Is psychology a science discipline?

It is what some call a soft science. In math 2 + 2 = 4, a hard fact. In psychology the answers aren't so obvious.

We know that environment affects behaviour but exactly how? Some scientific theories have a lot of theory but little hard evidence while others have little evidence but a lot of theory. UFOs have a lot of theory but little evidence (some say none).

However, in all sciences the scientific method of theorizing, evidence gathering and evaluation of evidence is used and that is the best way to get at the truth. Psychology and those who study it are as important to humanity as math and chemistry.

Rock said it all. I will just add that psychology relies on research and you do heaps of stats all through the undergraduate and post graduate degrees. Jexebellion 26 days ago.

Is psychology a science discipline Asked by logical 1 month ago Similar questions: psychology science discipline Science > Social Science.

Rock said it all. I will just add that psychology relies on research and you do heaps of stats all through the undergraduate and post graduate degrees. Jexebellion 1 month ago.

Science vs. God! " "science and religion....." "Where's the science in emotion? " "Is psychology really a science?" "Social science.

Name the famous Rajputs dynasty? " "how has science done more good than bad" "what is the general view with perspective of social science" "what is the best course for a science student" "Has science gone to far?" "Do you think Creationism is science?

Social science. Name the famous Rajputs dynasty?

What is the general view with perspective of social science.

What is the best course for a science student.

Arguably, psychology is a form of philosophy since very little to nothing ever gets proven. If I had any illusions, they were shattered after taking a statistics course and a research methods course. Psychology has struggled for acceptance as a ‘science’ but real scientists still have trouble believing that psychology could ever be a science.

” Asked by EternalOptimist 51 months ago Similar questions: psychology science Science > Psychology.

Some of it is Scientists think of themselves as a stack, with physics at the bottom. It’s the most provable, the most solid science. It deals with the smallest things as individuals, and they behave more reliably than anything else.

Physics experiments are done with a precision of 10 decimal places or even more. The best experiments are done to 12 decimal places. The higher up the scale you go, the more complex the things you deal with, and the harder it is to be precise.

Chemistry involves molecules, big ugly things compared to protons, and much more variable. Biology is molecules put together into body parts. Medicine is big-scale biology.

And psychology involves a hundred billion neurons, interlocked in trillions of ways, all firing hundreds of times per second. That’s far too complex to measure directly, though there are people working in neuroanatomy who try. But what all these scientists share is the basic notion of how science works: repeatable experiments.

You can make up all of the theories you want, but if you can’t test them, and then have other people repeat those tests and get the same results, it’s not science. It’s hard to do experiments in psychology, but it is possible. There are all kinds of experiments.

We can study brain chemistry, both by observing neurons (in humans and others) and by watching the way drugs affect people. (When it involves drugs, that requires a medical doctor, and we call that "psychiatry"). Some involve observing people’s behavior, and trying to describe it mathematically.

Such people really want to take good rigorous data, but people are so complex that it’s difficult to measure their behavior precisely. It’s also unethical to do a lot of the experiments whose results they’d like to know. They say they have "physics envy", the desire to take really precise data, but they can’t.

Still, it follows the fundamental scientific method: observe, hypothesize, test, reject hypotheses that fail. The closer psychology moves to therapy, the actual application of psychological theories, the less scientific it is. They’re guided by the work of psychological scientists, but they can’t afford to wait for complete theories, because people need actual help now.As scientists, they record their results and try to fit them to hypotheses, and reject hypotheses that don’t seem to be working, but the actual connection to the scientific method grows tenuous as the daily needs of helping people outweigh the need to be rigorous.

The history of psychology is not so good. It's full of people who hypothesized without testing. Or they took wild guesses, because they had nothing else to start from, and unfortunately the failed hypotheses took a stronger hold on the public imagination than they should have.

Freud is to be commended for trying to make psychology into a science, but people hold onto his theories long after the scientists have discarded them. That's the fault of the people, not of Freud himself. He was a scientist, willing to discard failed theories, and it's not his fault that his theories were so far off.

