Reductionism and Holism

• Holism

  • looks at the system as a whole and sees any attempt to subdivide behaviour into smaller units as innapropriate.
  • focuses on the individuals experiences which cannot be reduced to biological unit
• Strengths of holism

  • looks at everything that may impact behaviour
  • can be higher in ecological validity
• Limitations of Holism

  • overcomplicates behaviour that may have simpler explanations
  • neglects the importance of biological explanations
• Recutionism

  • the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts, based pm the scientific principle of parsimony, all phenomena should be explained using the simplest principles
• strengths of reductionism

  • can be useful in allowing scientific study to be carried out as it requires the isolation of one variable to identify cause
• limitations of reductionism

  • it can be over simplistic therefore lacking ecological validity
  • doesn't address larger societal issues such as poverty
• biological reductionism

  • includes the neurochemical and physiological levels, evolutionary and genetic influences
  • based on the premise we are biological organisms
• environmental reductionism

  • behaviourist approach is built-in environmental reductionism, proposing all behaviour is learned and accquired through interactions with the environment
• limitation of holism

  • may lack practical value, holistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex.
  • there are many different factors that contribute to depression for example and may be difficult to know which is the most influential.