Holism v.s. Reductionism

• This debate focuses on whether psychology should look to study people by breaking them down into their parts or whether we can understand the full complexity of a person by studying their whole experience.
• A reductionist approach says that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it into simpler component parts. Reductionist suggests that explanations have 3 levels:

  • highest level - social and cultural explanation
  • middle level - psychological, cognitive, behavioural
  • lowest level - biological, including hormones and genes
• Examples of levels

  • HIGHEST LEVEL - Cultural/ social factors - schemas
  • these are shaped by our cultural and social influences
  • e.g. Bartlett's War of the Ghost study showed that the Ps recall of the story was difficult due to their western expectations which made them change certain words or forget large parts of it
  • MIDDLE LEVEL - Cognitive, psychological, social - cognitive approach
  • information processing is explained through cognitive hardware such as the capacity of the STM which is 7+/- 2
  • This is reductonist as it looks at components of STM and LTM to explain memory
  • LOWEST LEVEL - Biological explanations - genes
  • memory can be explained by looking at physical structures in the brain
  • e.g. Maguire who showed that human memory was in terms of components and taxi drivers had a larger hippocampus to store increased spatial matter
• Biological reductionism

  • includes reducing complex behaviours to the actions of neurons, hormones and neurotransmitters
  • e.g. OCD in terms of hypersensitivty to the basal ganglia or the underproduction of serotonin
• Environmental reductionism

  • reduces complex behaviours to stimulus and response links
  • e.g. explaining attachment in terms of assosciating a mother with food
• Holism

  • comes from the Greek word "holos" which means whole
  • puts forward the idea that human behaviour should be considered as a whole rather than looking at the parts of a person
  • e.g. humanistic approach which shows that individual experience is fundamental to achieving someone's full pontential
• A03

  An argument for holism is that the richness of human experience cna only be gained by looking at the whole of the experience.

  For example, Zimbardo's prison simulation looked at the ideas of deindividuation and conforming to social roles. These are explained by looking at the situation which made the guards do bad things to prisoners in positions of power rather than the person's dispositional characteristics.

  Also, qualitative methods can allow for a more idiographic approach and a more holistic account of the person.
• A03

  An argument against holism is that it does not allow scientific testing on its concepts. It can be criticised due to a lack of empirical evidence. The concepts are therefore seen as vague.
• A03

  On the other hand, a good thing about the reductionist approach is that it often forms the basis of scientific research. In order to operationalise variables, a researcher must break behaviour down into parts.

  This helps to give psychology greater credibility and be seen as something that is more scientific. However, the operation of variables in studies can result in something that is not meaningful to everyday life. For e.g. studying EWT through video clips lacks the emotion that would be present in real life EWT situations.
• A03

  Reductionist approaches are accused of oversimplifying complex behaviours. In doing so, they miss the richness of human experience, such as the analysis of social context where a behaviour will occur.

  For e.g. lifting a finger could be due to answering a question, an angry exchange, or showing a number. This could mean behaviour gets overlooked.
• A03

  A further argument against reductionism is that the development of drug therapies is the consequence of reductionist approaches.

  If a child with OCD gets treated with anti depressants, the true cause of the disorder may be missed and the symptoms will singularly be treated. Another e.g. from stress is the use of BZs to control stress symptoms. However, the cause of stress may be due to family or environment.