The method was what was important. (Well, he did tend to believe his own theories rather more than they deserved, too, which I think contributed to them sticking in the public's imagination.) The more we understand psychology, the more rigorous and scientific it is. The field of evolutionary psychology is very hot right now because it’s easy to characterize and allows both precise and ethical experiments.

The more we understand, the better the hypotheses we can make, and the more rigorous the tests. That’s science.

I majored in Psyc and took a lot of such courses, that's why I ask. Consider Quantum Physics or even Organic Chemistry, for that matter. (I also majored in Science).

Neither seem to follow much of any 'rules', yet I'd bet you'd call them a science. The recent sub-prime fiasco caused waves in markets that were 1000 standard deviations beyond expectations. The real question should be, does Psycology help people?

If you are studying Psycology and questioning your commitment or interest in it, the question should be more like do I really like this? Is it rewarding? Because the answer to the first question is, yes, Psycology does help people when practiced by well informed, caring and dedidcated psycologists.

Like the bell curve you learned in statistics, most practitioners probably fall near the middle. If you can't be near the top, do something else. I think science is way overrated, but if you feel that you'd be happy being more 'scientific', by all means go that way.

There's plenty of everything to study and lots of need for answers in every direction. Think I'll go out and watch the elk graze and the grass grow for the rest of the day. Being less productive is good for the planet.

Philosophy, science, psychology I am currently taking a course in philosophy of science and having studied a little about the history of science (and being a philosophy professor) I can say that the history here is interesting and complex. Psychology certainly has its roots in philosophy (though I once had a student of mine who was also studying psychology doubt this! ).

Many of the advances in psychology have been helped by the philosophical insights of people like David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote extensively on the philosophy of psychology. The line between science and non-science is not always clear.

Physics is often taken to be the paradigmatic science though string theory is more philosophical than scientific at this point. Medicine is an interesting mix of science and non-science. Certainly medical research is scientific in methodology but your family physician practicing the art of medicine may not be doing science on a day to day basis.So, where does psychology fit into this mix?

I would say somewhere in the middle of the fuzzy boundary. Psychological research with its rigorous research methods and statistical analysis is certainly using some aspects of scientific method and with the advances in neuroscience has the potential to become even more scientific. Applied psychological and talk therapy certainly seem less scientific and more of an art form like medicine.

The criteria for deciding whether something is science or philosophy is not necessarily whether anything ever gets proven. There are certainly areas of philosophy where proof is possible and areas of science where proof is not possible. The same seems to hold for psychology; there are areas where our knowledge is rigorous and proven and other areas where it is not.

I suppose this question can really be answered only when we have a clear conception of what science is. Something that is not entirely easy as any scientist or philosopher of science will tell you! What I have said here may not provide much clarity but given the historical connection between philosophy and science and psychology and science it may not be possible to draw a sharp boundary.

This is not necessarily bad. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein illustrates with the examply of defining the term "game:""One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges.'But is a blurred concept a concept at all? ' Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all?

Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need? " There's much more that could be said but I hope this provides you with some food for thought!

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Yes, there are psychological phenomena that can be predicted and measured. We do not have a full definition of this science, as we do on a science like algebra. The human psyche is much more complex, and what describes one human may not apply to another in some cases.

There are basic principles of phsychology that apply across the board, with very few exceptions. Defining a science means that the field has theories that can be tested and repeated. It is a relatively young science, and so many of the theories change frequently over time.

That seems to make it less of a science, but that only means that we don't have as good of a grasp of this science as we do of chemistry or biology. New theories appear in those sciences also. Psychology must be treated as a science if it is to progress, with observation, theories, and testing.It is just difficult to perform tests, since the tests involve humans.

You need their permission to test them, and they are not always honest. Many group non-scientific items under the name psychology, which also adds to the confustion.It is a young science, but it is a science. I hope this helps.

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In my opinion,... No. Neither science nor any closer to being an art. But it's a great way to make money!

BYE! .

" "To what extent is psychology considered to be a scientific discipline?.

Looking for a book about psychology called The Shell People, I think.

To what extent is psychology considered to be a scientific discipline?.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.