A03: Holism and Reductionism
- Created by: theninjaemu
- Created on: 03-04-18 12:21
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- A03: Holism and Reductionism
- For holism
- Can explain key aspects of behaviour
- De-individuation in the SPE couldn't be studied by only looking at individuals
- Holistic explanations are needed for a more complete understanding of behaviour than reductionism
- Against holism
- Impractical approach
- They don't led themselves to scientific testing
- The explanations can become very vague
- Lower level explanations may be more applicable for real world problems
- It can be difficult to establish the most influential factor in e.g. mental illness
- For reductionism
- Scientific credibility
- Target behaviours are reduced to constituent parts to create operationalised variables
- Experiments can be conducted in more meaningful ways
- This gives psychology greater credibility
- Against reductionsim
- Lack of validity
- Reductionism oversimplifies complex phenomena
- They fail to analyse the social context of behaviour
- The social context is where behaviour derives its meaning
- Reductionism can only ever form part of an explanation
- For holism
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