Holism and reductionism

• Levels of explanation

  • Cultural and social explanations
  • Psychological explanations
  • Biological explanations
• Biological reductionism

  Reducing behaviour to biology as it is based on the premise than we are biological organisms
• Environmental reductionism

  Behaviourist explanations suggest that all behaviour can be explained in terms of simple stimulus response links
• Holism

  Perceiving the whole experience rather than the individual feature and or the relations between them. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Reductionism

  Breaking complex phenomena into more simple components and implies that this is desirable because complex phenomena are best understood in terms of a simpler level of explanation.
• Levels of explanation

  Different ways of viewing the same phenomena in Psychology e.g. socio-cultural, psychological, physical, physiological and neurochemical.
• Levels of explanation (from highest to lowest)

  • Cultural and social explanations
  • Psychological explanations
  • Biological explanations
• Cultural and social explanation of depression

  • Withdrawal from social activities, low energy levels and insomnia, which is viewed as odd by society.
• Psychological explanation of depression

  • Beck's Cognitive Theory (the product of the cognitive triad of automatic negative thoughts, faulty information processing and negative self-schemas) and Ellis' ABC model (an activating event produces an irrational belief which leads to an emotional or behavioural consequence).
• Biological explanation of depression

  • Action of candidate genes (e.g. 5HT1-D beta controlling the efficiency of synaptic serotonin transport) and neural factors (e.g. abnormal functioning of the left parahippocampal gyrus and the lateral frontal lobes).
• Biological reductionism

  Reducing behaviour to biology as it is based on the premise than we are biological organisms. i.e. depression can be explained biochemically as a result of low levels of serotonin in the synaptic gaps between neurons.
• Environmental reductionism

  Behaviourist explanations suggest that all behaviour can be explained in terms of simple stimulus response links, i.e. phobias are obtained and maintained using classical and operant conditioning.