Understanding Human Behaviour through Reductionist Approach

Understanding Human conduct finished reductionist ApproachThe only if way to understand Human Behaviour is to motor a reductionist barbel. Critically discuss with reference to relevant germinal and contemporary literature in psychology.Reductionism basis be defined as being the idea that a complex formation, such as homo deportment, is nothing much than the sum of its areas and that a description of the system can be reduced to descriptions of the individual components. Many of the main cash advancees in psychology work to bribe a reductionist approach when onerous to develop their understand of gentleman deportment, including the cognitive approach which uses machine chemical mechanism (using the analogy of machines and their most simple components) to explain military man deportment, such as Berkowitz (1993). The behaviorist approach excessively tends to be reductionist in how it tries to explain human behaviour, usually cut down behaviour spile to simp ly environmental accompanimentors such as reinforcement and punishment. Perhaps the most reductionist approach in psychology however is the biological approach. The biological approach takes a more scientific approach to explaining human behaviour and puts it in the main batch to our biology, for pattern, Lacourse, Boivin, Brendgen et al. (2014) explained that the results from their research invokeed that a toddlers aggression is strongly associated with heritable figures.Many psychologists would agree that The only way to understand Human Behaviour is to take a Reductionist approach for example, Hull (2002) who stated that Reductionism at its most extreme asserts that the only level worth investigating is the low technologically feasible level. All else is a waste of time. Given the fact that scientists who use more reductionist approaches to understanding human behaviour tend to get the most grant money for their research, publish the most cover and also tend to demand t he most scientific advances within psychology, this whitethorn be true. However, other psychologists believe that the lower states involved in reductionism do not capture the necessary coherence of the rationalisation relation at the higher level and are known as being anti-reductionist.biological psychologists explain human behaviour by trying to relate it to the mental process of the brain and the nervous system, relating it to the map of genetic influences and also by move it graduate to chemical processes in the brain. These are all reductionist shipway to explaining human behaviour payable to the fact that, apart from physics, they are the last(a) level of explaining behaviour. A prime example of a reductionist account statement to understanding human behaviour such as aggression is through genetics. This type of biological reductionism reduces aggressive behaviour in an individual down to the role of genetic influence, for example Dilalla (2002) concluded from her revi ew on the role of genetics on aggression that there is a growing torso of evidence on the genetic effects on aggression with the majority of twin and adoption studies on anti favorable behaviour in children suggest that genetic effects are important influences suggesting that aggressive behaviour is mainly payable to the genetic make-up of an individual. This explanation of aggressive human behaviour is solely reductionist and fails to take into account any environmental and heathen factors. The social approach to psychology however, would explain this behaviour through The social Learning Theory by Bandura (1978), putting aggressive behaviour of a child down to factors such as imitation. Bushman Huesmann (2006) explored aggression in both children and adults, and represent that exposure to violence led to participants becoming more aggressive, suggesting that human behaviour such as aggression can be take through imitation, leading one to believe that reductionist approache s to human behaviour, such as the biological approach isnt taking every factor into account that could contribute towards an individuals behaviour.Reducing human behaviour down to lower levels of psychology that can be studied is utilizable in trying to understand how things work. Poldrack Wagner (2008) used Atinkson Shiffrins (1968) multi-store model of storehouse in order to assess long and short-term memory. This cognitive approach to understanding human behaviour, suggested that remembering information over either the long-term or short-term was overdue to how we process this information internally. Reducing this behaviour down to a simple component of the individual means that, for example if an individual has long-term memory loss, it is easier to target one specific part of the brain responsible for this, so easier to treat. However, even though this is a effectual aspect of reductionist explanations of human behaviour, some psychologists, such as Hull, would make ou t that these explanations offer only a simple solution to a ofttimes more complicated problem. Depression, for example, according to the biological approach should be treated with anti-depressants as biological psychologists such as Carlson (2005) believe that depression is due to neurotransmitters in the brain. However, social psychologists such as Beattie (2005), who examined the social causes of depression, would say that this is miss the real problem which could be issues such as problems within the family. This is a fundamental problem with the reductionist approach to understanding human behaviour it tends to ignore social and environmental factors that may also contribute towards behaviour and hence when it comes to applying reductionist approaches to everyday life and having implications for human behaviour, the treatments may not be as reliable as they could be.Although there are arguments for The only way to understand Human Behaviour is to take a Reductionist approach there are a destiny more anti-reductionist arguments. Anti-reductionist psychologists such as Hull Regenmortel (2002) refer to reductionism in explaining human behaviour as as successful as Reductionism has been, it is seriously inadequate and must be supplemented with a more holistic science. Emotion, for example, is ignored by reductionist explanations due to the fact that it is seen as impossible that an individuals emotions can be explained through lower levels of psychology, such as neurotransmitters. Thus, factors such as emotion can only be truly explained by less reductionist approaches such as an individual is happy due to the environment that surrounds them, not due to biological factors.A supercharge approach to understanding human behaviour is taking into account the role of the environment. Reductionist biological approaches do not consider the environment when explaining human behaviour, however there is a lot of research suggesting that although an individual is b orn with certain biological traits, such as genes, environmental factors, for example an individuals upbringing and people they are exposed to predominately shapes an individuals behaviour further. However, taking an environmental approach to understanding human behaviour is also reductionist, but psychologists specialising in this area such as Brent are starting to amalgamate the small parts into the whole. In 1995, Brent assessed risk factors for adolescent self-annihilation and suicidal behaviour and stressed the importance of environmental factors such as family, as well as biological factors on these risk factors. winning a more holistic approach like Brent (2005) instead of a reductionist approach to understanding human behaviour tends to take many factors into account instead of just reducing an explanation down to its simplest form, thus can lead people to believe that a more holistic approach to understanding human behaviour is a lot more valid and reliable as, for exa mple, when treating an individual of an illness such as depression, not only will the biological aspect of the illness be treated with anti-depressants, but the social aspect of the illness can also be treated with a form of counselling.Using a reductionist approach to understanding human behaviour can be seen to be not so useful when trying to explain individual factors due to the fact that reductionist explanations, although they are reduced to the lowest levels of psychology and thus are in the simplest form, generalise behaviour to a target population. Maguire, Gadian, Johnsrude et al. (2000) found that the amount of time spent as a capital of the United Kingdom taxi driver positively correlated with the volume in the posterior genus Hippocampus and from this, suggested that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation of the environment and can expand regionally to accommodate. Here, Maguire et al (2000) have generalised their study of male, London taxi drivers to the population as a whole. Every individual is odd and so it would not be right to generalise these findings to everyone as the like behaviour in people may be due to dissimilar explanations, such as our biology and the environment.In conclusion reductionist approaches to understanding human behaviour can be seen to have led to further scientific advances within psychology due to the fact that reductionist approaches make it easier to find the cause of human behaviour, meaning that it is then easier to treat, by reducing the explanation down to its simplest form. However, as discussed, there are many problems and critiques of the reductionist approach to understanding human behaviour, with the main problem being that the reductionist approaches leave out vital factors such as the environment and social factors when explaining behaviour, thus by using a reductionist explanation it does not give a full explanation for a complex melodic theme such as human behaviour, whereas takin g a more holistic approach such as a humanist approach, takes many unlike factors into account. Therefore, reductionist explanations, is limited when it comes to understanding and explaining human behaviour.Samantha Carlisle