According to one of the websites I visited, it states that, “Scientific laws are generalisable but psychological explanations are often restricted to specific times and places.”
For example there was a study on conformity where the results tested out showed that people with low self esteem were more likely to conform, it was however shown by Aronson in 1997 that people conform more depending in social situations, (something specific) rather than differences in personality.
Now, to elaborate into the definition of science, the requirements for something to be defined as a science are: (still from the same source, simplypsychology) “Empirical evidence, objectivity, control (over variables), predictability, hypothesis testing, and replication”. Just about all psychology experiments have all these (except unethical studies which are less likely to be replicable), except for objectivity. Claims in psychology come easily biased as it depends a lot on the psychologist’s mind. For example, in observations psychologists may to have different interpretations of what they observed, leading to different conclusions. In experiments, psychologists choose the independent variables though it can be a well many other things that could’ve been the independent variable and lead to the same result. In a way psychology is almost as subjective as the arts.
Like previously mentioned, we are able to conduct research and collect empirical data for psychology, draw a hypothesis and theory in order to attempt a phenomena, just like science. Despite this, I still believe that psychology as a whole cannot really be classified as a true science. Or perhaps, it can be classified as a science but is not yet a very valid form of science – maybe there are laws in psychology to be discovered yet that we are just not even close to finding. The thing that hinders psychology to be valid most is the human mind – people can hide things and change things unconsciously. In psychology, laboratory experiments are often most reliable due to the factors being controlled like in science (biology, chemistry, physics) experiments, but the people in the experiment may often show demand characteristics (guessing aim of experiments and act accordingly to the hypothesis predicted) and thus confound with the results, and hence the conclusion that the psychologist attempts to generalize onto the population. Laboratory experiments in psychology are said to lack ecological validity anyway, so we cannot apply it to real life, unlike with the other fundamental sciences where this would not be a problem.
Perhaps one day if a machine was invented to really read and analyse minds, then psychology could be seen no different to the study of particles and electrons. The machine would help to obtain objectivity, which is a component that psychologists up to these days still lack. An American philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1990), said that ‘psychology is a pre-science’ which supports my theory above. As philosopher Kinder (1929) said, the lack of progress in certain sciences – and I will be referring to psychology here – is because of the ‘lack of suitable methods for the investigation’. The instruments used in psychology are human minds – humans study humans in psychology. The instrument itself so far is deemed as impossible to obtain objectivity.
In conclusion, I believe that psychology is a science, but we have not yet found an appropriate method that would let us discover things about the human mind that have certain laws, just like biology, chemistry, and physics.
Note: Science itself is a term created by humans – the definition for this can very well change.
Websites used:
Is Psychology a science?: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml
Thomas Kuhn: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Revision:Psychology_model_answers_-_Is_Psychology_a_Science
Key features of science:
Criticism on psychology as ‘soft’ science:
Prescience concept: http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/
