How do psychology and science relate

But many approaches of psychology do meet the accepted requirements of the scientific method, whilst others appear to be more doubtful in this respect. There are alternatives to empiricism, such as rational research, argument and belief. The humanistic approach another alternative values private, subjective conscious experience and argues for the rejection of science. The humanistic approach argues that objective reality is less important than a person's subjective perception and subjective understanding of the world.

Because of this, Carl Rogers and Maslow placed little value on scientific psychology, especially the use of the scientific laboratory to investigate both human and other animal behavior. This is what the humanistic approach aims to do. Humanism is a psychological perspective that emphasizes the study of the whole person. Humanistic psychologists look at human behavior not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of the person doing the behaving.

Humanistic psychologists believe that an individual's behavior is connected to his inner feelings and self-image. The humanistic approach in psychology deliberately steps away from a scientific viewpoint, rejecting determinism in favor of freewill, aiming to arrive at a unique and in depth understanding.

Humanistic psychologists rejected a rigorous scientific approach to psychology because they saw it as dehumanizing and unable to capture the richness of conscious experience. In many ways the rejection of scientific psychology in the s, s and s was a backlash to the dominance of the behaviorist approach in North American psychology.

In certain ways everyone is a psychologist. This does not mean that everyone has been formally trained to study and be trained in psychology. People have common sense views of the world, of other people and themselves.

These common sense views may come from personal experience, from our upbringing as a child and through culture etc. Common-sense views about people are rarely based on systematic i.

Racial or religious prejudices may reflect what seems like common sense within a group of people. However, prejudicial beliefs rarely stand up to what is actually the case.

Common sense, then, is something which everybody uses in their day-to-day lives, guides decisions and influences how we interact with one another. But because it is not based on systematic evidence, or derived from scientific inquiry, it may be misleading and lead to one group of people treating others unfairly and in a discriminatory way.

Despite having a scientific methodology worked out we think , there are further problems and arguments which throw doubt onto psychology ever really being a science. Limitations may refer to the subject matter e. Science assumes that there are laws of human behavior that apply to each person. Therefore science takes both a deterministic and reductionist approach.

Science studies overt behavior because overt behavior is objectively observable and can be measured, allowing different psychologists to record behavior and agree on what has been observed.

This means that evidence can be collected to test a theory about people. Scientific laws are generalizable, but psychological explanations are often restricted to specific times and places. Because psychology studies mostly people, it studies indirectly the effects of social and cultural changes on behavior.

Psychology does not go on in a social vacuum. These factors, and individual differences, make research findings reliable for a limited time only. Are traditional scientific methods appropriate for studying human behavior? When psychologists operationalize their IV, it is highly likely that this is reductionist, mechanistic, subjective, or just wrong.

Experiments are keen to establish that X causes Y, but taking this deterministic view means that we ignore extraneous variables, and the fact that at a different time, in a different place, we probably would not be influenced by X. There are so many variables that influence human behavior that it is impossible to control them effectively. The issue of ecological validity ties in really nicely here.

Objectivity is impossible. It is a huge problem in psychology, as it involves humans studying humans, and it is very difficult to study the behavior of people in an unbiased fashion. Moreover, in terms of a general philosophy of science, we find it hard to be objective because we are influenced by a theoretical standpoint Freud is a good example of this.

The observer and the observed are members of the same species are this creates problems of reflectivity. Scientists therefore draw a distinction between values and facts. Because values cannot be considered to be either true or false, science cannot prove or disprove them. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1. For instance, science may be able to objectively measure the impact of unwanted children on a society or the psychological trauma suffered by women who have abortions. The effect of imprisonment on the crime rate in Canada may also be determinable.

This factual information can and should be made available to help people formulate their values about abortion and incarceration, as well as to enable governments to articulate appropriate policies. Values also frequently come into play in determining what research is appropriate or important to conduct. Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction between values and facts is not always clear-cut.

Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual turn out later, on the basis of further research, to be partially or even entirely incorrect.

Although scientific procedures do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to questions will be objective and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective conclusions about the world around us. When old facts are discarded, they are replaced with new facts based on newer and more correct data.

Although science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result in a much greater chance of producing an accurate understanding of human behaviour than is available through other approaches.

