This is an issue because it tells us very little in reality about why we act a certain way. It can only ever form part of an explanation. For instance, the physiological processes involved in pointing one’s finger will be the same regardless of the context. However an analysis of this will not tell us why the finger is pointed – to draw attention to some object or person, as an act of aggression, as part of a raised hand to answer a question in class etc.
L: This means that validity of reductionist research can be questioned, due to the lack of depth and full explanation.
