Holism and Reductionism AO3

• -holistic accounts of human behaviour become hard to use as they become more complex which presents researchers with a practical dilemma. If many different factors contribute to an illness then it becomes difficult to know which is most influential and which to prioritise for treatment. This suggests that holistic accounts may lack practical value whereas a reductionist account may be more useful.
• -there are aspects of social behaviour that may only emerge within a group context and can't be understood in terms of the individual group members. The Zimbardo prison study couldn't be understood by observing the participants as individuals, it was the behaviour of the whole group that was important. The shows that higher / holistic level explanations provide a more valid account.
• +research variables need to be operationalised in order to conduct well-controlled research. Target behaviours would be broken down into constituent parts. This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in a way thats objective and reliable. This scientific approach gives psycholagy greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences.
• +-However reductionist explanations at the level of the gene or neurotransmitter don't include an analysis of the context

  within which behaviour occurs and therefore lack meaning. This suggests that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.
• A reductionist account of consciousness would argue that we are thinking machines : that cognitive processes are associated with physical processes in the brain. Meanwhile neuroscrentists struggle to explain the subjective experience of the same neural process. This is referred to as the 'explanatory gap’ in brain science. This suggests that not all aspects of consciousness, particularly individual differences in experience, can be explained by brain activity.