Psychology Issues & Debates: Holism and Reductionism

hello and welcome to this AQA a level topic video this one looking at the holism and reductionism debate now the purpose of this short topic video is to really get our heads around the different key terms within the holism and reductionism debate and you'll see on screen now at the top there are a number of key terms that are actually named in the specification that you need to be particularly aware of for this part of the course now those include reductionism biological and environmental reductionism levels of explanation and holism okay and the purpose of this debate focuses on a really important question in in Psychology and that's can complex behaviors be reduced down to more simple parts so that's the whole purpose of the debate itself now if we start with the term reductionism reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into more simple component parts now those people who take a reductionist position believe that the best way to understand behavior is to look closely at the parts that make up our different systems whether it's biological or psychological and then choose the most simple explanation to understand how our Behavior works okay so the reductionist approach actually argues that there are different levels of explanation and levels of explanation is one of your other key terms and at the lowest level we might consider physiological or biological factors things like neurochemicals genetics brain structure hormones and so forth okay at the middle level we might consider psychological explanations whether it's cognitive or behavioral explanations and right at the top the the highest level we might consider social and cultural explanations where we try and explain behavior in terms of the influence of social groups on an individual okay now those actually have names so we can refer to those as the lowest level the middle level and the highest level but it's still very very abstract at this stage and the best way really to consider these levels is to illustrate it with an example now I'm actually going to start at the bottom and work our way up so if we take memory as an example memory can be considered in terms of biological compon components okay for example you may have come across a study by Maguire who found an association between the size of the hippocampus and memory for spatial navigation in taxi drivers now what M has done is biologically reduced down the explanation of memory to just one biological factor in this case the size of the hip campus okay so that would be a biological reductionist point of view okay however we could also consider memory at a psychological level okay uh and many psychologists actually do this so cognitive psychologists in particular examine different aspects of memory Miller looked at the capacity of short-term memory peton and peton examined the duration of short-term memory and these would all be sort of psychological explanations to understanding how our memory works and right at the top we could consider explaining memory in terms of both so social and cultural factors and there is research that actually argues that cultural expectations affect both what we remember and how we recall information and you may have come across the really famous study by bartett who looked at schema Theory and how actually cultural expectations shape what we remember okay so it's nice to just consider those different levels in terms of a year one example okay on top of that what you also need to be aware of are two key terms within the reductionism debate okay the first one is biological reductionism which is very specific and this refers to the way that biological psychologists try to reduce Behavior to a physical level and explain it in terms of neurons neurotransmitters hormones brain structure Etc so you need to know that key term the other one you need to be aware of is what's called environmental reductionism which is sometimes called stimulus and response reductionism and this is where behavioral psychologists argue that behavior can be reduced down to simple building blocks of stimulus and response associations and actually even more complex behavior is just a series of stimulus and response associations okay so you need to be aware of those two key terms again I think it's always really really useful to consider these within the context of an example so if we think about biological reductionism taking a different example now if we think to a year one Psychopathology topic the biological approach argues that OCD is caused by high levels of dopamine low levels of Serotonin that's two of the biological explanations so that would be a biologically reductionist point of view sticking with the same topic if we think about environmental reductionism uh the behaviorist approach actually argues that phobias are caused by classical conditioning and maintained through through operant conditioning okay so you can see how that would be an example of environmental reductionism okay so there we have we've got our reductionism we got the two key terms that we need biological reductionism and environmental reductionism of course at the opposite end of the spectrum what sits probably nicely above all of that is the idea of holism and holism comes from the Greek word holos which actually means all whole entire entirety and that gives you really the idea of what what this key terms about and it's the idea that human behavior should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not a separate component parts okay so it's very very distinctive saying that we shouldn't consider different levels of explanation we should actually consider the whole Behavior as a whole experience for humans okay again I think it's really really useful to have examples and I'm going to give you one novel example and an example you'll be more familiar with from your course uh there was a movement of psychology guest out psychology in around 1910 1912 which was a group of German psychologists who took a holistic position to perception and they said that when we see something in the real world we do so as a whole rather than as a collection of bits and pieces okay um and actually since then cognitive psychologists have also taken a slightly holistic approach in the area of study of perception so if you think about visual Illusions like the one on the screen now if you examine that image what you will instantly perceive or most people perceive is the outline of a cube however there is in fact no cube in that image and your mind has created the cube due to the position and the configuration of all of the black shapes on the image okay so what you've done is you've taken a very holistic view to looking at that image your mind has interpreted that there is a cube there when actually there is in fact not and guest out Psychology was really the starting point of looking at perception using a holistic point of view so that's a nice example an example that you'll be more familiar with though because you study this within your year two approaches topic is the humanistic psychology and humanistic psychologists argue that humans react to stimuli as an organized ho and not as a set of stimulus and response links so they're very against the environmental reductionism point of view as an approach humanists really take a qualitative approach to investigate an individual uh and really look at the interactions of people within Society so it's a very very different approach okay and does take again a holistic point of view so there you can see it there we have it all the definitions are now on screen so you've got your reductionism at the bottom the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into simpler Parts there are three different levels of reductionism at the bottom you've got biological explanations in the middle psychological and at the top you've got social and cultural explanations and do think back to that memory example we shared with you you need to be aware of the distinction between biological reductionism which is our lowest level where behavior is reduced to a physical level and explained in terms of things like neurons neurotransmitters hormones brain structure and you also need to be aware of environmental reductionism which is also known as stimulus response reductionism where we reduce Behavior down to the stimulus response links so okay of course at the top end of the spectrum the other end of the spectrum you've got this idea of holism the idea that human behavior should be viewed as a whole integrated experience and not a separate parts now on the screen there you've got all of the key terms that you need to be aware of for the exam there are others out there that are really really useful to be aware of but I'm not going to cover them in this video so you've got the idea of experimental reductionism uh that can be used in there and an interactionist approach they're nice terms to have absolutely but these are the key ones that you need now I hope you found that useful don't forget that we have our live webinars that you can sign up to by going on to ch.net psychology events if you got any questions following this particular topic video do ask them either in the YouTube channel or or send us a message directly on Twitter if you're not already a part of our student Facebook community group do search for a level psychology student group and then if you've got any other questions always feel free to ask me thanks once again and I hope you found that useful

Channel: tutor2u

Views: 53,243

Keywords: holism, reductionism, cara flanagan, a level psychology, psychology revision, issues, issues and debates, psychology issues, psychology holism, psychology reductionism, tutor2u psychology, resourcd, oup psychology, psychology a level, psychology a level exam papers

Id: D3TG9KECZao

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2017