Holism & Reductionism

• Reductionism - breaking a behaviour down into simpler component parts.
• Reductionist three levels of explanation - can explain same behaviour at different levels- biological (lowest level), psychological (middle level) and socio-cultural (highest level)
• Biological reductionism - behaviour reduced to physical level in terms of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structure etc
• Environmental reductionism - behaviour explained in terms of stimulus-response (External stimuli is presented to an organism, it triggers a reaction) e.g Pavlov's dogs
• Holism - behaviour viewed as whole integrated experience, not as separate parts