Holism- reductionism

• Holism

  = Theory which proposes that it only makes sense to study an indivisible system.

  • Looks at a system as a whole
  • Humanistic psychology focuses on the individuals experience, which is not something that can be reduced, uses qualitative methods to investigate the self whereby themes are analysed rather than breaking the concept into component behaviours.
• Reductionism

  = Belief that human behaviour is best understood by studying smaller constituent parts.
• Levels of explanation

  = Ideas that there are several ways that can be used to explain behaviour.

  • Lowest= physiological/ biological explanations
  • Middle= psychological explanations
  • Higher= social and cultural explanations
• Biological reductionism

  = Includes neurochemical, physiological levels and evolutionary and genetic influences.

  • All behaviour is at some level biological
  • Biologically reductionist arguments often work backwards. Eg: drugs that increase serotonin have been found to be effective in treating OCD, so low serotonin may be a cause of OCD. Have reduced OCD to the level of neurotransmitter activity.
• Environmental reductionism

  = The attempts to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus- response links that have been learned through experience.

  • Behaviourism= reducing behaviour acquired through interactions with the environment to basic stimulus- response elements.
  • Eg: learning theory of attachment reduces idea of love to a learned association between the person doing the feeding and food resulting in pleasure.
• Evaluation- holistic approach lacks practical value

  • Holistic accounts of human behaviour become harder to use as they become more complex. From a humanistic perspective, that there are many different factors that contribute to depression then it becomes difficult to know which is most influential.
  • Its difficult to know which to prioritise as the basis of therapy.
• Evaluation- reductionist approach is scientific 

  • In order to conduct well controlled research we need to operationalise the variables to break down target behaviours into constituent parts. This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations in a way that is objective and reliable.
  • Eg: research on attachment using strange situation operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety, so has greater credibility.
• Evaluation- counterpoint

  • Reductionist approaches accused of oversimplifying complex situations, leading to reduced validity.
  • Explanations that operate at the level of the gene or neurotransmitter don't include an analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs- and this is where the behaviour may derived its meaning. Eg: the physiological process involved in finger pointing will be the same regardless of the context. An analysis wont tell us why the finger is pointed.
  • So reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.
• Evaluation- higher level

  • Limitation= some reductionist explanations of behaviours can only be explained at a higher level.
  • Often, aspects of social behaviours that only emerge in group context can't be understood in terms of individual group members.
  • Eg: effects of conformity to social roles in zimbardos study couldn't be understood by observing the participants as individuals, it was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important. No conformity gene so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur.