social constructionism and individualism, reductionism

The social constructionist approach relates to both of these concepts in important ways. Social constructionists would contend that the dominant approach in psychology is a reductionist one, and would highlight social constructionism as a non-reductionist approach. Psychologists often take a biological-reductionist approach to studying psychological phenomena, reducing human behavior and cognition to biology, for instance purporting all human cognition to be simply the product of neural activity. For example depression may be explained by pointing to a deficiency in serotonin, with little attention paid to matters beyond biology, for instance social relationships or life events. Social constructionists on the other hand prefer to look at phenomena from a much less narrow scope, looking instead for instance at how depression is constructed, for instance perhaps in some cultures depression is not seen as a disease that needs to be fixed but a relatively innocuous “low” someone may naturall experience in the course of their life.

In a similar vein, social constructionists may also contend that the typical approach to the study of psychological phenomena is individualistic in nature, looking at psychological phenomena from the perspective of the individual and neglecting interpersonal aspects. Social constructionists on the other hand, emphasize collaborative construction, for instance they may look at how depression is collaboratively constructed, how depression is understood as it is and perhaps how depressive behavior may be constructed. Perhaps peope come to understand that when they feel low they should stay in, when in fact this is a constructed norm rather than an objective reality.