Science therefore refers to the empirical methods of investigation and seeks to justify a belief in the truth or falsity of an empirical method. Basing on these definitions above therefore psychology becomes a science due to the fact that it involves use of empirical or research methods to understand human and animal behavior hence it came to be considered a science in after Wilhelm Wundt brought about the first psychology laboratory in Leipzig German.
Case study is one empirical method used in psychology which proves that psychology is a science. In a case study nearly every aspect of the subject life and history is analysed to seek patterns and causes of behaviour Kasschau , The hope is that learning gained from studying one case can be generalized to many after others which is a fact that makes psychology a science through the use of this method.
In natural sciences a molecule for example potassium reacts violently when put in water this means that this can be said to be true to all potassium molecules. Psychologists and other social scientist devised the survey method to gather data from a sample that represents a larger population and this is according to Crossen Surveys are often used because they can be efficient ways to collect large amounts of information.
During this research a sample is collected to reflect the characteristics of a large group population. Questions must be carefully recorded to elicit meaningful and useful responses. Surveys can also be conducted in face to face interviews, by telephone and even the computer.
Face to face interviews allow asking for collection of answers. The fact that we can describe and explain the results we get and be able to predict future behavior and most probably change it for the better makes psychology a science. Another method that proves that psychology is a science is the correlation research method. It is an empirical method that studies naturally occurring associations among 2 or more factors.
It asks whether 2 or more factors are naturally associated. In natural sciences like biology scientists also study the relationship between temperature and transpiration rates.
An experiment conducted by Fowler et al said that drinking soft drinks was correlated with overweight. Therefore, with the above mentioned methods one can safely say that psychology is a science. To prove that psychology is a science we will also look at the experimental research method. The overarching goal of psychology is to understand the behavior, mental functions, and emotional processes of human beings.
This field ultimately aims to benefit society, partly through its focus on better understanding of mental health and mental illness. What is a main concern about psychology as a discipline? It will be used to manipulate people. It will treat humans inhumanely during research. It is a pseudoscience.
Psychology is a scientific discipline because it is a systematic and controlled study of human behaviour, with the hope of establishing cause-and-effect relationships or describing behaviour. Explains differences in behaviour with genetic make-up and hormones.
Psychology is a science because it follows the empirical method. We can directly observe and carefully measure externals such as what a person does, says, and marks down on a psychological test. There are four big ideas used to teach psychology. They include: critical thinking, the biopsychosocial approach, the two-track mind, and exploring human strengths.
Psychology is a science because it proposes explanatory theories that can be shown to be wrong. Psychology is an empirical science in particular because the way we test whether a theory is wrong is by comparing its predictions to actual data. The current empirical paradigm for psychological research is criticized because it ignores the irreversibility of psychological processes, the infinite number of influential factors, the pseudo-empirical nature of many hypotheses, and the methodological implications of social interactivity.
Western philosophy and the way the mind-body problem was presented and discussed paved the way for a particular perspective to the investigation of psychology. Given the fundamental differences among global philosophies and religious belief systems, the emergence and evolution of psychology as a scientific discipline will have had its own idiosyncratic trajectory depending on the geographical region or dominating views on the psyche.
How is the study of psychology influenced by geographical region, both in the past and current? What was the impact of cross-region communication or travel of key defining moments in the local history of psychology? The perceived dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Early on in the genesis of Western psychology, introspection was seen as the only method to directly observe psychological processes.
Yet, undergraduates are regularly taught that introspection is a nonscientific method, as it is subjective and not independently verifiable.
As qualitative interpretative analyses typically deal with data on subjective experiences, the qualitative analytic approach is labelled as nonscientific by some in favour of the indirect quantitative method of neural recordings. Where did this dichotomy come from and is this a global phenomenon or merely a Western mindset? How did the early work on introspectionism evolve in more sophisticated qualitative methods we know today?
Before answering this question, however, it is worth reflecting on what astronomy, biology, and chemistry have in common with each other. It is clearly not their subject matter. Astronomers study celestial bodies, biologists study living organisms, and chemists study matter and its properties.
It is also not the equipment and techniques that they use. Few biologists would know what to do with a radio telescope, for example, and few chemists would know how to track a moose population in the wild. For these and other reasons, philosophers and scientists who have thought deeply about this question have concluded that what the sciences have in common is a general approach to understanding the natural world.
Psychology is a science because it takes this same general approach to understanding one aspect of the natural world: human behavior. The general scientific approach has three fundamental features Stanovich, Stanovich, K. How to think straight about psychology 9th ed.
The first is systematic empiricism Learning about the world through careful observation. Empiricism refers to learning based on observation, and scientists learn about the natural world systematically, by carefully planning, making, recording, and analyzing observations of it. As we will see, logical reasoning and even creativity play important roles in science too, but scientists are unique in their insistence on checking their ideas about the way the world is against their systematic observations.
