Reductionism essay PDF

Preview

Summary

discuss reductionism...

Description

Reductionism is the belief that human behaviour is best explained by breaking it down into smaller constituent parts. The biological approach follows biological reductionism which attempts to explain social and psychological phenomena at a lower biological level. It is based on the idea that we are in fact biological organisms made up of physiological structures and processes. This suggests that all behaviour is at some level biological and so can be explained through neurochemical, neurophysiological, evolutionary and genetic influences. This is in fact an assumption of the biological approach and is applied to many different topics in psychology. For example, the effects of psychoactive drugs on the brain have contributed to our understanding of neural processes and the fact it may be a possibility in explaining mental health such as OCD, depression and schizophrenia at a biochemical level. This theory of schizophrenia can be supported by drug therapies, for example Fawnly et al found that chlorpromazine (a drug used to treat schizophrenia) was better associated with functioning and reduced symptom severity when compared to a placebo. This suggests that drug therapies and so the biological approach to explaining schizophrenia is successful. On the other hand, the behaviourist approach is built on environmental reductionism. This is the attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus-response that we learn through experiences. Behaviourists study observable behaviour only and break complex learning into simple links through stimulus response which are measureable within the laboratory settings in which most of these studies are done. This can be shown by phobias. Phobias can be seen as caused by conditioning, however it can be shown that phobias can develop without conditioning as they can develop without a bad experience with the phobic stimulus. For example you could form a phobia to a shark could be acquired without ever actually seeing a shark. One strength of the reductionist approach is that it is very scientific. For example, it conducts experiments or records observations in a way that is meaningful and reliable as you can operationalise the variables. This is a strength because the reductionist approach allows us to break target behaviours down into constituent parts for the research, meaning we can draw more reliable and therefore arguably more accurate conclusions from the research. For example, the behaviourist approach was able to demonstrate how complex learning could be broken down into simple stimulus-response links within the lab. This therefore gives psychological research deemed reductionist greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences lower down in the reductionist hierarchy. One weakness of the reductionist approach and biological approach is that it oversimplifies complex phenomena. For example, explanations that operate at the level of the gene, neurotransmitter or neurons do not include an analysis of the social context within which behaviour occur and this is where the behaviour in question may derive its meaning. This is an issue because it tells us very little in reality about why we act a certain way. It can only ever form part of an explanation. For instance, the physiological processes involved in pointing one’s finger will be the same regardless of the context. However an analysis of this will not tell us why the finger is pointed; to draw attention to some object or person, as an act of aggression, as part of a raised hand to answer a question in class. This means that validity of reductionist research can be questioned, due to the lack of depth and full explanation.

One strength of the behavioural approach to phobias is that it has led to the development of effective treatments for the phobias. Therefore Roth Baum found that after treating patient with systematic desensitisation there was a 93% improvement in phobic symptoms. This suggests that is it effective and does support the idea that the behavioural approach is reductionist especially in explaining phobias. However the holistic approach may be better as it research is that it addresses an entire group at once. For example, there are aspects of behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood at the level of the individual group members such as the effects of conformity to social roles and the deindividuation of prisoners and guards in Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment could not be understood by studying the PPs as individuals, it was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important. This is a strength because holistic explanations provide a more complete and global understanding of behaviour than the more reductionist approaches, which it can be assumed can be more easily generalised to wider societies and larger cultures. As a result this provides support for the use of holistic methods within psychological research....