The holism-reductionism debate

• Holism = an arguement which proposes that it only makes sense to study an indivisible system rather than its constituent parts
• Reductionism = the belief that human behaviour is better understood by studying the smaller constituent parts
• Humanistic psychology focuses on the individual’s experience, which is not something that can be reduced to, for example, biological units.
• Humanistic psychologists use qualitative methods to investigate the self whereby themes are analysed rather than breaking the concept into component behaviours.
• Reductionism is based on the scientific principle of parsimony - that all phenomena should be explained using the simplest principles.
• There are different ways to explain behaviour -some more reductionist than others. For example social cognition, social groups, interpersonal interaction, cognition and emotion, learned associations, genetics, physiology, cellular biology and biochemistry.
• Levels of explanation:

  • socio-cultural level
  • psychological level
  • physical level
  • environmental/behavioural level
  • physiological level
  • neurochemical level
• Which of the levels provides the ‘best’ explanation is a matter of debate, but each level is more reductionist than the one before.
• Psychology itself can be placed in a hierarchy of science; sociology, psychology, biology, chemistry and physics. Researchers who favour reductionism would see psychology as ultimately being replaced by explanations derived from those sciences lower down in the hierarchy.
• Biological reductionism = includes the neurochemical and physiological levels and also evolutionary and genetic influences. It is based on the premise that we are biological organisms. Thus, all behaviour is at some level biological.
• Biologically reductionist arguments often work backwards. For example, drugs that increase serotonin have been found to be effective in treating OCD. Therefore, working backwards, low serotonin may be a cause of OCD. We have reduced OCD to the level of neurotransmitter activity.
• Environmental reductionism = proposes that all behaviour is learned and acquired through interactions with the environment
• The behaviourist approach is built on environmental reductionism. Behaviourists explain behaviour in terms of conditioning which is focused on simple stimulus-response links, reducing behaviour to these basic elements. For example, the learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love to a learned association between the person doing the feeding and food resulting in pleasure.
• One limitation of the holism approach is that it may lack practical value. Holistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex. If we accept, from a humanistic perspective, that there are many different factors that contribute to depression then it becomes difficult to know which is most influential and which to therefore prioritise as the basis for therapy, for instance. This suggests holistic accounts lack practical value.
• One strength of reductionist approaches is that they often form the basis of a scientific approach. In order to conduct well-controlled research we need to operationalise the variables to be studied. This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations in a way that is objective and reliable. For example, research on attachment operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety. This scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences.
• Reductionist approaches have been accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena, leading to reduced validity. Explanations that operate at the level of the gene or neurotransmitter do not include an analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs -this is where behaviour may derive meaning. For example, the physiological processes involved in pointing one’s finger will be the same regardless of the context. However, an analysis of these will not tell us why the finger is pointed. This suggests reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.
• A limitation of reductionism is that some behaviours can only be understood at a higher level. There are aspects of social behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood in terms of the individual group members. For instance, the effects of conformity to social roles Stanford prison study could not be understood by observing the participants individually. It was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important. There is no conformity ‘gene’ so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur.