Holism and Reductionism

• Holism: In the 1920/30s a group of German psychologists known as Gestalt psychologists declared, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. This became known as “holism”. The idea is that behaviour can only be understood if you look at the ‘whole’ person. Breaking behaviour down into smaller components is useless. This view is also shared by the humanist approach.
• Reductionism: reductionists believe behaviour is best explained and understood if it is broken down into its

  smaller constituent parts. It is based on the scientific principle of parsimony: all behaviour should be explained using the most simple, basic (lowest level) principle since this is the easiest and most economical explanation.
• Levels of explanation: The reductionist approach suggests that there are different levels of explanation. The lowest level considers physiological (biological) explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of neurochemicals, genes and brain structure; the middle level considers psychological explanations (e.g. cognitive and behavioural) and the highest level considers social and cultural explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of the influence of social groups.
• Examples

  Biological explanations: memory can be considered in terms of biological components through association between size of the hippocampus and memory for spatial navigation.

  Psychological explanations: cognitive psychologists examine particular aspects of memory like capacity of STM and duration of STM

  Socio-cultural: cultural expectations affect what we remember and how we recall information
• Biological reductionism


  Biological reductionism therefore assumes that all behaviour is at some level biological

  and can be explained through:

  – Genetics

  – Neurochemicals

  – Neurophysiology

  – Evolution

  E.g., psychoactive drugs have led to understanding of the effects of neurotransmitters on the brain and can help us explain schizophrenia.
• Environmental reductionism


  all behaviour is acquired through interactions with the environment. E.g., the behaviourist approach through stimulus-response links. For example, the learning theory of attachment shows this through conditioning and cupboard love.
• The holistic approach rejects reductionism in favour of a

  perspective that is best called interactionist. Even if the

  body and mind are two different entities, empirical

  research has clearly demonstrated what everyday

  experience has already taught us, that mind and body

  interact intensely and inevitably. Recognition of that

  existential truth is the most potent critique of the

  reductionist argument
• The holistic approach maintains that

  human behaviour is best understood as an integrated

  experience rather than as separate and distinct parts. For

  example, Gestalt psychology adopts a holistic approach to

  perception: when we perceive something in the real world,

  we do so as a whole rather than as a collection of bits and

  pieces. The physiology of perception is a biological

  phenomenon; the psychology of perception is something

  more, and arguably holistic in nature.
• The critique of environmental reductionism is as much

  methodological as it is substantive. Much of the relevant research in the behaviourist tradition has made use of non-human animals as subjects. The classic Pavlovian

  experiments are an iconic example. Critics of reductionism point to the social context in

  which humans are embedded from the earliest moments of

  life, and to hard-to-measure factors like cognition,

  emotion, and intentionality. In this case as well, the

  reductionist position seems, if not clearly incorrect, then at

  least inadequate.
• Some psychologists argue that biological reductionism can lead to errors of understanding because it ignores the

  complexity of human behaviour. For example, to treat

  conditions like ADHD with drugs in the belief that the

  condition consists of nothing more than neurochemical

  imbalances is to mistake the symptoms of the

  phenomenon for its true cause. Ritalin may reduce these

  symptoms, but the conditions which gave rise to the ADHD

  have not been addressed. success rates of drug therapy are so highly variable, the purely biological understanding seems

  inadequate.
• The defence of the reductionist approach rests on one

  essential epistemological claim: it is the aim of science to

  discover the simplest explanation that accounts for the

  most variation. If it is in fact the case that, for example,

  genes are responsible for 80% of intelligence, and

  environment for 20%, reductionists would insist that no

  more complex explanation is necessary or desirable.

  Science is a reductionist endeavour, and if psychology is

  truly a science, then it should be one as well.