Holism v Reductionism Flashcards
Reductionism
Breaking complex phenomena down to it’s most smallest and basic parts to analyse it
Biological reductionism
Breaking down behaviour into the most basic biological components
Environmental reductionism
Says all behaviour can be broken down and explained by our environment and stimulus responses.
Levels of explanations
Explains behaviour in different levels. Lowest is biological explanations, middle is psychological, cognitive and behavioural and the highest is social and cultural. Lowest is reductionist, highest is holistic.
Levels of explanations: memory
Social and cultural = Social expectations affect what we remember and recall due to schema theories
Psychological = Peterson examining duration of STM
Biological = Maguire, size of hippocampus and spatial navigation
Levels of explanation: Aggression
Cultural = Research found US children more accepting of aggressive children than those in the middle east.
Psychological = Observation and imitation
Biological = hormone testosterone.
AO3 - Reductionism oversimplifies
It oversimplifies complex phenomena, loses validity. Explanations that operate at bio level don’t include analysis of social context of the behaviour. Reductionist explanations can only form part of an explanation.
AO3 - Holism lacks empirical evidence
Its criticised for lacking empirical evidence. Example, accepting there are many factors leading to depression its hard to decide the most influential factors and which ones should be focused on in therapies. Lower level (reductionist) explanations more appropriate for finding real world solutions.
AO3 - Reductionism forms the basis of scientific research
To operationalise variables, they need to be broken down. This allows psychologists to make meaningful and reliable studies. For example, the behaviourist approach shows
complex learning broken down into simple stimulus-response links
within the lab. Gives science greater credibility
