holism and reductionism

what is reductionism?

breaking a complex phenomenon down into simple componants

what are the 3 levels of explanation?

• Highest level: cultural and social explanations of how our social groups affect our behaviour

• Middle level: psychological explanations of behaviour

• Lowest level: biological explanations of how hormones and genes etc affect our behaviour

using the example of memory show how any behaviour can be broken down into all 3 levels

• social - terms of how cultural expectations and schemas affect what we can remember

• psychological - terms of LTM such as episodic, semantic and procedural memories

• biological - terms of areas of brain where the memories are stored (hippocampus and temporal lobe) and the neurotransmitters involved in forming memories

what is biological reductionism?

• Since all animals are made up of arms, then human behaviour must be explainable at this level i.e. can be reduced to a physical level

• Biological psychologists reduce behaviour to the action of neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones and so on

what is environmental reductionism?

• The attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus response links that have been learned through experience

• e.g. behaviourist approach

what is holism?

focuses on systems as a whole rather than on the constituent parts

• Suggest we cannot predict how the whole system will behave just from knowledge of the single parts

• Means reductionist explanations would only play a limited role in understanding behaviour

what is Gestalt psychology?

• Gestalt means the whole in German

• Approach favoured by a group of German psychologists in first part of 20th century

• Focused especially on perception, arguing that explanations for what we see only makes through a consideration of the whole rather than the individual elements, as illustrated by the illusion on the right

what is humanistic psychology?

• Believe the individual reacts as an organised whole, rather than a set of stimulus response links

• What matters most is a person's sense of unified identity; and thus a lack of identity or sense of 'wholeness' leads to mental illness

what is cognitive psychology?

• Memory is a complex system which has been understood in terms of connectionist networks

• Idea of networks is that each unit (such as a neuron) is linked to many other units (other neurons)

• Links develop through experience and, with each new experience, the links are strengthened or weakened

• Connectionist networks are described as holist because the networks as a whole behaves differently than the individual parts; linear models (where one item links only to the next in a sequence) assume that the sum of the parts equal as a whole

what are the levels of explanation?

• socio cultural

• psychological

• physical

• environmental

• physiological

• neurochemical

fill in the gaps for the triangle showing the levels of explanation

fill in the gaps for examples of the levels of explanation