Holism and reductionism

• Reductionism is explaining behaviour by boiling complex theories down to their basic components
• Reductionism- This is beneficial for testing theories as psychologists can isolate variables to assume cause and effect.
• reductionism can lead to psychologist concluding unrealistically oversimplified behaviour and fail to account for other influences on behaviour, thus giving a less accurate account for behaviour
• There are 3 levels to explaining behaviour that are increasingly holistic
• The lowest level of explanation is the biological which reduces behaviour to the simple product of genes
• The next level of explanation is the psychological explanation such as the cognitive approach which suggests behaviour is the product of information processing
• The highest level of explanation and the most complex is based on social and cultural factors
• There are two types of reductionism
• Biological reductionism reduces behaviour down to a physical level and explains it in terms of genes, neurochemistry and neural structures
• Environmental reductionism is based on the idea that external forces determine the outcomes of behaviour.
• Holism is the argument that human behaviour is more complex than the processes studied by single sciences. And that behaviour should be viewed as the product of different influences that all interact
• holism example- trying to study one of them means that complex behaviours can be misunderstood, so a holistic approach avoids this problem. However it does make it more difficult to test as it means variables cannot be isolated which makes it hard to assume cause and effect.
• Humans do not live in a “bubble” so many different factors influence behaviour rather than single variables as studied by reductionist approaches
• holistic approaches reflect real life experiences more than a reductionist approach by considering many different influences, thus giving a more ecologically valid explanation.
• Taking a holistic approach may become very complicated for researchers, if there are two many variables all in play it makes understanding behaviour very difficult. As well as this it makes it more complicated to identify the most influential factors
• reductionist viewpoints of the biological approaches because they focus on the simple link between genes and inherited biology on behaviour. Thus ignoring any other environmental influences
• reducutionalist viewpoints- upbringing which have been shown to be heavily influential on behaviour e.g as suggested by freud.
• At the other end of the continuum is the humanistic approach which is the most holistic as it tries to understand the individual by looking at their behaviour as a whole taking all aspects into account.
• In the middle of the continuum is the psychodynamic approach, as it acknowledges both biological innate drives as well as environmental influences and experiences during early life. I.e not reducing behaviour down to one single influence