Holism and reductionism

Question 1

Which approaches are holistic and which are reductionist

Answer 1

Holism - humanism
Reductionism - behaviourism

Question 2

What is the holism side of the debate

Answer 2

• Looks at a system as a whole and sees any attempt to subdivide behaviour or experience into smaller units as inappropriate
• Argues the whole is greater than the sum of its parts
• Therefore learning about the parts does not help us understand the essence of that person
• Focus on the individual’s experience - not something that can be reduced to biological units for example
• Qualitative methods to investigate the self whereby themes are analysed rather than breaking the concept into component behaviours

Question 3

What is the reductionism side of the debate

Answer 3

Reductionism seeks to analyse behaviour by breaking it down into its constituent parts
It is based on the scientific principle of parsimony - all phenomena should be explained using the simplest principles

Question 4

What are the levels of explanation

Answer 4

There are different ways to explain behaviour - some more reductionist than others
e.g. OCD:
1. Socio-cultural level - OCD interrupts social relationships
2. Psychological level - person experience of anxiety
3. Physical level - movements e.g. washing one’s hands
4. Environmental/behavioural level - learning experiences
5. Physiological level - abnormal functioning in the frontal lobes
6. Neurochemical level - underproduction of serotonin

Deciding which is the ‘best’ explanation of OCD is up to debate but each level is more reductionist than before

Question 5

What are the two types of reductionism

Answer 5

1. Biological reductionism
   - Includes the neurochemical and physiological levels and also evolutionary and genetic influences. It is based on the premise that we are biological organisms, thus all behaviour is at some level biological
   - Biologically reductionist arguments often work backwards e.g. drugs that increase serotonin have been found to be effective in treating oCD and therefore low serotonin may be a cause of OCD - reducing OCD to the level of neurotransmitter capacity
2. Environmental reductionism
   - The behaviourist approach is built on environmental reductionism, proposing that all behaviour is learned and acquired through interactions with the environment
   - Behaviourists explain behaviour in terms of conditioning which is focused on simple stimulus-response links, reducing behaviour to these basic elements
   e.g. learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love to a learned association between the person doing the feeding and food resulting in pleasure

Question 6

Evaluation

Answer 6

PRACTICAL VALUE
P - One limitation of the holism approach is that it may lack practical value
E - Holistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex. This can present researchers with a practical dilemma. If we accept, from a humanistic perspective that there are many factors that contribute to depression e.g. a person’s past, relationships, their job and family circumstances, then it becomes difficult to know which is most influential. It is then difficult to know which to prioritise as the basis for therapy for instance.
E - This suggests that holistic accounts may lack practical value and therefore reductionist accounts may be more suitable

SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
P - One strength of reductionist approaches and limitation of the holistic approach is that they often form the basis of a scientific approach
E - In order to conduct well-controlled research we need to operationalise the variables to be studied - to break target behaviours down into constituent parts. This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record obersvations e.g. behavioural categories in a way that is objective and reliable. For example, research on attachment (the strange situation) operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety.
E – This scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences

HIGHER LEVEL
P – Limitation of reductionism is that some behaviours can only be understood at a higher level
E – Often, there are aspects of social behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood in terms of the individual group members. For instance, the effects of conformity to social roles in the prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison study could not be understood by observing the participants as individuals. It was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important. There is no conformity ‘gene’ so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur.
P – This suggests that, for some behaviours, higher level explanations (or even holistic ones) provide a more valid account