The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation , which are the perspectives that are used to understand behaviour. The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation, as shown in Table 1. Studying and helping alleviate depression can be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain influence the experience of depression. At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that may cause depression.

And at the highest level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression between men and women and across cultures. These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression. The study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain everything. All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential for a better understanding of human behaviour. Understanding and attempting to alleviate the costs of psychological disorders such as depression is not easy because psychological experiences are extremely complex.

The questions psychologists pose are as difficult as those posed by doctors, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists, if not more so Wilson, A major goal of psychology is to predict behaviour by understanding its causes. Making predictions is difficult, in part because people vary and respond differently in different situations. Individual differences are the variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions. For instance, although many people experience at least some symptoms of depression at some times in their lives, the experience varies dramatically among people.

Some people experience major negative events, such as severe physical injuries or the loss of significant others, without experiencing much depression, whereas other people experience severe depression for no apparent reason.

Other important individual differences that we will discuss in the chapters to come include differences in extraversion, intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity. Because of the many individual difference variables that influence behaviour, we cannot always predict who will become aggressive or who will perform best in graduate school or on the job.

The predictions made by psychologists and most other scientists are only probabilistic. We can say, for instance, that people who score higher on an intelligence test will, on average, do better than people who score lower on the same test, but we cannot make very accurate predictions about exactly how any one person will perform. Another reason that it is difficult to predict behaviour is that almost all behaviour is multiply determined , or produced by many factors.

And these factors occur at different levels of explanation. We have seen, for instance, that depression is caused by lower-level genetic factors, by medium-level personal factors, and by higher-level social and cultural factors. You should always be skeptical about people who attempt to explain important human behaviours, such as violence, child abuse, poverty, anxiety, or depression, in terms of a single cause.

Furthermore, these multiple causes are not independent of one another; they are associated such that when one cause is present, other causes tend to be present as well. This overlap makes it difficult to pinpoint which cause or causes are operating. For instance, some people may be depressed because of biological imbalances in neurotransmitters in their brain.

The resulting depression may lead them to act more negatively toward other people around them, which then leads those other people to respond more negatively to them, which then increases their depression. As a result, the biological determinants of depression become intertwined with the social responses of other people, making it difficult to disentangle the effects of each cause. Another difficulty in studying psychology is that much human behaviour is caused by factors that are outside our conscious awareness, making it impossible for us, as individuals, to really understand them.

The role of unconscious processes was emphasized in the theorizing of the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud , who argued that many psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have repressed and thus remain outside our consciousness. Brendl, C. Name letter branding: Valence transfers when product specific needs are active. Journal of Consumer Research, 32 3 , — Cacioppo, J. Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: Social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological approaches.

Psychological Bulletin, 6 , — One such example is that globally, we all correlate facial expressions with the emotions that incite them. Despite any actual or perceived differences between fields of psychology and other branches of science, psychologists do rely on scientific methods. This includes influences on our day-to-day life and our unconscious processing of it.

Most people are unaware what actually influences their behaviour, and how their behaviour is impacted. Practitioners in the field have been keen to distance their occupations from the realm of pseudopsychology.

Psuedosciences lack key, distinguishing features which categorise a science, such as empirical evidence, objectivity, and consideration of alternatives and it is important to make this distinction. Humans are known to be fallible; our common sense and intuition have obvious limitations and cannot be relied upon for all the answers. Without careful investigation, many myths and opinions would remain as the popular antidote. In fact, research conducted in the varied branches of psychology — both basic and applied - is generally done so by people with doctoral degrees or other qualified practitioners exhibiting clear scientific attitudes of curiosity, scepticism, objectivity, and critical thinking.

Modern psychology seeks not simply to observe, but to explain. In their quest for answers, researchers challenge commonly held beliefs, and counter confirmation bias through objectivity. By considering alternatives before accepting a claim as true, researchers are able to give strength to their argument and establish a clearer picture of the rich tableau of behaviour. The clinical practise of psychology aims to aid society to function better through application of scientific research.

Scientific research helps establish whether or not treatments in clinical practice are effective using mathematics — the language of science. But do you need one final good reason? The MSc Psychology BPS is an online master's programme that explores the core areas of clinical psychology to improve ethical and evidence-based decision-making skills. The information you provide on this form will be processed in accordance with Edology's Privacy Policy.

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