Holism-reductionism

Question 1

Holism-reductionism Debate

Holism

Answer 1

• Looks at a system as a whole and sees attempts to subdivide behaviours or experience into smaller units as inappropriate.
• Gestalt psychologists believe “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
• Humanistic psychology focuses on the individuals experience and uses qualitative methods to investigate the self.

Question 2

Holism-reductionism Debate

Reductionism

Answer 2

• Seeks to analyse behaviour by breaking it down into its constituant parts.
• It’s based on the principle of parsimany that all phenomena should be explain using its simplest principles.
• There a different levels of explanation for behaviour (e.g. OCD), getting progressively reductionist:
  1. socio-cultural level - interrupts social relationships
  2. psychological level - experience of anxiety
  3. physical level - movements, e.g. hand washing
  4. environmental level - learning experiences
  5. physiological level - abnormal frontal lobe function
  6. neurochemical level - serotonin underproduction

Question 3

Holism-reductionism

Biological Reductionism

Answer 3

• Based on the idea that we are biological organisms and so all behaviour is somewhat biological.
• We can work backwards to see that drugs that increase serotonin levels are effective in treating OCD.
• So by reducing OCD to its most reductionist form (neurotransmitter activity), we find that low serotonin may be a cause.

Question 4

Holism-reductionism

Environmental Determinism

Answer 4

• Proposes that all behaviour is learned and acquired through interactions with the environment.
• Behaviourists explain this through stimulus-response links.
• The theory in attachment reduces the idea of love to a learned association between the person doing the feeding (NS) and food (UCS) resulting in pleasure (CR).

Question 5

Holism-reductionism: Evaluation

Practical Value

Limitation

Answer 5

• Holism has little practical value.
• Accepting holistic explainations can present researchers with a practical dialemma.
• For example, there are many different factors that contribute to depression and it’s difficult to know which is the most influential, making it hard to priortise in terms of therapy.

This suggests holistic accounts lack practical value.

Question 6

Holism-reductionism: Evaluation

Scientific Approach

Strength

Answer 6

• Reductionist approaches often form the basis of a scientific approach.
• To conduct well-controlled research we need to operationalise variables by breaking them into constituant parts.
• This allows psychologists to conduct objective and reliable research (.e.g Ainworth’s SS operationising component behaviours such as separation anxiety).

Reductionism gives psychology greater scientific credibility.

Question 7

Holism-reductionism: Evaluation

Too Simplistic

Limitation

Answer 7

• Reductionism has been criticised for oversimplifying complex phenomena.
• Explainations which operates on a neurochemical level does not account for the social context behavious occurs.

This suggests reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.