Psychology as a Science

Ben McNicholl 6th October 2009

Describe and Discuss the historical development of psychology as a science.

According to Russell & Jarvis(2003: 469) “the word 'science' comes from the Latin word 'scire', meaning 'to know'”; thus it is the knowledge of specific study. Psychology was defined by Atkinson et al. (2000: 3, cited by Mestre. et al. 2002: 811) as the “scientific study of behaviour and mental processes”. Psychology has been universally recognised as a science since the late 1800's when James (1890, cited by Gross 1999: 3) stated that 'Psychology is the Science of Mental Life”. Though many praise the study of psychology for it's findings and achievements there will always be those who are sceptical of these findings and whether or not they can be seen as 'solid'.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is widely seen as the 'founding father' of 'new psychology', in which we mean psychology as a separate scientific discipline, rather than it had been previously; a part of philosophy. Wundt created 'structuralism', this is the study of the mind by breaking all chains of thought down in to such things as images, feelings and sensations, for example, if one were to think of chocolate, one may picture the bar, have a feeling of desire for the bar which may produce the sensation of hunger. By studying the conscious mind using introspection he would record the results of his studies, these would be performed under controlled conditions, by which we mean no outside interferences or influences. However, his methods were heavily criticised as it only studied conscious processes, he was also very select in whom he selected for these tests, children and the mentally disturbed for example, were not considered for his studies as he believed they could not use introspection to a successful degree. Thus, introspection cannot be considered a scientific study as it does not aim to discover the mental processes for all humans; it does not allow for generalisation as not all possible subjects have been tested.

There are many arguments for and against psychology as a science, let us focus on the arguments for psychology first. Classical and operant conditioning are still widely used on various different subjects, classical (or 'Pavlovian') conditioning is the method of teaching a response when a conditional stimulus is in place, for example the study of Pavlov's dog – the dog was trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, this study was performed under lab conditions and therefore in a controlled environment in which and influences could be eradicated, this was fully testable and as proposed by Popper(1969, cited by Russell & Jarvis 2003: 469) “a theory or hypothesis needs to be fully testable to be scientific”. This method of conditioning is used in every day society, for example, though when young, one is never told that during 'play time' if a teacher or someone of authority blows a whistle one is meant immediately to stop what he or she is doing, it is a natural reaction to pay attention to the person whom commanded the attention and, in a case of a teacher/student situation, follow their instructions. Operant conditioning also follows the proposal that Popper suggested as it is used every day, when teaching an animal or human, whether they be an adult or a child. For example, operant conditioning is used when teaching a pet a new trick such as sitting down or shaking hands, the pet is initially guided in what it is supposed to do by it's owner, then treated after the act as been performed, over time the pet will 'learn' that if it obeys the command of “sit” then it will be rewarded, though it is no longer necessary to reward the animal after every completion of the command, instead rewarding it every now and then. This was also found in Skinner's box, in which the rat learnt to press a lever in order to receive a food pellet, psychologists would therefore argue that both of these methods of conditioning are considered objective studies which provide clear findings. Popper also argued that in order for a hypothesis or theory to be considered scientific it must be falsifiable, in practise this means that for the study to be valid there must also be subjects which prove the study to be false. For example, to say that “all lions are mammals” would not be falsifiable, as it would be impossible to conduct the amount of study necessary to disprove this theory, however, to say “all lions have yellow fur”, it would only be necessary to find one lion with brown fur in order to prove this falsifiable, Popper(1959, cited by Hill 2009: 19) argued that “science advances through refutation rather than support”.

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Psychology, namely the biological approach, has been helped through the advancements in technology, for example, now it is possible to use medical equipments to see the functions of the brain via electrical pulses, though obviously this does not give us an image of what someone is thinking it does provide us with information as to which different triggers the varying reactions which until recently we have not been able to understand, obviously, this provides us with clear findings. Until the 1950s, Behaviourism dominated psychological experimentation as psychologists such as John Watson believed that only observable behaviour should be investigated if psychology wished to be considered an objective science. Thus, though psychology may not have directly effected the advances in technology the benefit it has seen from these advances are clear, it is now possible for psychologists to view the workings of the brain through the advances in other areas of science, therefore this can only inflate psychology's status as a separate scientific discipline.

