Psychology: Is it a science?

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Aaron Hepi

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Ok so my answer to this question is yes. I'm interested in what you think?

I know a few individual with psychology degrees and they assure me that the scientific method is used extensively. So why, then, do so many people insist that psychology is not a science?
 
"So why, then, do so many people insist that psychology is not a science? "

Knit picking i suspect or a snobbery of some sort.
Why wouldn't the study be a science?

Without doubt the best in this field are very , very bright.
 
Psychology is definitely a science. It employs all the same methodology as the other sciences. I think the issue comes in with the fact that the human brain is the most complex thing on this earth and there is no easy way to study it. Every brain and every person is completely different so it's not like studying something like physics where there are specific laws that are easy to prove. I would say that psychology is the most complicated science. Different people react differently and behaviour in different environments and situations is difficult to predict. The same person in a different environment or even at a different time in their life will react differently so how can we predict how all the different people will react? With the advent of technology to scan the brain the scientific discoveries in psychology have been incredible. It's definitely a science and anyone that says that it isn't either doesn't understand what a science is or is a snob from a different scientific field who likes to feel superior.
 
The question on my mind is if there's a scientific answer in psychology as to why people think psychology isn't scientific.
 
Because it can't be studied under a microscope and because everyone is different it isn't predictable enough.
 
camomile said:
Because it can't be studied under a microscope and because everyone is different it isn't predictable enough.
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Unfortunately, I think this is a common answer. I go to a major engineering university, and even among some of my friends several hesitate to call psychology a science for this kind of reason. Those who make such a claim either don't realize or understand what science is.
 
"So why, then, do so many people insist that psychology is not a science?"

To be clear, not my opinion.
 
Psychology is a science but is it a hard science like the natural sciences? No. It is a social science which looks at the interactions and motivations of humans which cannot be predicted by a mathematical formula… that we know of. Perhaps someday we will be able to accurately predict human behavior but until that point, it won’t be considered a hard science just as economics isn’t. Tell me looking at world economies isn’t a science and I will gladly show you how it is but because it deals with human nature, it is unpredictable at times even if it follows a certain pattern.
 
Tools like the Five Factor Model (which is actually respected in academic studies) are constructed using not hard science but quantitatively rigorous methods akin to the scientific processes of gathering and analyzing data -- the only difference is that the end goal isn't always to find some kind of hard protein or such chemical. Ultimately how people test medicines and such things is through rigorous statistics, so the fact that the Big 5 and such inventories go through extreme amounts of rigorous screening to test for whether they're getting at something real should at least be some comfort to anyone concerned if it's all a bunch of hogwash.

They then are sometimes corroborated with neuroscience to find out what kinds of hard scientific things are leading to the personalities we see, and this has been done a lot with the Big 5. And since the MBTI has been shown to be quite well correlated with the Big 5, the instrument itself is quite good -- only there's a lot of bad interpretation of what it statistically is saying (for instance, the claim that it is measuring bipolar dichotomies is more or less disproven, and in fact wasn't even Jung's perspective) -- it's measuring more like a continuous distribution where most people are more in the middle than on either end.

This is the more quantitative side of psychology. There are of course less quantitative sides to it as well.
 
Psychology is a science, but there are sub-fields of it that need to be voted off the island. Social psychology comes to mind. Abnormal psychology has some major failings as well. However, bio-psychology and stuff on memory and learning are fine.
 
I find it far more fascinating as to why the label 'science' carries so much more weight that they would consider being deemed an 'art' insulting.
 
That is a good point yeah; the word "science" is kind of trite and overused nowadays to make something seem respectable. In reality, it depends more whether something *should* be a scientific endeavor or not -- why not view philosophy, art, and so on as their own domains, with their own standards for excellence?
 
I don't think that you can classify "psychology" as a term as either scientific or un-scienfic, since it just means the "study of spirit". It is a term that has been used and abused since the dawn of man.

Freudian psychology was based on very little research, and was more conjecture than science, but it had a huge impact on the development of psychology.

Nothing is black and white, some psychology is more scientific than others.

The hot ones right now are very practically oriented.

You have to be very critical about which types of psychology you choose to believe in. Some psychology works better on some than others. Narrative therapy worked wonders for me, but I know a lot of people that it didn't help at all.
 
Is urology a science?
 
Matt3737 said:
I find it far more fascinating as to why the label 'science' carries so much more weight that they would consider being deemed an 'art' insulting.
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Because art has no constraints to deal with what is predictable or even real.
 
charlatan said:
That is a good point yeah; the word "science" is kind of trite and overused nowadays to make something seem respectable. In reality, it depends more whether something *should* be a scientific endeavor or not -- why not view philosophy, art, and so on as their own domains, with their own standards for excellence?
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Let me experiment on you and then we'll see about respectability of methods.
 
sprinkles said:
Because art has no constraints to deal with what is predictable or even real.
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Art has constraints both physically imposed by the medium and arbitrarily imposed by the author. Science also deals with hypotheticals, theory, thought experiments, philosophy, speculation, and supposition. What is real is a matter of belief as science tends to use the term 'phenomena' to describe the unknown and possibly unknowable.

The difference between the two are a matter of perceived degree. The fact that science is constantly changing and being altered by newer information can be perceived as being highly erroneous and/or highly accurate depending on your perception. Predictability is really the only factor that gives science its perceived importance over art as the arts aren't necessarily concerned with prediction or are less so depending on the field. This is an imposition of the medium (the field of study) as why should history require an observable prediction? It doesn't on the whole although it may use scientific methods to add credible supplemental information such as carbon dating.
 
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Matt3737 said:
Art has constraints both physically imposed by the medium and arbitrarily imposed by the author. Science also deals with hypotheticals, theory, thought experiments, philosophy, speculation, and supposition. What is real is a matter of belief as science tends to use the term 'phenomena' to describe the unknown and possibly unknowable.

The differences are a matter of degree, but not of kind.
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Degree matters. Life may be on the line for science. People have died for it, and there are people that live on the edge of death for science, e.g. explorers and astronauts.

Imagine being strapped to the top of a rocket that could explode if something goes wrong. Imagine the amount of faith it takes to do that and believe the scientists and engineers got it right, and that you won't explode in a fireball on launch, or won't get into space and decompress, or have a power failure and be left to drift for eternity.
 
sprinkles said:
Degree matters. Life may be on the line for science. People have died for it, and there are people that live on the edge of death for science, e.g. explorers and astronauts.

Imagine being strapped to the top of a rocket that could explode if something goes wrong. Imagine the amount of faith it takes to do that and believe the scientists and engineers got it right, and that you won't explode in a fireball on launch, or won't get into space and decompress, or have a power failure and be left to drift for eternity.
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I was in the process of editing my post for more clarity. I understand the reasoning. I think my original post made it sound more like an open observation rather than being a pointed observation. That psychologists and the field of psychology feels the need to validate and emphasize its importance is quite amusing and seems a delightful irony to me.

A seemingly inwardly introverted field of study desirous of external validation.
 
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