EVALS Holism and Reductionism

• Evaluation points for holism and reductionism

  • S - reductionist- Practical application in treatment
  • W - holistic- Don't lead themselves to rigorous scientific testing and can become vague
  • S - reductionism tends to be scientific
  • W - reductionist explanations oversimplify complicated behaviours and concepts by breaking them down to component parts
• S- reductionist explanations is that they have practical applications in treatment. Breaking down phenomena to the simplest factors is especially useful in treating mental illnesses. For example, viewing complex mental illnesses such as OCD at their lowest level e.g. NT imbalance, leads to a specific understanding of disorders that can lead to the development of psychoactive drugs like SSRIs that can treat the illness....
• (S practical application in treatment)... Soomro has found that SSRIs work for around 70% of OCD patients that take it. S bc it shows that reductionist explanations have led to benefits in peoples lives such as OCD patients. Therefore the reductionist explanation increases in merit.
• S - reductionism - practical application in treatment. Breaking down phenomena to the simplest factors is especially useful in treating mental illnesses. E.g. complex mental illnesses like OCD - lowest level - NT imbalance - understanding of disorders - psychoactive drugs like SSRIs. Soomro - work for around 70% of OCD patients. Shows...
• W- holistic explanations don't lead themselves to rigorous scientific testing + can become vague. For example, humanistic psychology conveys concepts which are very broad + vague such as self actualisation. This is a problem because these cannot be empirically tested ...
• (W-holistic explanations don't lead themselves to rigorous scientific testing and can become vague) Another problem they pose is that if we accept there are many factors, this makes it difficult to measure all those factors at the same time in a controlled environment. This means we can't establish which factor is the most influential + should be the basis for therapy. This it's clear that holistic explanations tend to be unscientific
• S - reductionism tends to be scientific. In order to conduct observations in a scientific manner, individuals will break down a target behaviour into behavioural categories. This process is suggested by reductionism, thus it facilitated the conducting of scientific observations. ...
• (S-reductionism tends to be scientific) ... Furthermore, conducting experiments requires a dependent variable which is a broken down, measurable version of a variable. Thus reductionism has facilitated the conducting of experiments. This means that researchers can study scientific phenomena like stimulus response associations. Thus reductionist explanations tend to be scientific
• W - reductionist explanations oversimplify complicated behaviours and concepts by breaking them down to component parts. For example, lower level explanations that operate on a gene or NT level do not include analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs. Thus, whilst depression has been strongly linked to lower levels of serotonin, to see it as only a NT issue would ignore factors such as major negative life events that may also contribute to its onset. Therefore reductionist explanations tend to be incomplete explanations of behaviour