Despite the arguments for psychology to be considered a science there are, of course, those that believe it should not. Those who are against the idea of psychology as a science believe there are many issues surrounding areas of psychology and the methods of investigation it carries out, one area of concern is that of sampling; random, stratified, opportunity, self-selecting/volunteer. The first in the above list, random sampling, is very rarely used, or at least it is very rare that it can be considered 'true'; “true random sampling only occurs when every member of a target population has an equal chance of being selected” (Hill, 2009: 35), this is rarely the case as in a large target audience, in order for everyone to have an equal chance there would be a severe drain on the available resources so that the list could be compiled; many studies do not have the funding or resources available to them to waste on said list, so a truly random list of subjects is rarely achieved. Stratified sampling provides the same constraints on resources as random sampling; it is very time consuming and costly, this is due to the method that is used in order to perform stratified sampling – dividing the target population in to various subcategories then selecting members of these subcategories in to the proportion necessary to conduct the relevant research. Opportunity and self-selecting methods of sampling both provide problems in terms of bias, though from different perspectives. In terms of opportunity sampling not only does it give unrepresentative samples it is often biased on the part of the researcher, whom may pick people to take part in their study whom they believe will be more 'helpful' to his or her hypothesis. The opposite is said regarding self-selecting sampling, with the bias this time being on the part of the volunteer rather than the researcher, for example, someone may volunteer to take part in a study because they wish to show their support for it, or they may wish to disprove a theory to spite the researcher, due to ethical beliefs or another reason they have decided to disagree with the study. There has been criticism of other methods of obtaining data, namely through interview – structured or unstructured. A structured interview usually consists of a set of questions that the researcher wishes the subject to answer, however the subject will often answer the questions as he or she believes the researcher wants the questions to be answered; believing there are right and wrong answers, which is the case in a normal interview scenario, for example, interviewing for a job. Unstructured interview can provide a more natural response however can also allow the subject to go off topic and thus it is more difficult to generalise throughout the target population, which is necessary in order for the study to be considered scientific.

There are other concerns surrounding investigations within psychology, such as ethical issues, one famous example of this is the study of 'Little Albert' (Watson & Raynor 1920), in which there was no protection of the subject – 'Little Albert', whom was an emotionally stable 11-month old child had a fear of white, fluffy objects conditioned in to him, he was even afraid of a Santa Claus mask. This fear was never removed and though it is unknown as to what actually happened to Albert - we cannot be sure as to whether or not this fear stayed with him or if he grew out of it, the issues still surround the study. (Hill 2009: 27). Another concern is the 'controlled conditions' that subjects are tested under, for example if a subject is studied in a lab it is impossible to obtain natural results, especially if those results being monitored are the subjects 'natural' behaviour, this is due to the subject not being in their natural environment; however, it would be difficult to obtain reliable results in a subjects natural environment due to the possible influences that there may be in said environment.

The study of psychology is intangible, the majority of existing findings can list both the advantages and limitations of studies. Until recently, many of the research findings could not be directly observed, however due to advances in medical technology it is now possible to view the effects of studies; researchers are now able to map the brain and observe how different stimulus effect different parts of the brain and how different behaviours are triggered. Though it is evident that certain aspects of psychology have gained more authority as a separate scientific discipline there will always be some aspects of psychology which are looked down upon as 'softer' studies, such as the humanistic approach, there is no doubt that psychology as a whole has developed to a huge degree since Wundt first introduced Structuralism. There will always be two sides regarding the argument of whether or not psychology should be considered a science, which is a debate that will continue for years to come, however as more advances are made in both technology and methods of study and research psychology will build a stronger case for being considered a science and those in the more obvious scientific Worlds, such as biology, physics and chemistry will have to pay attention to it.

“So, is psychology a science? If we adopt a broad, modern view of nature and philosophy of science, then psychology in all it's manifestations is unquestionably a science. However, many psychologists prefer to adhere to a more old-fashioned view of what science means, and according to this more traditionalist school of thought only come approaches to psychology can be called science.” (Russell & Jarvis 2003: 471)