holism and reductionism

• the debate


  debate over which position is preferable for psychology - study the whole person (holism) or study component parts (reductionism)
• holism


  holism proposes that it only makes sense to study a whole system - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Gestalt psychology)

  - e.g. humanistic psychology focuses on experience which can't be reduced to biological units, qualitative methods investigate themes
• reductionism


  reductionism is based on the scientific principle of parsimony - that all phenomena should be explained using the simplest principles
• levels of explanation


  for example OCD may be understood in different ways:

  - socio-cultural level; behaviour most people would regard as odd e.g. repetitive handwashing

  - psychological level; the individual's experience of having obsessive thoughts

  - physical level; the sequence of movements involved in washing one's hands

  - environmental/behavioural level; learning experiences (conditioning)

  - physiological level; abnormal functioning in the frontal lobes

  - neurochemical level; underproduction of serotonin

  - can argue about which is the 'best' explanation of OCD, but each level is more reductionist than the one before
• biological reductionism


  suggests all behaviour can be explained through neurochemical, physiological, evolutionary and/or genetic influences

  - e.g. drugs that increase serotonin are used to treat OCD. Therefore low serotonin may be a cause of OCD. We have reduced OCD to the level of neurotransmitter activity
• environmental reductionism


  proposes that all behaviour is acquired through interactions with the environment e.g. the behaviourist approach

  - e.g. the learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love to a learned association between the mother and food resulting in pleasure
• limitation


  P - holism may lack practical value

  E - holistic accounts of human behaviour become hard to use as they become more complex which presents researchers with a practical dilemma

  E - if many different factors contribute to, say, depression then it becomes more difficult to know which is most influential and which to prioritise for treatment

  L - this suggest that holistic accounts may lack practical value
• strength


  P - reductionism has scientific status

  E - in order to conduct well-controlled research variable need to be operationalised - target behaviours broken down into constituent parts

  E - this makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in a way that is objective and reliable

  L - this scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences

  COUNTERPOINT

  - reductionist explanations at the level of the gene or neurotransmitter do not include an analysis of the context within which behaviour occurs and therefore lack meaning

  - this suggests that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation
• limitation


  P - reductionism needs higher level expectations

  E - there are aspects of social behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood in terms of the individual group members

  E - for example the Stanford prison study could not be understood by observing the participants as individuals, it was the behaviour of the group that was important

  L - this shows that, for some behaviours, higher (or even holistic) level explanations provide a more valid account
• strength/limitation


  P - brain and mind

  E - a reductionist account of consciousness would argue that we are thinking machines - that cognitive processes are associated with physical processes in the brain

  E - on the other hand, neuroscientists struggle to explain the subjective experience of the same neural process. This is referred to as the 'explanatory gap' in brain science

  L - this suggests that not all aspects of consciousness, particularly individual differences in experience, can be explained by brain activity