holism and reductionism

• holism: treating as a whole person more than just the parts that make it up - links to humanistic and localisation of function in the brain
• reductionism: analyse behaviour by breaking it down to singular parts that make up a person, may look at biological or environmental factors
• parsimony: simplest approach is always the best
• extreme reductionism: lowest level, reducing it to basic units - example of biological reductionism
• environmental reductionism; role of environmental influences (classical and operant conditioning)
• levels of explanation; where psychology is placed into hierarchy's to best explain behaviour

  • sociological, holistic and complex level
  • psychological, phobias and conditioning, cognition
  • biological, genetics and brain structures
  • chemical, enzymes and hormones
  • physical, atoms

  
• evaluation:

  strength:

  • reductionism has scientific credibility

  weakness;

  • holism lacks practical value, human behaviour is more complex than it seems. Looking at all factors that cause behaviour cannot help to discover which is the most influential to cause that behaviour
  • reductionism; oversimplifies behaviour and ignores other factors that contribute to behaviour