Holism - Reductionism

• The holism-reductionism debate

  This debate is whether holism or reductionism is the better approach to use to understand human behaviour.

  Holistic approach à studying the ‘whole’.

  There is no continuum between holism and reductionism because as soon as you begin to break down holism – it isn’t holistic.

  Debate is about preference for holism or reductionism.

  Humanistic psychologists take a holistic approach whereas behaviourists are reductionist.

  Within the reductionist approach there is a continuum – the levels of explanation.
• Key concept à reductionism

  Breaking down behaviour into constituent parts

  This is based on the scientific principle of parsimony – all phenomena should be explained by using the most basic, low level and simplest principles (e.g. behaviour of individual cells)
• Psychology itself can be placed into a hierarchy of science.

  Top = sociology, psychology, biology, chemistry and then physics (most reductionist at end)

  Researchers who favour reductionist accounts of behaviour see psychology as ultimately being replaces by explanations derived from those sciences lower down in the hierarchy.
• Key concept - holism

  People and behaviour should be studied as a whole system.

  It sees any attempt to subdivide behaviour or experience into smaller units as inappropriate.

  Gestalt psychologists (Germany in 1920/30) claimed that the ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. Breaking up the behaviour and experience is inappropriate as these can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole.
• Humanistic psychology focuses on individuals experiences which is not something that can be reduced to e.g., biological units. Humanistic psychologists uses qualitative methods to investigate the self whereby themes are analysed rather than breaking the concept into component behaviours. They see successful therapy as bringing together all aspects of the whole person (congruence)
• Key concept à biological reductionism

  Physiological & neurological level

  Biological reductionism also includes evolutionary & genetic influences. It is based on the premise that we are biological organisms. Thus, all behaviour is at some level biological.

  Biologically reductionist arguments often work backwards. E.g. drugs that increase serotonin have been found to be effective in treating OCD. Therefore working backwards, low serotonin may be a cause of OCD. We have reduced OCD to a level of neurotransmitter.
• The behaviourist approach = environmental reductionism – all behaviour is learned + acquired through interactions w environment. Explain behaviour in terms of conditioning – focused on the S-R links, reducing behaviour to basic elements. Learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love to learned association between person doing the feeding + food = pleasure. The key unit analysis occurs at physical level – the behaviourist approach is not concerned with cognitive processes at the psychological level. The mind is regarded as a ‘black box’ – irrelevant to our understanding of behaviour.
• Key concept à levels of explanation in psychology

  There are different ways to explain the same phenomena/ behaviour in psychology – some more reductionist than others
• OCD  may be understood at a: (pt1)

  •Sociocultural level – e.g. OCD interrupts social relationships as it involves behaviour most people would regard as odd – repetitive hand washing.

  •Psychological level – the persons experience of having anxiety/individuals experience of having obsessive thoughts

  •Physical level –  the sequence of movements involved in washing ones hands
• OCD may be understood at a: (pt2)

  •Environmental/behavioural level – learning experiences

  •Physiological level – hypersensitivity of the basal ganglia & abnormal functioning in the frontal lobes

  •Neurochemical level – underproduction of serotonin

  Which one of these provides the ‘best’ explanation of OCD is a matter of debate, each level is more reductionist than the one before
• Holism – an argument or theory which proposes that it only makes sense to study an indivisible system rather than its constituent parts
• Reductionism – the belief that human behaviour is better understood by studying the smaller constituent parts
• Levels of explanation – the idea that there are several levels that can be used to explain behaviour. The lowest level considers the physiological/biological explanations, the middle level considers the psychological explanations and the highest level considers social and cultural explanations.
• Biological reductionism – a form of reductionism which attempts to explain behaviour at the lowest biological level (in terms of the actions of genes, hormones etc) (biological approach)
• Environmental reductionism – the attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus response links that have been learned through experience (behaviourism/behaviourist approach/operant conditioning/skinner/classical conditioning)
• One strength of holism is that it can explain key aspects of social behaviour.

  There are some social behaviours that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood at the level of individual group members. For example, the effects of de-individualisation of prisoners and guards in the Stanford prison experiment could not be understood by studying the participants as individuals – it was the interactions between the people that mattered. This shows that holistic explanations are needed for a more complete understanding of behaviour than reductionist approach.
• +ve of reductionism is its scientific credibility.

  A reductionist approach often forms the basis of scientific research. Target behaviours are reduced to constituent parts to create operationalised variables. This makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in objective and reliable ways. For example, research on attachment (the strange situation) operationalised component behaviours such as stranger anxiety. This gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences lower down in the reductionist hierarchy.
• A strength of BOTH holism and reductionism is the interactionist approach.

  Interactionism in the context of holism and reductionism considers how different levels of explanation combine and interact. For example, the diathesis-stress model explains mental disorders such as SZ as the outcome of predisposition (often genetic) which is triggered by some stressor (often psychological). This model has led to a more multi-disciplinary and holistic approach to treatment (e.g. combining drugs and family therapy) and is associated with lower relapse rates.
• Reductionist account of conscious thinking

  Thoughts are the result of what happens in our brains - we are thinking machines
• Cognitive neuroscience

  Cognitive processes, including how we think and feel, are associated with physical processes in the brain
• Neuroscientists struggle to explain

  The subjective experience of the same neural processes
• Explanatory gap in brain science

  (Levine 1983) Thinking is at least one step beyond what is happening in the brain
• One limitation of holism is that it is impractical.

  Holistic explanations tend not to lend themselves to rigorous scientific testing and become vague and speculative as they become more complex. For example, if we accept there are many factors contributing to depression, it is difficult to establish which is most influential and which to use as a basis for therapy. This suggests that when it comes to finding solutions for real world problems lower level explanations may be more applicable.
• -ve reductionist approach is the lack of validity.

  Reductionist explanations at the level of genes or neurotransmitters oversimplify complex phenomena and so lose validity. They fail to analyse the social context of the behaviour – but this is where behaviour derives its meaning. Physiological processes in pointing one’s finger are the same in any context. But an analysis of these processes does not tell us why the finger is pointed (e.g. to draw attention, as part of a raised question, or an aggressive act). This means that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation.