Is Psychology a Science? Discuss With Reference To

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There is much debate over whether psychology is considered to be a science or not. So what is science? Science is generally defined as the knowledge gained through observations of the world via scientific methods, rather than what we believe to be true of the world (American Psychological Association, 2007). Psychology is widely recognised as the study of mental processes and behaviour (Wickens 2000). From this outline psychology could clearly be defined as a science as it involves gaining a deeper understanding of humans within the world. However, there are many factors which need to be taken into account in order to claim psychology as science. Thus, this essay will look at and apply the main attributes that characterise a science to psychology, discussing the arguments for and against psychology being a science in relation to scientific methods and research biases. The scientific method involves experimentation exploring observations for cause and effect relationships. The design of which is so one variable is manipulating another variable primarily by gathering quantitative research. Psychologists use scientific methods for their investigations such as laboratory experiments and structured interviews which gather quantitative research. Although Laboratory experiments are used there are a lot of non-scientific methods used within psychology such as case studies which gather qualitative research generating subjective data, which isn’t scientific. Science is also nomothetic which means it establishes general laws and principles by examining groups for trends and patterns to obtain general laws for behaviour. So by using case studies it is impossible to generate general laws and principles as only one persons behaviour is examined and can’t be generalised. But using laboratory experiments of large samples of people can generate general laws for behaviour.
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