Discuss levels of explanation in psychology. Refer to at least two or more topic in your answer. (16 marks).

There are 3 different types of levels of explanation within reductionism - biological level, psychological level, and social and cultural level. The biological level is the lowest level of explanation. This explains human behavioural phenomena in terms of genes, neurotransmitters and brain structure. Psychological is the second highest level of explanation, and this level of explanation explains human behaviour in terms of psychological processes such as rehearsal. The highest level of explanation is the social and cultural level, in which this attempts to explain human behaviour in terms of how cultural and environmental factors can affect out behaviour.

An example of the biological level of explanation in psychology is within schizophrenia, where the different levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine (either being to high in the sub cortex of the brain which is known as hyperdopaminergia, or being too low in teh pre-frontal cortex of the brain which is known as hypodopaminergia) is implicated with either the postive (hyperdopaminergia) or negative (hypodopaminergia) symptoms of schizophrenia. This reflects the biological level of explanation because the symptoms of the mental disorder have been purely explained by neurotransmitter levels and brain structure, and nothing else outside of this. An example of the biological level of explanation in attachment is the fact that human babies are altricial, meaning that they are born at a very early stage of human development. This is why human babies need to form bonds with adults, so that they can protect them.

An example of the psychological level of explanation in psychology is the theories of the schizophrenogenic mother (put forward by Reichmann), the Double-Bind theory (put forward by Gregory Bateson), and expressed emotion. These theories all explain that schizophrenia can be caused through abnormal psychological processes. For example, in the double-bind theory, it suggests that when a child is receiving mixed messages from their parent, they are likely to develop paranoid schizophrenia, and is likely to lead to the development of delusions. An example of the psychological level of explanation in Attachment is reciprocity and interactional synchrony. These are psychological processes that occur within an infants mind that cannot be directly observed, but shows that that a psychological process affect human behaviour.

An example of the social and cultural level of explanation in psychology is that environmental factors may affect behaviour and cause schizophrenia. This is reflected in the ‘Stress-Diathesis’ model. This states that an individual may have a biological vulnerability which makes them more likely to develop schizophrenia, but will require an environmental stressor to cause the onset of schizophrenia. This model shows that without the environmental stressor, the individual is unlikely to develop schizophrenia, and so shows how the environment can influence human behaviour. An example of the social and cultural level of explanation in Attachment is the learning theory of attachment, which consists of stimulus-response links within the infants environment, where they are conditioned to form an attachment with their mother figure.

The levels of explanation are based on reductionism, and so a disadvantage of this is that, espcially with the lower levels of explanation, it may be accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena, which then leads to a loss of validity in the findings of studies which use such approaches. However an advantage of reductionism is that it often forms the basis of scientific research as it is often required to break down target behaviours in order to form an operationalised hypothesis.