Reductionism and Holism

Question 1

What is Holism ?

Answer 1

• ‘the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts’
• only makes sense to study the person or behaviour as a whole
• Takes into account economic, environmental, cultural and social factors
• e.g. Humanistic approach - self actualisation - hierarchy of needs
• e.g localisation of the brain - recent research (lashley with the rats)

Question 2

What is reductionism ?

Answer 2

• analysing behaviour by breaking it down to it’s constituent parts (basic units)
• Based on the scientific principle of parsimony (simplest is the best)
• E.g. Bowlby’s maternal deprivation - attachment to mother in critical periods
• E.g. Cognitive neuroscience - machine reductionism - doesn’t look at human emotion

Question 3

What is extreme reductionism ?

Answer 3

• lowest basic unit (biological reductionism)
• Can be linked to the biological approach
• E.g. treating OCD

Question 4

What is environmental reductionism ?

Answer 4

• role of environmental units
• role models, conditioning
• e.g. - the way that phobias are conditioned

Question 5

What are the levels of explanation with reductionism ?

Answer 5

• The different ways to explain behaviour’s through the levels of reductionism
• Holism is at the top (complex)
• Then sociological (e.g cultures, subcultures) (high)
• Then psychological (conditioning) (mid)
• Then biological (genetics, brain structures) (hard sciences)
• Then chemical (enzymes, hormones) (hard sciences)

Question 6

What are the strengths of reductionism ?

Answer 6

Can be scientifically tested
- Means that the cause of behaviours can be established easily as behaviour can be broken down

Application to treatments
- treating a basic unit is easier as you can identify cause and create a simple solution

Question 7

What are the limitations of reductionism ?

Answer 7

Over-simplifies behaviour
- This ignores the complexity of different factors which leads to a loss of meaning

It is difficult to establish how each individual factor contributes to any behaviour
This means we can’t always define what specifically is causing something to happen (it may be more general)

Question 8

What are the strengths of holism ?

Answer 8

Reminds us that the whole is not just the sum of parts
- Shows that it is beneficial to look at all the factors and what they mean as they mean more than if you just put all the separate parts together

More complete understanding of behaviours
- Allows us to get a wide range of knowledge about behaviour as it looks at many different factors that reductionism doesn’t look at

Question 9

What are the limitations of holism ?

Answer 9

Cannot be rigorously tested because it’s not a unit
- no way of reliably testing all factors behaviour at the same time so it isn’t very scientific