Holism & Reductionism Flashcards
Define ‘Holism’
- Attempts to understanding human behaviour can only be done through by analysing the person or the behaviour as a whole rather than its constituent parts.
Define ‘reductionism’.
- Where you break down behaviour into its smaller consistuent parts and analyse the relative contribution that factor makes
It assumes that parsimony all behaviour should be explained using the simplest possible explanation
What might reductionist approach look at?
- Biological: genes, including individual genes; neurochemistry; neuroanatomy
Behaviourist: stimulus, response learning that leads to a behaviour
Treat symptoms according to involvement of each system.
What might a hollistic approach look at?
- Consider the whole person’s experience:
Cognitive,
Emotional,
Spiritual,
Developmental,
Social,
Cultural,
Environmental,
Economic.
Deal with person holistically.
What study is an example of biological reductionism?
- Raine et al (1997)
- Researched differences in brain activity of two groups to try to identify the cause of criminal behaviour, in this case murder.
- By using PET scans a group of murderers were gathered & compared to a group of controls.
- Raine found that there were differences in the activation in the cerebral cortex & further to this that there were differences in activity in the subcortical areas.
This research explained that anti-social behaviours can be reduced to brain abnormalities & these can determine behavioural responses.
Define biological reductionism?
- Reducing behaviour to a physiological component/explanation
Define environmental reductionism.
- Explaining behaviour through a stimulus-response learning experience
Give an example of a study that used environmental reductionism.
- Skinner (1963) investigated operant conditioning, stating that behaviour can be predicted or controlled by simply identifying or manipulating stimuli.
- He used a Skinner Box to show that animals can learn to operate on their environment through positive & negative reinforcement
Give an example of research to support holism.
- Gould (1982) carried out review article about history of intelligence.
- Previous research has suggested that intelligence is innate & Gould wanted to investigate the validity of this claim further.
- Whilst this research was not empirical-aimed to question objectivity in intelligence testing
- The evidence of intelligence being innate found to be flawed by Gould as it appeared from Yerkes intelligence testing that cultural bias invalidated any measure of intelligence Yerkes claimed to have.
- Gould highlighted problematic nature of reducing intelligence to a score & the dangers of ignoring other important contributing factors such as culture & language.
Define ‘parsimony’.
- The idea that complex phenomena can be explained in a very simple form
- This leads to reductionism.
- The reductionist approach says that there are different levels of explanation.
- Each level has properties that can’t be reduced down further
Define ‘levels of explanation’.
- Idea that there are several ways (levels) that can be used to explain behaviour.
- The lowest level considers physiological/biological explanations
- The middle level considers psychological explanations
- The highest level considers social & cultural explanations
A truly holistic explanation of behaviour includes all levels of explanation in order to truly understand all factors that might lead to a behaviour
In the levels of explanation triangle what is the order from bottom to top of explanations?
BOTTOM- BIOLOGICAL LEVEL
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Biology
MIDDLE-PSYCHOLOGICAL LEVEL
- Behaviourism
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychodynamic
TOP- SOCIO-CULTURAL LEVEL
- Social Psychology
- Sociology
(biological level is most reductionist)
Give one strength of reductionism.
- It is scientific therefore laws of cause & effect can be established
- Isolating individual variables means cause & effect can be established: Examining individual factors means that scientific research can identify causal variables & determine their importance
Give one limitation of reductionism.
- Some behaviours can only be understood at a higher level
- Often there are aspects of social behaviour that only emerge within a group context & cannot be understood in terms of the individual group members
- For instance the effects of confomrity to social roles in the prisoners & guards in the stanford prison study could not be understood by observing the participants as individuals.
- It was the interaction between people & the behaviour of the group that was important.
- There is no conformity ‘gene’ (that we know of) so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur.
- This suggests, that for some behaviours, higher level explanations (or even holistic ones) provide a more valid account.
Give one limitation of Holism.
- OL: It may lack practical value
- Hollistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex.
- This can present researchers with a practical dilemma.
- If we accept, from a humanistic perspective that there are many different factors that contribute to depression (persons past/present relationships job etc) then it becomes difficult to know which is most influential.
- It is then difficult to know which to prioritise as the basis for therapy for instance.
- This suggests that holistic accounts may lack practical value (whereas reductionist accounts may be better)
