Issues & Debates - Reductionism-Holism Flashcards
What is holism?
Gestalt psychologists (Germany in 1920s and 30s) claimed that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. Breaking up behaviour and experience is inappropriate as these can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole. Human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not as separate component parts.
This view is shared by humanistic psychologists who see successful therapy as bringing together all aspects of the whole person.
What is reductionism?
Reductionist approaches analyse behaviour by breaking it down into smaller constituent units.
This is based on the scientific principle of parsimony - all phenomena should be explained using the most basic, lowest level and simplest principles (e.g. behaviour of individual cells).
What are levels of explanation?
The notion of levels of explanation suggests there are different ways of viewing the same phenomena in psychology - some are more reductionist than others.
Explanations vary from those at a lower or fundamental level focusing on basic components or units to those at a higher more holistic multivariable level.
How can OCD be understood in different ways (levels of explanation)?
- Socio-cultural level: it involves behaviour most people would regard as odd (e.g. repetitive hand-washing).
- Psychological level: the individual’s experience of having obsessive thoughts.
- Physical level: the sequence of movements involved in washing one’s hands.
- Physiological level: hypersensitivity of the basal ganglia.
- Neurochemical level: underproduction of serotonin.
Who was Rose (1976)?
Rose suggested reductionist explanations are one form of discourse about human behaviour and that physical explanations are at the bottom moving through chemical, anatomical/biochemical, physiological, psychological, social-psychological, and then the broadest lens is sociological.
No explanation is more or less important than another. All are valid and all are useful.
How can psychology be replaced by a hierarchy of reductionism?
Psychology can be placed in a hierarchy of science, with the more precise and ‘micro’ of these at the bottom (e.g. physics), and the more general and ‘macro’ at the top (e.g. sociology).
Researchers who favour reductionist accounts of behaviour see psychology as ultimately being replaced by explanations derived from those sciences lower down in the hierarchy.
What is biological reductionism?
We are biological organisms made up of physiological structures and processes - all behaviour is at some level biological and can be explained through neurochemical, neurophysical, evolutionary and genetic influences.
This assumption has been successfully applied to the explanation and treatment of mental illness.
What is environmental reductionism?
The behaviourist approach is built on environmental reductionism - behaviourists study observable behaviour and break complex learning up into simple stimulus-response links, which can be tested and explained using laboratory experiments.
So the key unit of analysis occurs at the physical level - the behaviourist approach is not concerned with cognitive processes at the psychological level. The mind is regarded as a ‘black box’ - irrelevant to our understanding of behaviour.
What are the strengths of holism?
There are some social behaviours that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood at the level of individual group members.
For example, the effects of de-individuation of prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison experiment could not be understood by studying the participants as individuals - it was the interactions between the people that mattered.
This shows that holistic explanations are needed for a more complete understanding of behaviour than reductionist approaches. The whole isn’t just the sum of the parts, but also the way they work together.
What are the weaknesses of holism?
Holistic explanations tend not to lend themselves to rigorous scientific testing and become vague and speculative as they become more complex.
For example, if we accept there are many factors contributing to depression, it is difficult to establish which is most influential and which to use as a basis for therapy. This suggests that when it comes to finding solutions for real-world problems lower-level explanations may be more applicable.
Another weakness is that many different theories of cognitive functioning such as memory, perception and language have been created in psychology but little attempt has been made to combine the theories together.
What are the strengths of reductionism?
A reductionist approach often forms the basis of scientific research. Target behaviours are reduced to constituent parts to create operationalised variables.
This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in meaningful and reliable ways, meaning that the cause of behaviours can be established more easily.
This gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences lower down in the reductionist hierarchy.
What are the weaknesses of reductionism?
Reductionist explanations at the level of genes or neurotransmitters oversimplify complex phenomena and so lose validity. They fail to analyse the social context of the behaviour - but this is where the behaviour derives its meaning.
Physiological processes in pointing one’s finger are the same in any context. But an analysis of these processes does not tell us why the finger is pointed (e.g. to draw attention, as part of a raised hand to answer a question, or as an aggressive act).
It is also difficult to establish how much each individual factor contributes to any particular behaviour.
This means that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.
What is the interactionist approach?
A strength of both holism and reductionism is the interactionist approach. Interactionism in the context of holism and reductionism considers how different levels of explanation combine and interact.
For example, the diathesis-stress model explains mental disorders such as schizophrenia as the outcome of predisposition (often genetic) which is triggered by some stressor (often psychological).
This model has led to a more multi-disciplinary and holistic approach to treatment (e.g. combining drugs and family therapy) and is associated with lower relapse rates.
How is the psychodynamic approach partly holistic and partly reductionist?
H: humour, dreams, relationships with parents, child development
R: ID -> eros (sex), thantos (aggression)
How is the cognitive approach partly holistic and partly reductionist?
H: recognises that systems interact with each other
R: looks at reductionist systems in our mediational processes
