If you do not consider it a true science, please give your reasoning. This is a small, friendly debate between my department and the biology department, and I just wanted to know what the general consensus was.
Do you consider psychology to be a true science?
- Thread starter CollectiveUnconscious
- Start date
This is something I've never bothered to think about in my life, so I realyl don't have an opinion either way.
It is not a true science because there are no hard and fast rules that are always true.
I will elaborate to say it is a soft science rather than a hard science.
I will elaborate to say it is a soft science rather than a hard science.
dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
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By definition, it is a science.
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
I think psychology does everything in that list; thus it is a science. However, you have a qualifier. You want to know if it is a "true" science. What is your definition of a true science? Personally, I have to vote no. That is because I have a very strict definition of a true science. To me, a true science must be repeatable by any other scientist. For much of psychology, you don't really have that ability.
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
I think psychology does everything in that list; thus it is a science. However, you have a qualifier. You want to know if it is a "true" science. What is your definition of a true science? Personally, I have to vote no. That is because I have a very strict definition of a true science. To me, a true science must be repeatable by any other scientist. For much of psychology, you don't really have that ability.
I would say you can't make any hard and fast scientific conclusions from all of psychology, but the methods employed in psychological experiments are definately scientific. I especially enjoy the areas of psychology that overlap with neurobiology (for their scientific value, as a biochemist). I would say psychology is science's illegitimate brother.
It's a soft science for one main reason - you are asking for and making subjective, not OBJECTIVE observations/measurements. Although this depends on the field.
Social Psych is plush soft, and Bio/Neuropsych is fairly hard.
Social Psych is plush soft, and Bio/Neuropsych is fairly hard.
I'd say the current batch is better than some of the early "famous" names like freud. Nobody puts any stock in freud's ideas anymore.
I would use your definition of science when talking about "true science," as opposed to something that is simply an in depth study, such as astrology.
No, it's not a true science.
For one thing, child psychologists are not able to run double-blind tests on children (thank goodness, I might add). And yet that doesn't stop them from making sweeping conclusions.
On the other hand, they get suburban parents to part with $120/hr for sessions that actually last 45 minutes. They might be SMARTER than, say, physicists. When's the last time you paid that much to meet with a physicist?
For one thing, child psychologists are not able to run double-blind tests on children (thank goodness, I might add). And yet that doesn't stop them from making sweeping conclusions.
On the other hand, they get suburban parents to part with $120/hr for sessions that actually last 45 minutes. They might be SMARTER than, say, physicists. When's the last time you paid that much to meet with a physicist?
I had an electron flow problem in my plumbing. I called my local plumber/physicist and it cost an arm, a leg, and all the toes off my one remaining foot. That equates to $9000/hour.
Quite untrue. In my current research, all data gathered is objective (in my current case, the calls of the North Carolina Chickadee) and we measure that data using objective methods (statistics).
Demon-Xanth
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2000
- 20,551
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I would say that they are as scientific as they can be. And with today's technology (ie: MRIs, CAT scans, etc.) they are becoming more and more scientific.
So I would say that it's a true science, but lacks the tools needed to be a pure science.
So I would say that it's a true science, but lacks the tools needed to be a pure science.
It was a generalization, loosely applied. When you're doing psychology, youre trying to understand the inner workings of a brain, and while you can peer at MRI's all day, you'll never get inside their thoughts.
Although I don't quite see what Chickadee calls have to do with psychology....and of course, what conclusion you are trying to draw from them is also quite important.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
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Humans think in a certain manner. Psychology is an attempt to study this process. Humans generally won't lend themselves to the experimentation that science would benefit from, so psychology is somewhat limited in what it can do. While rigging up a sane person's brain with a few thousand electrodes buried at various locations in the brain could yield some incredibly useful data, well, you probably won't find many people willing to risk the brain damage that would likely result.
The Chickadee call has a strict grammatical structure, much like human language. I can take their calls and learn about their social structures and behavioral tendencies, in my case intergroup relations, and compare that to intergroup relations in humans.
Sounds more like behavioral biology to me. I'd file it more under neurobiology than what most of us would typically think of as "psychology", such as milgram.
Many disciplines of psychology use the experimental method. Psychology has developed quite a bit since Milgram's era.
eits
Lifer
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