Holism and Reductionism

Question 1

Reductionism

Answer 1

• The scientific view that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts

Question 2

Biological reductionism

Answer 2

• Psychologists reduce behaviour to its physiology and explain behaviour in terms of genetics, neurotransmitters, hormones, and biological structures

Question 3

Machine reductionism

Answer 3

• Viewing organisms as macine-like enteties

Question 4

Environmental reductionism

Answer 4

• Reduces behaviour to a simple stimulus-response

Question 5

Parsimony

Answer 5

• The idea that complex behaviour should always be explained in its simple parts

Question 6

Levels of explanation

Answer 6

• The view by Rose argues that there are different levels of explanations
• These include the highest level of social and cultural explanations, middle psychological levels, and the lowest being biological explanations

Question 7

Holism

Answer 7

• Human behaviour is too complex to be broken down into simple parts
• Consider the whole individual as a sum of its parts

Question 8

Reduction is…

Answer 8

• Based on scientific assumptions of parsimony
• Similar to the concept of Occam’s Razor which argues the answer to any problem is often the simplest explanation

Question 9

Schizophrenia

Answer 9

• Biological reductionism
• The theory that schizophrenia is caused by excessive activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine is reducing schizophrenia to the songle component of dopamine

Question 10

Memory - Social and cultural explanations

Answer 10

• Top level explanation
• Bartlett’s schema theory: memory can be explained through cultural explanations as research suggests socially learnt schemas affect what we remember and how we recall

Question 11

Memory - Psychological explanations

Answer 11

• Middle level explanation
• Cognitive psychologists explain memory through theoretical models such as the multistore model of memory
• Evidence from Miller and Peterson and Peterson support this

Question 12

Memory - Biological explanation

Answer 12

• Bottom level explanation
• Biological psychologists have found that memory is localised in areas of the brain such as the hippocampus

Question 13

Gender - Social and cultural explanations

Answer 13

• Top level explanation
• Mead conducted research into cross-cultural differences in gender roles and found that gender was shaped by social factors and cultural norms

Question 14

Gender - Psychological explanations

Answer 14

• Middle level explanation
• Cognitive psychologists such as Kohlberg explain gender develops as a child progresses through stages of cognitive intellectual development

Question 15

Gender - Biological explanations

Answer 15

• Bottom level explanation
• Gender has been explained to be developed as a result of the action of sex hormones such as the higher levels of testosterone in males which has been used to explain masculine behaviour

Question 16

Who is holism supported by

Answer 16

• Gestalt Psychology
• Explores how when we perceive something in the real world and argue that we do so as a whole rather than as a collection of pieces
• We only make sense of and perceive our world accurately through considering the whole image
• By separating human behaviour into parts, this means that complex behaviour can be easily misunderstood

Question 17

Who supports the holistic approach (think approach)

Answer 17

• Humanists
• Argue that humans experience stimuli as a whole
• Maslow proposes the hierarchy of needs that consider all contributions to human behaviour
• Use qualitative methods to support their holistic investigation of Psychology