Holism and reductionism

Cards (9)

  • Holism - Breaking up behaviour and experience is wrong and can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole:
    • Shared with humanistic approach
  • Reductionism - Analyses behaviour by breaking it down into constituent parts
  • Levels of explanation in psychology:
    E.g. OCD
    • Socio-cultural context - Repetitive hand washing
    • Psychological level - Having obsessive thoughts
    • Physical level - Movement of hands when washing them
    Hierarchy can be placed
  • Biological reductionism - Made up of biological organisms - All behaviour is biological at some level and be explained through genetic influences e.t.c.
  • Environmental reductionism - Mind regarded as a black box
  • Evaluation for holism:
    • Aspects of social behaviour on a group context - Cannot be understood at the level of individual group members
    • Effects of conformity to social roles and de individuation in the Stanford prison experiment - Interaction between people and the behaviour of the group was important
    Strength: Holistic explanations provide a more complete and global understanding of behaviour that reductionist approaches
  • Evaluation against holism:
    • Cannot be scientifically tested and become vague and speculative the more complex it is
    • Higher level explanations combine many different perspectives produce a practical dilemma - Hard to establish which aspect is most influential
    Limitation: Finding solutions for real world problems - Low level explanations may be more appropriate
  • Evaluation for reductionism:
    • Forms basis of scientific research
    • Create operationalised variables - Break target behaviours down into constituent parts - Conduct experiments and record observations and be more meaningful and reliable
    Strength: Gives psychology greater credibility placing it on equal terms with natural sciences lower down in the reductionist hierarchy
  • Evaluation against reductionism:
    • Oversimplifying complex phenomena - Loss of validity
    • Explanations at the gene, neurotransmitter or neuron - Don't include an analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs
    Limitation: Reductionist explanations can only form part of an explanations