Holism & Reductionism

• Holism


  - an approach that looks at a system as a whole and sees any attempts to subdivide behaviours/experiences into smaller units as inappropriate
• Reductionism


  - the analysis of behaviour by examining its constituent parts

  
  

  - based upon the principle of parsimony: all phenomena should be explained using simplest principles
• Levels of Explanation


  - the idea that there are different way of explaining behaviour

  
  

  - the lowest level considers physiological/biological explanations

  
  

  - the middle level considers psychological explanations and the highest considers social and cultural explanations
• Biological Redcutionism


  - a form of reductionism which attempts to explain behaviour at the lowest biological level (e.g. genes, hormones)
• Environmental Reductionism


  - the attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus-response links that have been learned through experience.
• Practical Value: Limitation


  - the holism approach may lack practical value

  
  

  - holistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex

  
  

  - e.g. from a humanistic perspective there are many different factors that there are many different factors that contribute to depression:

  . the person's past/present relationships

  . their job

  . family circumstances

  
  

  - this can present research with a practical dilemma because it becomes hard to identify which factor is the most influential

  
  

  - suggesting holistic accounts may lack practical value
• Scientific Approach: Strength


  - reductionist approaches often form the basis of a scientific approach

  
  

  - to conduct well-controlled research, variables need to be operationalised - to break target behaviours down to constituents parts

  
  

  - this makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations in a way that is objective and reliable

  
  

  - e.g. research on attachment operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety

  
  

  - this scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility placing it on equal terms with natural sciences
• Scientific Approach: Counterpoint


  - reductionist approaches have been accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena reducing validity

  
  

  - explanations that operate at a biological level don't include an analysis of the social context of which behaviour occurs

  
  

  - e.g. the physiological process involved in pointing one's finger will be the same regardless of the context, however analysis will not tell us why the finger is pointed

  
  

  - suggesting reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation
• Higher Level: Limitation


  - some behaviours can only ever be understood on a higher level

  
  

  - some aspects of social behaviour only emerge within a group context and can't be understood in terms of individual group members

  
  

  - e.g. conformity to social roles in the prisoners and guards in the Stanford Prison experiment couldn't be understood by observing the participants as individuals

  
  

  - there is no 'conformity' gene (that we know of) so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur

  
  

  - suggesting that for some behaviours higher level explanations provide a more valid account
• Brain & Mind


  - cognitive neuroscience works upon the basis of reductionism: thoughts are simply the result of what happens in our brain

  
  

  - however what neuroscientists struggle to explain is the subjective experience of the same neural process

  
  

  - e.g. thinking about the colour blue involves the same region and activity in the brain as thinking of the colour red, yet the thought we experience is different (explanatory gap)

  
  

  - suggesting that thinking is at least one step beyond what is happening in the brain