Issues and Debates: Reductionism and Holism
Reductionism:
➔ is the scientific theory of describing something using its basic parts or the simplest explanation
➔ may help understand how cognitive (thought) processes and behaviours work and cause and effect
➔ uses the scientific method (eg using laboratory experiments)- helps establish cause and effect by
isolating and testing controlled variables
➔ can be appropriate in circumstances where there is a clear, single explanation for a behaviour
➔ may result in an overly simplistic explanation of a behaviour – we might ignore other important factors
➔ might also be interactions between different factors, which may be ignored – for example, you might
need a particular gene and to have been brought up in a certain environment for a behaviour to happen
How the debate applies to human memory research:
➔ Area of cognitive psychology concerned with memory= generally regarded as reductionist
➔ Atkinson and Shiffrin Multi-Store Model:
● Describes our memory as a series of component memory stores with specific functions
➔ Memory Experiments:
● They tend to isolate variables to investigate without considering other factors
● The information processing approach
Holism:
➔ opposite of reductionism
➔ way of trying to understand behaviour by considering the whole behaviour rather than its parts
➔ takes into account different factors that work together to cause behaviour
➔ helps us understand the whole person and all of the factors which might be affecting their behaviour
➔ By using qualitative methods, we get lots of detailed information and each person is treated as an
individual
➔ By focusing on individuals, this approach might mean that the results are not generalisable to anybody
else, and so it can be considered to be unscientific
➔ It can be difficult to achieve a holistic approach as it means investigating lots of variables at the same
time
How the debate applies to human memory research:
➔ Bartlett’s Theory of Reconstructive Memory:
● Used qualitative analysis to explore the reconstructive nature of memory by understanding how
each person's schema affected their recall of stories/ pictures
➔ Qualitative Analysis
Reductionism:
➔ is the scientific theory of describing something using its basic parts or the simplest explanation
➔ may help understand how cognitive (thought) processes and behaviours work and cause and effect
➔ uses the scientific method (eg using laboratory experiments)- helps establish cause and effect by
isolating and testing controlled variables
➔ can be appropriate in circumstances where there is a clear, single explanation for a behaviour
➔ may result in an overly simplistic explanation of a behaviour – we might ignore other important factors
➔ might also be interactions between different factors, which may be ignored – for example, you might
need a particular gene and to have been brought up in a certain environment for a behaviour to happen
How the debate applies to human memory research:
➔ Area of cognitive psychology concerned with memory= generally regarded as reductionist
➔ Atkinson and Shiffrin Multi-Store Model:
● Describes our memory as a series of component memory stores with specific functions
➔ Memory Experiments:
● They tend to isolate variables to investigate without considering other factors
● The information processing approach
Holism:
➔ opposite of reductionism
➔ way of trying to understand behaviour by considering the whole behaviour rather than its parts
➔ takes into account different factors that work together to cause behaviour
➔ helps us understand the whole person and all of the factors which might be affecting their behaviour
➔ By using qualitative methods, we get lots of detailed information and each person is treated as an
individual
➔ By focusing on individuals, this approach might mean that the results are not generalisable to anybody
else, and so it can be considered to be unscientific
➔ It can be difficult to achieve a holistic approach as it means investigating lots of variables at the same
time
How the debate applies to human memory research:
➔ Bartlett’s Theory of Reconstructive Memory:
● Used qualitative analysis to explore the reconstructive nature of memory by understanding how
each person's schema affected their recall of stories/ pictures
➔ Qualitative Analysis
