Reductionist / Holistic

• What is Holism?


  Attempts to understand human behaviour can only be done through analysing the person or the behaviour as a whole rather than its constituent parts.
• What is Reductionism?


  Analysing behaviour by breaking it down into its constituent parts. It is based around the scientific principle of parsimony. All behaviour should be explained using the most basic (lower level) principles.
• What is Biological Reductionism?

  Human behaviour can be reduced to a physical level. Biological psychologists reduce the behaviour to neurons, hormones and other biological processes.
• What is Environmental Reductionism(stimulus-response)?

  Behaviourist explanations suggests that behaviour can be explained in terms of stimulus response links. This means that behaviour is all shaped by the environment (except for the reflexes and instincts).
• What is Experimental Reductionism?

  This is where you reduce complex behaviours to isolate variables in a lab environment. Behaviour are reduced to operationalised variables which can be manipulated and measure to determine casual relationship.
• What are the levels of explanation?

  Highest level: Cultural and social explanations of how social group affects our behaviour.

  Middle level: Psycho logical explanations of behaviour.

  Lowest level: Biological level

  
• What is the Holism vs Reductionism scale of approaches?

  
• What is a strength of Holism vs Determinism?

  Reductionism is more scientific

  • They are causal explanations as it believes that one causes another. This means that psychology is viewed as more scientific which is what it ultimately wants. Holism takes various aspects into consideration which doesn't land well to science.
• What is another strength of Holism vs Determinism?

  Reductionism can lead to treatment/prevention

  • As they are causal explanations, people can work out what causes what to discover treatments/prevention. (e.g. biological explanations of depression says depression is caused by serotonin. This would lead to treatments because we'd know we need to change serotonin levels.
• What is a counterargument for reductionism can lead to treatment/prevention?

  This may be argued to be too simplistic as it's taking other aspects into consideration so may be good for short-term but not long-term.