Reductionism or holism

Question 1

Reductionism

Answer 1

The belief that there is a single factor that is the cause of a certain behaviour
There is THE cause

Question 2

Strengths of reductionism

Answer 2

Research will be scientific: isolating all factors except THE factor to investigate cause and effect
Experiments are as a result highly controlled: standardised and replicable and accurate results

Question 3

Weaknesses of reductionism

Answer 3

Less ecologically valid of use of highly controlled experiments
Behaviour is too complex to be reduced to a single cause
Causes decoupling problem where irl causes of behaviour work in conjunction with each other, so controlling all except one factor won’t be accurate in its effect

Question 4

Holism

Answer 4

Belief that human behaviour is caused by multiple factors and their interactions with each other
Hence research includes multiple independent variables

Question 5

Strengths of holism

Answer 5

Lots of factors are considered so high face validity
High eco validity as the research considers multiple factors so this reflects real life

Question 6

Weaknesses of holism

Answer 6

Hard to know what factor has the largest factor
Not scientific as the claims are more vague, we are saying multiple factors effect behaviour rather than cause and effect of one IV
Hard to make predictions as a result

Question 7

Examples of studies that support holistic explanations

Answer 7

Piliavin - considered multiple factors such as the victim’s race, state they were in (ill or drunk) on the amount of help they receive when they fall over on the subway
Simon and Chabris - considered 4 factors on inattentional blindness when showing participants a video of basketball and how they interact (transparency, difficulty of task, team they were told to watch, type of unexpected event)

Question 8

Examples of studies that support reductionist debates?

Answer 8

Loftus and Palmer - argued the verb used in the critical question is the sole cause of participants saying they saw broken glass when there was none in the video they watched
Sperry - argued that the reason participants had separate consciousness that allowed one side to say they saw a key but draw an apple was due to the cutting of the corpus callosum in the brain