Holism VS Reductionism in Psychology (Issues and Debates)

HOLISM VS REDUCTIONISM

The holism and reductionism debate is concerned with the level at which it is appropriate to explain human behaviour. Reductionist explanations try to break thought and action down into the smallest, simplest parts, whilst holistic explanations consider the whole person as an individual system.

HOLISM
The basis of the holism approach is that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – they hold the belief that any attempt to break up behaviour and experience is inappropriate as these can only be understood by analysing the person or behaviour as a whole.

REEUDCTIONISM
This is the belief that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it down into smaller constituent parts. It is based on the scientific principle of parsimony: that all phenomena should be explained in the simplest and most basic possible way.

LEVELS OF EXPLANATION IN PSYCHOLOGY
The notion of ‘levels of explanation’ suggests that there are different ways of viewing the same phenomena in psychology – some are more reductionist than others. The lowest level of explanation considers physiological explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of neurochemicals, genes and brain structure, and the highest level considers social and cultural explanations, where behaviour is explained in terms of the influence of social groups.

An interactionist approach argues that several levels of explanation are necessary to explain a particular behaviour, and a holistic view will take into account all the levels.

For example: a man who physically attacks someone who has killed his daughter. The neurochemical explanation may suggest that the father may possess the MAOA or ‘warrior gene’, the physiology level may propose that the father could have, for example, frontal lobe damage, meaning his ability to control himself is diminished, and the socio-cultural explanation may conclude that the father could have witnessed aggressive responses as a child, and so he responds in a similar way.

BIOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM is based on the premise that we are biological organisms made up of physiological structures and processes and thus, all behaviour can be explained through neurochemical, evolutionary and genetic influences.

This is the assumption of the biological approach and it has been successfully applied to a number of different topic areas in psychology – for example, it argues that it may be possible to explain serious mental disorders, such as OCD, Depression and SZ at a biochemical level.

ENVIRONMENTAL (stimulus-response) REDUCTIONISM simplifies a behaviour down to a stimulus-response action. This level of explanation is advocated by behaviourist theorists. Classical conditioning is one example of this: for example, a phobia of snakes can be explained as learned through an experience such as being bitten by a snake: fear and pain are associated with the snake and so when the individual sees a snake in the future, they will avoid it as they experience a strong fearful reaction.

FOR AND AGAINST HOLISM…

FOR: Unlike the reductionist approach, holistic views look at every factor that may impact behaviour and it considers more than one potential cause. This allows for a detailed all-round analysis of a person/a behaviour and therefore this means that any findings using a holistic approach are likely to be high in validity as they account for all possible factors involved.

AGAINST: It is a non-scientific method and it leaves researchers with a practical dilemma: for example, if we accept that there are many factors that contribute towards depression it is then difficult to establish which factor is the most influential and which one we should use as a basis for therapy. This suggests that when it comes to finding solutions for real-world problems, lower levels of explanations may be more appropriate.

FOR AND AGAINST REDUCTIONISM...

FOR: A reductionist approach often forms the basis of scientific research. In order to create operationalized variables, it is necessary to break target behaviours down into constituent parts – this makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in a way that is meaningful and reliable.

AGAINST: Reductionist approaches have been accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena, leading to a loss of validity: they do not take into consideration other factors that may affect behaviour; for example, biological reductionists do not include an analysis of the social context within which the behaviour occurs and this means that it’s potentially not accounting for crucial factors.