Holism and Reductionism

• Holism:

  :) explains behaviour in social contexts

  > for example, conformity to social roles cannot be understood at the level of the individual group member (reductionism) because it is created from an interaction between people and the behaviour of a group

  > in cases such as these, it is important to take a holistic view to explain human behaviour
• Holism:

  :( unscientific

  > as explanations become more holistic and complex, they become more vague, so cannot be tested scientifically

  > unlike reductionist explanations, which use objective and empirical methods to establish cause and effect

  > holism lowers internal validity
• Reductionism:

  :) practical applications

  > studying basic units of behaviour can lead to treatments

  > e.g. dopamine has been found to be a key neurotransmitter in the development of schizophrenia, which has led to antipsychotics to reduce symptoms

  > using a reductionist explanation to study human behaviour is an important part of applied psychology
• Reductionism:

  :( oversimplifies complex human behaviour

  > e.g. a nicotine addiction may not be solely due to a stimulus, response association between a cue and a craving - there may be cognitive factors such as faulty thought processing or peer influence

  > reductionist explanations can lead to psychologists losing sight of behaviour in context, which lowers the internal validity of reductionism