Do you consider psychology to be a true science?

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: CollectiveUnconscious

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: CollectiveUnconscious

Originally posted by: BD2003
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.

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.

I know, I'm a psych and a bio major. Being from both sides of the camp, I can definitely say that *most* bio is more "scientific" than *a lot* of psych.

 

[PHiuR]

don't know about true science...but defintely a type of science.

 

[Kadarin]

If you can apply the scientific method to it to get valid results, it's a science.

 

[CFster]

You're being glib!

 

[PingSpike]

Sure. Just like astrology.

 

[WildHorse]

Richard Feynman, a scientist, said about Psychology that, "They don't have any laws."

I suspect that some level of true understanding of psychology may exist in some aspects of "Western" aboriginal and in "Eastern" cultures that do/did deep meditation.

In a layman's non-academic sense that "real" psychology is scientific because it describes (often in myth & allegory) experiences universally (replication) had by all individuals who dive into extremely deep meditation.

But since all except the most rudimentary of those predicted subjective experiences are not susceptible to external observation, in the academic sense that doesn't qualify as science.

 

[Kirby]

psychology is not a true science according to tom cruise and l ron hubbard. All hail lord Xenu!

 

[torpid]

It may not in practice be due to the fact that universities fail to seperate the science of psychology from stuff like freud. But it should be a true science. Psychology and psychotherapy should be completely different fields in my opinion. Pyschology should study humans in the abstract, like will they push the button to deliver an electric shock if told to, or does memory favor early and late items in a set over items in the middle, that sort of thing.

 

[yhelothar]

Psychology is a very broad subject. There are parts of psychology that involves scientific testing and research. But there are also philosophical and social areas of psychology.
So parts of psychology are sciences, and parts of it are not.

 

[bersl2]

Psychology is part biological science, part social science, and part philosophy. It's about trying to bridge the gap between the molecular machinery and the behavioral characteristics of life, especially human life, from both ends.

 

[Accipiter22]

as a clinical psych major..yes. There's parts that are theoretical, just as there are with biology, physics, etc.

 

[DrPizza]

Psychology is to science as McDonald's chicken mcnuggets are to food. The answer is a weak "yes."

 

[chcarnage]

Originally posted by: dullard
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.

Of course psychology experiments can be repeated. For example the famous Milgram Experiment was repeated countless times with similar results everywhere.

 

[Siddhartha]

Psychology is a science. But it is not as mature as Physics, Chemistry, or Biology. I would say that Pschology is at the same stage in its development as Biology was 100 years ago, Physics and Chemistry 150 years ago.

 

[fitzov]

Psychology is one of the so-called "soft" sciences due to the fact that it has "soft laws" rather than laws.

Soft laws hold ceteris paribus. In other words, the laws hold under some range of circumstances (not always).

 

[imported_goku]

IMO English and psychology are not very different from each other, you do the same thing in both classes whether you realize it or not.

 

[thomsbrain]

psychology is a very broad field.

there are plenty of hard, QUANTITATIVE experiments performed in the field, mostly in the cognitive psych areas, and even lots of cool computer programming involved with modeling and stuff. and there are also many empirical studies done in developmental psych, though they are usually based on visual observation, and as such, require VERY carefully controlled and well-though-out designs. in fact, many findings by prominant names that were taken as fact have been dis-proved because it was shown that they were measuring the wrong thing.

at the same time, personality psych and psychotherapy techniques are not terribly scientific. for instance, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy has been proven to be effective, but it's not like we have hard data on why that is. it's just people sitting around thinking "hmm, this would be a good way to approach this problem," and then talking it out and seeing what happens. that's not to say it will always be this way, and in the meantime psychological models like those of freud and jung are extremely USEFUL and have tons of revelance in our day-to-day lives. freud has tons of terms in our cultural lexicon, and many movies employ jungian consultants who ensure that the images and plots of movies will captivate viewers. and nearly all of the movies and stories that we love fit jungian and/or freudian archtypes. once you learn the archtypes, you see them ALL the time, and you quickly realize that the movies that suck are the ones that don't follow archtypes... but that isn't exactly science.

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: LordMorpheus

Originally posted by: albatross
some higly intelligent people "started" psychology,but now there are many impostors.

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.

on the contrary. while it is fashionable to bash him in some circles, it is usually the result of not actually understanding his theories in the first place. once you get a grasp on them and see how they can play out in real life, you realize that TONS of behavior is explained best in freudian terms, including things like gang membership, domestic violence, political struggles, etc. and yeah, most people get wish-washy on the penis envy, and freud himself was not without his bad points, but a tremendous amount of the things we take for granted in how we view our relationships, speech, etc, all came directly from freud and his theories.

 

[WildHorse]

A guy did a nice write up on this exact topic here:

"Is Psychology a Science?"

 

[Apathetic]

Originally posted by: dullard
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.

That's a bad definition of science. Experiments MUST be repeatable. This is not the case with psychology.

Dave