Holism and Reductionism Flashcards
What is reductionism?
When complex phenomena is broken down into simple components.
What are the levels of explanation?
Higher level: cultural and social explanations of social groups affecting behaviour (holistic)
Middle level: Psychological explanations for behaviour.
Lower level: Biological explanations for such as genes or hormones affecting behaviour (reductionist).
What is biological reductionism?
It is the idea that animals are explained using atoms so humans are also explained this way. Behaviour is usually reduced to neural action, neurotransmitters and hormones. OCD is explained this way due to the excessive activity of neurotransmitter dopamine. medication is used to inhibit its release which reduces its symptoms.
What is environmental reductionism?
This is the idea that behaviour is explained through stimulus and response links. An example is in attachment. This is because attachment is reduced to a set of probabilities. The mother provide food which will reinforce the link which causes the mother to be seen as a rewarding individual and becomes a loved one.
What is experimental reductionism?
This is the idea that complex behaviour is reduced to isolated variables (useful as it allows you to conduct scientific research easier). This approach reduces behaviour into variables you can operationalise and manipulate to be able to find cause and effect relationships.
What approaches are reductionist?
Biological approach - explain human behaviour in terms of endogenous processes by looking at neurochemicals, genes, brain structure, and hormonal activity.
Cognitive approach - reduces behaviour to cognitive explanations such as attentional processes or memory. Explain behaviour by breaking it down into isolated variables. They apply machine reductionism by portraying people as information-processing systems and disregarding emotional influences on behaviour.
Behaviourist approach - explains behaviour with simple responses: stimuli, response, reinforcement and punishment.
What is holism?
It is the idea that they take the whole experience into account instead of breaking them down. We are unable to predict how the whole system will behave from just individual components.
What is humanistic psychology?
Individuals react as organised whole rather than S-R links. Unified identity - lack of this = mental disorder.
What is cognitive psychology?
Memory: complex systems explained more using connectionist networks. Each neuron is linked to other units. Connection networks are seen as holistic as the network works differently than individual parts.
Criticism: Dualists
2 aspects can’t be separated, especially concerning mind+body. Reductionist approach doesn’t explain relationship between mind and body/brain. Alternative approach analyses how different levels interact. Dualists propose this idea of a physical brain and non-physical brain that interact. Interactionist approach more suitable to explain link between mind + body
Strength: Drug therapies
Biological reductionism has been instrumental in development of drug therapies. Institutionalisation has reduced due to drug therapies seen as more humane for treating mental illness and don’t blame patient. Drug therapies not always successful as they reduce illness to biological level ignoring context and reduce the function of behaviour. Shows drug therapies are useful for symptoms but psychological explanations considering causal factors are also useful.
Criticism: Behaviourist approach
Behavioural approach relies on finding from experiments from non-human animals. Pavlov + Skinner explain behaviour through simple components, which may not fit complex human behaviour. Humans are different from non-humans, especially in terms of free will so cognitive and emotional factors are overlooked. This means environmental reductionism fails to consider other influences on human behaviour.
Criticism: Lower level explanations
Can cause problems as taking lower level explanations in isolation can overlook the meaning of behaviour, leading to errors in understanding meaning of behaviour, leading to errors in understanding. Wolpe’s SD found no improvement in her fear of insects, her husband was given insect nickname and her fear was not due to conditioning but represented marital relationships. Low level distracts us from more important explanations and treatments.
Criticism: Experimental reductionism
Has been productive way of studying behaviour, but isn’t a real representation of real life. Lab experiments investigating EWT haven’t always been confirmed by real life witnesses. In real life, witness testimony has been found to be highly accurate. Operationalising variables such as EWT could result in other factors motivating performance that do not reflect real world. Suggests experimental reductionsim may have negative effect on the relevance of psychological research.
