reductionism vs holism

• reductionism


  the belief that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts
• levels of explanation in psychology

  suggests there are different ways of viewing the same phenomena - some more reductionist then others

  -

  for example, OCD can be understood in a socio-cultural context (influence of social groups on behaviour) as producing behaviour, such as repetitive hand washing, that most people would regard as abnormal

  at a psychological level (cognitive/behavioural) it can be understood as the experience of having obsessive thoughts

  at a physical or biological/physiological level it can be understood as having an underproduction of serotonin/leaky basal ganglia
• the reductionism approach argues that human behaviour can be explained by breaking it down into simpler component parts

  there are 3 levels of explanation within reductionism: 1) higher levels accounting for social and cultural factors; 2) middle levels reducing behaviour to more simple psychological explanations; 3) lower levels reducing behaviour to individual biological factors such as neurochemistry, genes, brain structure etc)
• biological reductionism


  behaviour is reduced to a physical level and explains it in terms of neurotransmitters, hormones, genes, brain structures etc

  explanations of OCD
• environmental reductionism


  also known as stimulus-response reductionism - assumes all behaviour can be reduced to simple building blocks of stimulus-response associations and that complex behaviours are a result of stimulus-response chains

  explanations of phobias
• holism


  the idea that human behaviour should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not as separate parts
• humanistic psychology argues that humans react to stimuli as an organised whole, rather than a set of stimulus-response links, as an approach, it uses qualitative methods to investigate all aspects of an individual and the interactions between people
• Gestalt psychology adopts a holistic approach as when we perceive something in the real world we do so as a whole rather than a collection of pieces
• the interactionist approach argues several layers of explanation are necessary to explain a behaviour, ranging from lower to higher levels - it considers how these different levels of explanation interact, whilst holism is more concerned with understanding the whole experience rather than individual explanations
• ao3 - experimental reductionism

  allows us to establish causal relationships and to predict/control behaviour

  simple experiments -> complex behaviours (memory) reduced to operationalised isolated variables in order to measure and determine causal relationships

  these experiments lack ecological validity and mundane realism and so may not reflect how memory works in the real world, but under particular experimental conditions
• ao3 - scientific


  the reductionism standpoint (both environmental and biological) is largely scientific, following empirical methods and laboratory settings in order to study isolated variables e.g., Skinner's rats (issues generalising results to humans)
• ao3 - applications


  reductionism has been seen to produce better applications in the real world than holism

  biological reductionism -> focus of role of serotonin in OCD -> SSRI drug therapies -> effective (Soomro et al, 2009) -> further implications for the economy

  environmental reductionism -> focus on role of stimulus-response mechanisms in forming/maintaining phobias -> systematic desensitisation to treat phobias -> effective (Gilroy et al)
• ao3 - reductionism ignores complexity of behaviour

  for OCD and schizophrenia biological reductionism has created drug therapies to treat the symptoms of the disorders, but they do not treat the root cause - interactionist approach (e.g., drug therapy and CBT/family therapy)
• ao3 - unscientific


  holism accounts for a range of factors influencing behaviour but due to a lack of examination of operationalised variables that can be manipulated the explanations do not establish causation