holism and reductionism

• Reductionism

  -          Involves breaking a complex phenomenon down into more simple components – this is desirable because a complex phenomenon is best understood in terms of a simpler explanation.
• Reductionism

  -          Psychologists are drawn to the reductionist explanation as a method of research because reductionism is a powerful tool which has led to major discoveries.
• Reductionism

  -          the alternative to reductionism is holism which is the view that simple components do not express the essence of behaviour or experience and that the song of the past does not equal the whole.
• reductionism

  -          the reductionist approach suggests the explanations begin at the highest level and progressively look at component elements of the explanation.
• reductionism

  -          High level equals culture and social explanations of how social groups effects our behaviour.
• reductionism

  -          middle level would be psychological explanations of behaviour.

  -          lower level would be the biological explanation of how hormones and genes affects our behaviour.
• reductionism

  -          all behaviour can be considered in terms of the three levels for example memory can be explained at the social level in terms of cultural expectations and how they affect how we remember it can also be explained on a psychological level in terms of the episodic memories and can be explained as a biological level too in terms of areas of the brain and where the memories are stored.
• Biological reductionism

  -          human behaviour can be explained at the level of atoms - our behaviour can be reduced to a physical level.

  -          biological psychologists reduced behaviour to actions of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones and more.
• Biological reductionism

  -          A popular way to explain mental illness is in terms of such units for example it is suggested that schizophrenia is caused by excessive activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine because drugs that block the neurotransmitter reduce the symptoms of the disorder.
• environmental reductionism

  -          behaviourist explanation suggests that all behaviour can be explained in terms of simple stimulus response therefore behaviour can be reduced to a simple relationship between behaviour and events in the environment.

   
• environmental reductionism

  -          an example of a behaviourist environmental reductionist explanation includes the behaviourist explanation offered for attachment-the complex emotion of attachment is reduced to a set of probabilities like the fact the mother is likely to provide food which is reinforcing so she is rewarding the individual and so becomes the loved one to them.
• holism

  -          this approach focuses on systems as a whole rather than on the consecutive pars and suggests that we cannot predict how the whole system will behave from just knowledge of the individual components meaning that the reductionist explanation would only play a limited role in understanding behaviour.
• gestalt psychology

  -          the word gestalten mean whole in Germany and was an approach favoured by a group of German psychologists in the fist part of the 20th century - play focused specially on perception, arguing by explanations of what we say only makes sense through the consideration of the whole rather than individual elements.
• humanistic psychology

  -          humanistic psychologists believe that the individual reacts as an organised whole rather than a set of stimulus responses that link and what matters most is a person sense of unified identity and thus a lack of identity leads to a mental disorder.
• holism

  cognitive psychology

  -          memory is a complex system which in recent years has been understood in terms of connectionist networks.
• holism

  cognitive psychology

  -          the idea of networks is that each unit is linked to many other units in the form of neurons on these links developed for experience and with each experience the links are strengthened and weakened.

  -          connectionist networks are described as holistic because the networks as a whole behave differently than the individual parts do.

  -          linear models which are when one item links only to the next in a sequence assumes that the sum of the parts equal the whole.