holism reductionism

• what is reductionism? 


  reductionism is the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts and using the simplest explanations to understand how they work
• describe levels of reductionism

  levels of explanation refers to the three levels of reductionism.

  • The highest is social and cultural explanations and this is the lowest level of reductionism, where behaviour is explained in terms of the influence of social groups.
  • The middle level is psychological explanations - cognitive behavioural, environmental
  • lowest level with the highest level of reductionism is biological and physiological explanantions where behaviour is explained in terms of neurochemicals, genes and brain structure.
• examples of levels of reductionism

  • Offending behaviour can be explained at a 

  biological level in terms of hormones (e.g. testosterone) or brain structure (e.g. the amygdala) genetics (MAOA gene); 

  • psychological level through either operant conditioning or observation and imitation (learning through peers), cognitive - hostile attribution bias. 
  • social and cultural explanations  cultural expectations affect what we remember -schema
• what are the three types of reductionsim

  biological

  environmental

  experimental
• describe biological reductionism?

  refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce behaviour to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure,
•  

  ENVIRONMENTAL - STIMULUS RESPONSE

  Behaviourists assume that all behaviour can be reduced to the simple building blocks of stimulus-response associations and that complex behaviours are a series of S-R chains.
•  

  EXPERIMENTAL

  is where a complex behaviour is reduced to a single (isolated) variable for the purpose of testing.
• Holism refers to an approach or perspective that emphasizes the importance of studying and understanding the whole person or system rather than focusing solely on its individual parts or components.
• • describe Gestalt psychology 


  adopts a holistic approach to perception: when we perceive something in the real world, What we see only makes sense when we consider the whole image, rather than the individual elements that make up our vision.
• cognitive psychology and humanistic psyhcology are considered more holistic approaches

  • humanistic argues Subjective experience can be understood by taking into account the whole person and all possible factors and what matters most is a sense of a person's unified identity
  • cognitive such as memory is a complex system of connectivist networks, all parts considered as a whole leading to behaviour