Task 9 - Is psychology a science?

Question 1

What are characteristics of science?

Answer 1

• Cumulative in nature - builds on existing knowledge
• information must be gathered with agreed methods that are clearly defined
• Findings must be formulated parsimoniously and clearly defined, so that they won’t be interpreted differently by others
• Science aims to predict events and not just explain them post-hoc

Question 2

What is a pseudoscience?

Answer 2

• No openness to testing by other experimenters
• Use of vague / unstable terms
• Over-reliance on confirmation rather than falsification
• Subjectivity rather than data
• Misleading language

Question 3

Why have some people criticized psychology becoming a natural science?

Answer 3

• It is not practical when it comes to the goal of psychology: helping people
• Neglect of individual differences - theories and laws might not apply to everyone
• Scientific research methods limit the scope of what can be studied
• Scientific findings are often less objective than they claim to be - they are placed in the contemporary society and represent current paradigms, so they can be influenced and later falsified after a paradigm shift.

Question 4

What is Humanistic Psychology?

Answer 4

• Prominent in the 1950s
• Another approach (“third force”) as an alternative to psychoanalysis and behaviorism
• > Promoted by Rogers and Maslow
• > Puts emphasis on the “human” in humanistic - sees theories etc as not very important when you look at the individual human in its entirety

Question 5

What are arguments for that psychology is in fact a science?

Answer 5

• Psychology dates back to the ancient Greeks and is an evolvement of what was formerly called philosophy. Thus psychology is not a young science, it has just been “hidden” under the name of metaphysical philosophy (John Dewey, 1887)
• Psychology uses scientific methods (Wundt, 1879) -> Science is defined by its method rather than subject matter
• Psychological research is strongly interconnected and frequently cross-referenced in other fields, so psychology is deeply manifested in the literature of sciences

Question 6

What are arguments against that psychology is a science?

Answer 6

• Methodologism: Psychology has been “a little too concerned” with developing adequate research methods and not with coming up with concrete laws.
• > There should be a conflict between theoreticians and experimentalists, however in psychology, the theoretical side is missing: No credible theory backing up the experiments.
• Public image of psychologists not having as much specific knowledge as other scientists
• A large part of present psychological fundamental knowledge is based on biased experiments.

Question 7

What is a common misunderstanding when it comes to the psychology being a science?

Answer 7

The natural-scientific status of psychology has been frequently misunderstood because of the large number of practitioners/therapists, who aren’t scientists themselves, but are still called psychologists -> Hermeneutic approach
- Multiple ways of differentiating research from practitioners were tried: different names, different associations etc.

Question 8

What is critical Psychology and its core message?

Answer 8

• Latest development within hermeneutics
• scientific psychology shouldn’t believe in realism
• people should be investigated as social beings in a social context and not as singular scientific subject.
• emphasis the moral responsibility of psychology