Instead, they systematically recorded, counted, and compared the number of words spoken by a large sample of women and men. The second feature of the scientific approach—which follows in a straightforward way from the first—is that it is concerned with empirical questions A question about the way the world actually is that can be answered by making systematic observations.
These are questions about the way the world actually is and, therefore, can be answered by systematically observing it. The question of whether women talk more than men is empirical in this way. Either women really do talk more than men or they do not, and this can be determined by systematically observing how much women and men actually talk. There are many interesting and important questions that are not empirically testable and that science cannot answer.
Among them are questions about values—whether things are good or bad, just or unjust, or beautiful or ugly, and how the world ought to be. So although the question of whether a stereotype is accurate or inaccurate is an empirically testable one that science can answer, the question of whether it is wrong for people to hold inaccurate stereotypes is not.
Similarly, the question of whether criminal behavior has a genetic component is an empirical question, but the question of what should be done with people who commit crimes is not. It is especially important for researchers in psychology to be mindful of this distinction. The third feature of science is that it creates public knowledge Detailed descriptions of research that are available to other researchers and the general public, usually through publication in a professional journal.
After asking their empirical questions, making their systematic observations, and drawing their conclusions, scientists publish their work. This usually means writing an article for publication in a professional journal, in which they put their research question in the context of previous research, describe in detail the methods they used to answer their question, and clearly present their results and conclusions.
Publication is an essential feature of science for two reasons. One is that science is a social process—a large-scale collaboration among many researchers distributed across both time and space.
Our current scientific knowledge of most topics is based on many different studies conducted by many different researchers who have shared their work with each other over the years. The second is that publication allows science to be self-correcting. Individual scientists understand that despite their best efforts, their methods can be flawed and their conclusions incorrect. Publication allows others in the scientific community to detect and correct these errors so that, over time, scientific knowledge increasingly reflects the way the world actually is.
Pseudoscience A set of beliefs or activities that is claimed to be scientific but lacks one or more of the three features of science. Consider the theory of biorhythms not to be confused with sleep cycles or other biological cycles that do have a scientific basis. The physical cycle has a period of 23 days, the intellectual cycle a period of 33 days, and the emotional cycle a period of 28 days. So, for example, if you had the option of when to schedule an exam, you would want to schedule it for a time when your intellectual cycle will be at a high point.
The theory of biorhythms has been around for more than years, and you can find numerous popular books and websites about biorhythms, often containing impressive and scientific-sounding terms like sinusoidal wave and bioelectricity.
The problem with biorhythms, however, is that there is no good reason to think they exist Hines, Hines, T. Comprehensive review of biorhythm theory. Psychological Reports, 83 , 19— A set of beliefs or activities can be said to be pseudoscientific if a its adherents claim or imply that it is scientific but b it lacks one or more of the three features of science. It might lack systematic empiricism. Either there is no relevant scientific research or, as in the case of biorhythms, there is relevant scientific research but it is ignored.
It might also lack public knowledge. People who promote the beliefs or activities might claim to have conducted scientific research but never publish that research in a way that allows others to evaluate it. A set of beliefs and activities might also be pseudoscientific because it does not address empirical questions. The philosopher Karl Popper was especially concerned with this idea Popper, Popper, K. Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge.
New York, NY: Routledge. He argued more specifically that any scientific claim must be expressed in such a way that there are observations that would—if they were made—count as evidence against the claim. In other words, scientific claims must be falsifiable An important property of scientific claims.
A claim is falsifiable if there is an observation that would—if it were made—count as evidence against the claim. The claim that women talk more than men is falsifiable because systematic observations could reveal either that they do talk more than men or that they do not. As an example of an unfalsifiable claim, consider that many people who study extrasensory perception ESP and other psychic powers claim that such powers can disappear when they are observed too closely.
This makes it so that no possible observation would count as evidence against ESP. If a careful test of a self-proclaimed psychic showed that she predicted the future at better-than-chance levels, this would be consistent with the claim that she had psychic powers. But if she failed to predict the future at better-than-chance levels, this would also be consistent with the claim because her powers can supposedly disappear when they are observed too closely.
Why should we concern ourselves with pseudoscience? There are at least three reasons. One is that learning about pseudoscience helps bring the fundamental features of science—and their importance—into sharper focus. A second is that biorhythms, psychic powers, astrology, and many other pseudoscientific beliefs are widely held and are promoted on the Internet, on television, and in books and magazines. Learning what makes them pseudoscientific can help us to identify and evaluate such beliefs and practices when we encounter them.
A third reason is that many pseudosciences purport to explain some aspect of human behavior and mental processes, including biorhythms, astrology, graphology handwriting analysis , and magnet therapy for pain control.
Among the pseudoscientific beliefs and practices you can learn about are the following:.
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