science is objective, controlled, replicable, able to validate or falsify and prediction are made.
science has a 'paradigm' (Kuhn) - a shared set of assumptions.
some researchers would argue psychology is not a paradigm but that it has experienced paradigm shifts.
for example, we began with biology (hard science), around the 1900's psychodynamic approach emerged (Freud), this is considered to be a 'soft science', its subjective, unfalsifyable and lacks controlled investigation.
psychology then moved into behaviourism (in the middle), it uses experiments and observations. we then moved into cognitive approach - more scientific (harder) science than behaviourist.
most areas of psychology are scientific, they use experimental research methods. experiments are advantageous in psychology because, we can test behaviour in valid, reliable ways.
controlled studies, e.g. Gibson and Walk/Asch enable us to measure results accurately in quantitative ways - gaining statistical fata from which hypotheses can be accepted/ rejected.
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experimental studies such as Milgram gives us cause and effect relationships, this is better than non-experimental methods which only show correlationg.
they are more objective than case studies, so likely to be more valid, e.g. Freud's case study of Little Hans which is highly interpretive and therefore less scientific than experiments.
in conclusion, there is a lot of scientific study in pscyhology
most of the psychological approaches use experiments to test a hypothesis, which are scientific.
this is good because it makes research more credible and results can be widely applied, e.g. Loftus and palmer
overall psychology can be considered as rooted in hard science because of its origins in biology
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