Holism and Reductionism Flashcards
Def of holism:
any attempt to break up behaviour is inappropriate as these can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole.
genes = whole person
Holism:
- A collective group of German researchers in the 1820s declared the whole world is greater than the sum of its parts
- Led to the core basis of holism in psych which is the idea that any attempt to break up behaviour is inappropriate as these can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole. Instead of focusing on constituent aspects of a person, genes = whole person.
Reductionism:
Belief that by breaking down behaviour into its component parts, you will better understand it. Based on scientific principle of parsimony-> all phenomena should be explained using the most basic principles. Most simplified + easiest level. E.g. depression via NTs.
Two types of reductionism:
- Biological
- Environmental (stimulus-response)
Biological reductionism:
- based on the idea that we are biological organisms made up of physiological structures and processes.
- thus in order to understand all behaviour- should be explained through neurochemical neurophysiological evolutionary and genetic influences.
Environmental (stimulus-response) reductionism:
- the belief that we should break down behaviour to stimulus-response associations that we form based on events around us
- based on the idea that only our interaction with environment influences behaviour. Approach does not consider itself with mental or physiological processes.
Levels of explanations within reductionism:
The reductionist approach in psych suggests that explanations begin at the highest level and progressively look at component elements:
- higher level
- lower level
Higher level:
- most holistic and broad explanations - they take into account multiple factors (cultural, social, psych) and how these interact to lead to behaviour
Lower level:
- most reductionist explanation -> break down beh to smallest underlying components to study them
Evals:
+ reductionism: practical applications in treatment
- holism: often not scientific
+ reductionism: Scientific
- reductionism may oversimplify complex ideas
A strength of reductionist approach: has practical applications in treatment.
Reductionist explanations believe in breaking down phenomena to simplest factors which is useful in treating mental illnesses.
E.g. viewing complex mental illnesses such as OCD at their lowest (e.g NT imbalance). This leads to specific understanding of disorder which has led to the development of drugs such as SSRIs, which help treat OCD. The effectiveness of this can be seen in Soomro’s study: treatment effective for 70% of OCD patients. This is a SB: benefits lives of OCD patients. This increases merit.
A weakness of holistic explanations: do not lend themselves to rigorous scientific testing and can become vague as they become more complex.
E.g. humanistic psychology conveys concepts which are very broad and vague such as ‘self-actualisation’. A problem with such concepts is that they cannot be empirically tested. Furthermore, holistic explanations pose a problem for researchers as if we accept there r many factors- makes it difficult to measure all those factors at the same time in a controlled environment. Thus cannot establish which is most influential and should be the base for therapy. Thus it is clear that holistic explanations tend to be unscientific.
A strength of reductionism: tend to be scientific
In order to conduct observations in a scientific manner, researchers will break down a target behaviour into behaviour categories. The act of breaking down TB into BC is suggested by reductionism. Thus it has facilitated the conducting of scientific observations. Furthermore, conducting experiments requires a DV which is a broken down measurable version of a variable. Thus, reductionism has facilitated the conducting of experiments. This means researchers can study scientific phenomena like stimulus-response associations. Thus, reductionist explanations tend to be scientific.
A weakness of reductionism is that reductionist explanations oversimplify complicated behaviours and concepts by breaking them down to component parts.
E.g. low level explanations that operate on a gene or neurotransmitter level do not include the analysis of the social context within which beh occurs. Thus, whilst depression has been strongly linked to lower levels of serotonin, to see it as only a neurotransmitter issue which ignore factors such as major negative life events (e.g. bereavement) that may also contribute to this onset. This means that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of the explanation for a given behaviour, diminishing their validity as they are incomplete explanations of behaviour.
