Holism And Reductionism Flashcards
What is reductionism?
Investigating behaviour through breaking down a behaviour into its constituent parts, rather than as a whole
- can be biological reductionism or environmental reductionism
What is the main implication of reductionism?
Potentially ignores other important factors influencing a behaviour
What is biological reductionism?
Reducing behaviour to a physical level, such as explaining behaviour in terms of only genetics/neurotransmitters etc.
What are some strengths of biological reductionism?
. Isolating one particular cause of a behaviour can help target the root cause of the behaviour, helping to develop a particular treatment
. Takes a more humane/sympathetic approach to behaviour as your biology isn’t your fault
What are some weaknesses of biological reductionism?
. Isolating the smallest part of our behaviour takes the lowest levels of explaining behaviour
- this could mean treatment may only treat symptoms and not the root cause as you may have missed the root cause in ignoring other factors
How can reductionism lead to loss of meaning in a behaviour?
Components of behaviour don’t add to reflect a whole experience of human behaviour
What is environmental reductionism?
Explaining behaviour at the stimulus-response level, where all behaviour is said to be learnt through stimulus-response
- reduced complex behaviours to a series of stimulus-response chains
What are some strengths of environmental reductionism?
. Can help explain individual differences based on environmental factors e.g how people possess same genes but not the same behaviour
. Paved the way for behaviourist treatment such as flooding and SD with the knowledge that a behaviour can be unlearned if it has been learned
What are some limitations of environmental reductionism?
Behaviourist stimulus-response approach was based on animal studies
- humans have much more complex behaviours than animals
. Reducing behaviour to stimulus-response ignores important factors such as genetics
How does a reductionist approach to behaviour fit well with the aim of psychology?
. Fits well with drive for scientific status
. Reductionism allows clearly defined variables which can be operationalised and observed objectively which allows for the inference of casual relationships
. Allows people to make predictions based on hypotheses to then establish cause and effect
. Overall very good scientific method
How does the reductionist approach follow the scientific method well?
As you are isolating other variables in studying a specific component of behaviour, allowing the empirical method to be used and lab conditions as conditions are controlled
What is holism?
The idea that you shouldn’t isolate one particular aspect of human behaviour, behaviour should be viewed as the whole person, a summed total of all their internal and external constituent parts
What is the best case of holism and how?
Humanistic psychology
- focuses on personal development
- investigates all aspect of an individual as well as interactions between people
- hierarchy of needs takes every aspect of human motivation into account, not just focusing on one part of life
- CCT focuses on the whole person to try and reach self-actualisation
- your identity is based on everything, not just one aspect of your life
