Another disadvantage of psychology as a science is that most of its theories aren’t falsifiable. If we can’t prove theories to be correct, how do we know psychological treatments that are based on them will be successful? We can’t see, or even consciously feel Freud’s theories that our subconscious mind consists of the ID, EGO and SUPEREGO (different parts of our personality that can be activated to either make us act more moralistic, or more aggressive), therefore how can it be proven that they exist? It is the same with the Freudian theory of the psychosexual stages. There is no proof that certain fixations at different stages of our infantry (anal, oral, phallic etc.) will affect our adult personalities. These theories also contradict the biological and cognitive approaches theories that should be taken into account. However, some people still class psychology as a science, because either way it’s impossible to scientifically ‘measure’ humans as we can with time and atoms.
Furthermore, psychology, unlike science is subjective. This means that results of experiments can be skewed due to observer bias. An example of this is dream analysis/clinical interviews. The UK + US Diagnostic Project found that American psychiatrists diagnosed depression when shown a video of a clinical interview, whereas British ones diagnosed schizophrenia. If different diagnosis can be made for the same patient, psychology can’t be called a science. Such diagnoses are made based on environmental factors, or to support a researchers hypothesis. Heisenberg found that you can’t even measure a subatomic particle without changing it’s behaviour – therefore how could you objectively measure human behaviour? Lack of objectivity could mean patients are incorrectly diagnosed, and therefore incorrectly treated. However, some would argue that psychology is objective: the use of brain scans can clearly source out problems like brain tumours putting pressure on the frontal lobe, which can lead to a more precise diagnosis of schizophrenia or other mental illness.
To conclude, science is not appropriate to psychology. Human beings and our behaviours are inconsistent and immeasurable, unlike measurable scientific elements like time and atoms. Becca’s natural experiment where she introduced TV to Figi to see if it affected the growth of eating disorders gathers spontaneous and qualitative data, yet it lacks many factors that are vital for the scientific method: control of the IV, and replicability because it was a one off experiment. However, it is desirable for psychology to be called a science because people trust it, and would feel diagnosis’ that were made would be more reliable. But if psychology were truly a science, it would mean our actions are due to just one cause, which is inappropriate because humans have varied biological and environmental backgrounds meaning there are many different justifications for behaviour, hence the different psychological approaches. However, is science really scientific? Kuhn argued that scientists themselves aren’t always objective as their findings could be influenced by wanting to prove their own ‘scientfic’ theories.