Debate - Is psychology a science?

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Debate topic: Is Psychology a science?

  • A science is knowledge that has empirical support. Science is objective and is pessimistic. Science is nomothetic and tries to establish universal laws, whereas common sense is idiographic and it can be culture specific.

  • A science follows a process when investigating anything scientific. The hypotheticodeductive model is the proposed description of a scientific method. A hypothesis is formed and observation/experimentation is carried out to falsify the hypothesis. Falsification is another criteria of a true science, as Popper pointed out - "No amount of observation of white swans can allow the conclusion that all swans are white, but the single observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

  • According to Kuhn, a paradigm is the most important aspect of a true science. Essentially a paradigm is a framework or central concept around which the science fits. As a science emerges and develops it progresses through three distinct stages: Prescience stage, Normal science stage and Revolutionary science stage.

  • Major sciences have paradigms e.g. Physics - theory of relativity. However, psychology does not have any of these. Instead, it has no one central approach, but rather a collection of different theoretical ideas centred around psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive and humanistic thinking. Thomas Kuhn said, because of this ‘psychology is a pre-science’, which means that no clear paradigm has yet emerged. However, some argue that psychology has a paradigm and it is to explain human behaviour, which suggests it can be a science.

  • However, it can be also argued that many of the physical sciences also struggle to produce a paradigm. Chemistry, for example, subdivides itself into organic, inorganic and physical. Each of those sub-divisions has different assumptions and approaches.

  • For psychology to be a science it needs to be objective in that the researchers imposes no ideas, which may be biased to what they believe in their study. Objectivity can sometimes be established. For example, behavioural, biological and cognitive theorists all use lab studies when they investigate their theories, which are largely controlled and therefore may be unbiased by researcher’s own beliefs. However, psychodynamic theorists, when investigating subject matter, often use case studies. These involve interpretations of the researchers, which can be highly subjective. From this point of views, whether psychology is objective or not depends on whether the method is objective.

  • Another element of science is operationalizing variables. In normal sciences, for example, chemistry and physics, variables are obviously established with the use of voltage, amps and grams when carrying out research. However, when psychologists investigate areas, they may not always be able to establish such things. For example, when looking at the unconscious there no way to operationalise the concept, because it is not measurable. Furthermore, operationalisation may be culturally-biased, for example in Bandura’s study and how he defined aggression.

  • Science uses scientific methods i.e. methods such as lab experiments

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