NS

Discuss the reductionism-holism debate. Refer to one or more topic areas in your answer. [16 marks]

  • What is the debate? - the most suitable way to explain behaviour

  • What is holism?

  • What is reductionism?

    • include types of reductionism

      • biological - genes

      • machine - computer

      • environmental - stimulus-response mechanisms

  • Levels of explanation, hierarchy ranging from most reductionist (maths, physics) to middle ground (chemistry, biology), to least (psychology, sociology)

  • explaining schizophrenia

    • holistic - family dysfunction

    • reductionist - excess dopamine in the brain

  • holistic methods yield qualitative data, greater insight into explaining behaviour

    • reductionism often neglects/ignores the complexity of behaviour

  • holism does not lend itself to rigorous scientific testing as its concepts are more vague and woolly

    • reductionism’s units allow operationalisation of variables, greater scientific value in their explanations, this lends credibility to the field of psychology, units can be behavioural categories

  • reductionism allows more specific treatments to be developed, more efficient, e.g. antipsychotics for schizophrenia through understanding the dopamine hypothesis

    • more likely to be effective than holistic treatments which attempt to address everything, when there are so many factors identified, how does one know which to target to help?

  • holistic explanations are far more helpful when explaining phenomena that involve more than one person, social influence processes like conformity must be understood by looking at the general interactions within the group, complex social situations shouldn’t be broken down into individual processes, sum of the parts doesn’t always equal a whole

  • interactionist approach is superior, addresses how different levels of explanations can combine and interact, for example with the diathesis-stress model of mental disorder such as schizophrenia, vulnerability can be low level genetic, while a trigger may be a more complex sociological factor (candidate genes e.g. PCM1 followed by expressed emotion)