LS6 - Holism & Reductionism Flashcards
Holism
Human behaviour should be looked at as a whole and not integrated parts.
Real World Holism
Things only make sense when you look at the whole image, humanistic psychology argues humans react to stimuli as an organised whole, rather than a set of stimulus response links hence qualitative methods are used to analyse people.
Reductionism
To understand someone, their behaviours and experiences must be broken up and individually analysed and explained using the most basic principles.
Levels Of Explanation
All behaviour can be analysed with different levels of explanations from most reductionist to most holistic.
Highest Level Of Explanation
Sociocultural Factors
Middle Level Of Explanation
Mild Reductionism i.e. cognitive behaviours
Lowest Levels Of Explanation
Hard Reductionism i.e. physiological factors.
Biological Reductionism
Psychologist reducing behaviour to physical factors e.g. genes and neurones.
Environmental Reductionism
All behaviour can be reduced to simple building blocks of S-R associations and the more complex the behaviour, the more S-R chains.
S-R Chains
Stimulus response chains
Reductionism (+)
Scientist Support
Scientific Credibility
Reductionism (-)
Lacks Ecological Validity
Ignores Behaviour Complexity
Methodology
Scientist Support (+)
Most studies imply human behaviour can be studied effectively, through simple experiments, allowing researchers to study behaviour in controlled environments.
Scientific Credibility (+)
Both biological and environmental determinism are viewed as scientific as they allow complex behaviours to be tested in smaller parts.
Lacks Ecological Validity (-)
Studies using reductionism are often questioned for their reliability due to labs being different to natural environments.
Ignores Behaviour Complexity (-)
Biological reductionism ignores the complexity of behaviours e.g. treating ADHD with drug therapy, mistakes its symptoms for its true cause.
Methodology (-)
Methodology of environmental reductionism is poor e.g. human behaviour is scaled up as most test subjects are animals anyway.
Holism (+)
Group Context
Blends In With Other Theories
Holism (-)
No Scientific Testing
Don’t Establish Causation
Group Context (+)
Some social behaviours only emerge in group context e.g. conformity, you need to look at the whole group.
Blends In With Other Theories (+)
It tries to provide a complete and realistic understanding of human behaviour.
No Scientific Testing (-)
Holistic explanations can become vague and complex e.g. humanistic approach which is difficult to scientifically approach.
Don’t Establish Causation (-)
Doesn’t look at established behaviours in terms of operationalised, manipulative variables.
