holism and reductionism

Question 1

what is reductionism

Answer 1

Reductionism is the concept of explaining behaviour by breaking it down into
smaller, more fundamental components. It operates within a hierarchical
structure, moving from extreme reductionism in the hard sciences to broader
explanations in psychology and sociology

Question 2

levels of reductionism

Answer 2

Highest level: Sociological level – Cultural and social explanations of
behaviour.
 Middle level: Psychological level – Behavioural and cognitive explanations.
 Lowest level: Biological level – Physiological explanations. This is the most
extreme form of reductionism, as it breaks complex behaviours into their
smallest component parts.

Question 3

what are the types of reductionism

Answer 3

biological
machine reductionism
environmental

Question 4

what is biological reductionism

Answer 4

Reduces human behaviour to the activity of neurons,
neurotransmitters, hormones, and genes.
o Example: Schizophrenia has been linked to excess dopamine
activity, as drugs that block dopamine receptors have been shown
to reduce symptoms.
o The biological approach relies on biological reductionism.

Question 5

what is machine reductionism

Answer 5

Treats organisms, including humans, as machine-like systems where
behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into distinct
cognitive processes.
o Example: The cognitive approach often uses machine reductionism
by comparing human thinking to computer processing.

Question 6

what is environmental reductionism

Answer 6

Reduces behaviour to a stimulus-response relationship, ignoring
internal processes.
o Example: Attachment is explained as a learned association—the
mother provides food, which is reinforcing, leading the infant to
view her as a “loved one.”
o The behaviourist approach follows environmental reductionism.

Question 7

what is holism

Answer 7

Holism is the highest level of explanation of behaviour, taking account of all
aspects of a person’s behaviour/experience. It is the opposite of reductionism.

Question 8

what does the humanistic approach believe about holism

Answer 8

The humanistic approach believes that the individual reacts as an organised
whole, rather than a set of stimulus-response links. What matters is a person’s
sense of a unified identity and thus a lack of identity or sense of ‘wholeness’
leads to a mental disorder.

Question 9

strengths of reductionism

Answer 9

Both biological reductionism and environmental reductionism are viewed as scientific. Breaking complex behaviours into small constituent parts means that they can be scientifically tested and over time explanations of behaviour based
on scientific evidence will emerge.

+ Biological reductionism has led to the development of biological therapies,
such as drugs. For example, SSRIs are more effective than placebos at treating
the symptoms of OCD and reduce the symptoms for up to three months after
the treatment. The use of SSRIs in patients with OCD has helped to reduce the anxiety associated with OCD thus providing relief for some patients.

Question 10

weaknesses of reductionism

Answer 10

Some psychologists argue that biological reductionism can lead to errors of
understanding because it is simplistic and ignores the complex interaction of
many factors in determining behaviour. For example, to treat conditions like
ADHD with drugs in the belief that the condition consists of nothing more than
neurochemical imbalances is to mistake the symptoms of the phenomenon for its true cause. Ritalin may reduce these symptoms, but the varied factors which
gave rise to the ADHD have not been addressed. Since the success rates of
drug therapy are so highly variable, the purely biological understanding seems
inadequate.

• Much of the research which supports environmental reductionism used non-
  human animals (e.g. Pavlov and Skinner). But is human behaviour simply a scaled-
  up version of that of dogs or rats? Critics of reductionism point to the social
  context in which humans are embedded from the earliest moments of life, and
  to hard-to-measure factors like cognition, emotion, and intentionality. In this case as well, the reductionist position seems, if not clearly incorrect, then at
  least inadequate.
• Environmental reductionism can mean that the true meaning of a behaviour is
  overlooked. For example, Wolpe (1973) treated a women who had a phobia of
  insects with systematic desensitisation, but found no improvement. It turned
  out that her husband, whom she was not getting along with, had an insect
  nickname. Her phobia was not the result of classical conditioning but an
  expression of her marital difficulties.