to wonder if Psychology is a "real" science or not?

[floraeasy]

I never used to question it really. The only science I have ever done is my A-Level Biology a million moons ago. But I seem to be hearing more and more about this. I suppose I was curious the first time I heard the argument and now I am seeing more of it on the Internet (Carl Jung would say it was synchronicity, I suppose - I've heard of that!)

Anyway, I imagine there are Psychologists and other people who have graduated in the other Sciences here too.

Have you heard this argument and what do you think of it? I can give more detail on what I've heard, but maybe this is commonly known to you already. Basically, it's stuff like "how can Psychologists possibly measure happiness" and that sort of thing.

Would be interested in your thoughts and conclusions.

I had this as an essay question when I started my degree!

Really? No wonder a pp was asking if this was an essay question I wasn't sure what they meant, LOL!

I think because of the huge number of variables it is a tricky science to manage.
It also attracts some waffle and people who don't think scientifically so it has got a bad reputation.

As a few others mentioned, there is a very serious amount of statistics, controlled experiments, etc. But there are also a lot of abstract theories, based on observation and behaviour and intuition (at least that is my perspective, not being a psychologist, but PhD in science field). But these same things exist in physics field and computer science too. In some ways it is a blend of science and art?

I struggle with this, as a science. I am a physicist and I deal with huge data sets. We don't go for intuition for published stuff, that's for sure. We wouldn't, for example, publish something based on 6 people's responses to a questionnaire (not hyperbole, I once read a paper with this!). Anything sufficiently advanced is neuroscience anyhow. The 'happiness' stuff; not convinced. I'd like to know what it is that people believe exists like this in physics and engineering etc! Questions about the universe fall into philosophy at some point...

No one is beyond help of some kind and most difficulties/problems may be solved in 30 minutes. I have done this after careful preparation for numerous persons in private.

Thanks.

Medicine is an art and engineering discipline based on biology, chemistry, psychology, psychiatry or other social sciences and training.

Thanks.

As a biologist i struggle with psychology as a science - dh reads a lot of those 'psychology of marketing' type books which are supposedly based on research and so many are just bollocks, based on the type of research that's fine if you assume everyone's a white, American undergraduate whose ticking the boxes randomly as fast as they can so they can get paid and leave.

I'm undecided about medicine. I think it may be science badly done.

I think you may want to consider what "a science" is and what scientific"evidence is..... Not to come over all "philosophy of science" on you but there popular idea of 'science' is one rooted in logical positivism... In certain areas of psychology there is a logical positivism approach. In others less so, but there are other forms of understanding and evidence...And psychology is a science because it recognises the tension between those paradigms, investigates it, examines it, describes it and allows others to critique it...

I'm not saying it isn't but usage of statistics does not make a subject science.

I have A level psychology. It is a science, I had to learn about statistics and did a stats paper as part of my exams.

I teach psychology and the debate as to whether or not it is a 'true' science is still ongoing. It's one of the topics students have to learn and debate in essays in their second year. There's plenty of evidence to argue both sides, I won't go into it all here, but ultimately the real underlying debate isn't so much whether it is/isn't a science, but whether it should/shouldn't try to be a science, and whether 'pure' scientific goals are actually suitable to psychology.

Surely science is an umbrella term, which covers everything from physical science to social science, and everything in between? So in that respect, yes it's a science.

I know people tend to use science to mean biology, chemistry and physics, but in the broad sense, 'science' has many fields within its remit (and there are numerous sub-fields within those fields).

It is considered a social science at DD's school, as is sociology. DD picked psychology as a fourth A level option, and has regretted it ever since. She will be dropping it after her AS exams. The disproportionate volume of work on top of her other subjects (Chemistry, biology and geography - all academically rigorous subjects) has contributed to her feeling tired, anxious and depressed all the time.

I don't consider it a science in the same way as the traditional three subjects, but it isn't an easy option to take at A level.

When I studied it it had a large scientific method component, though apparently this varies a lot depending on where you study, but as others have said, it's limited by the extent to which it's possible to ethically experiment on people, and it's given a bad name by both dodgy studies and pop psychology.

A lot of the "psychology" that makes it into newspapers absolutely is pseudoscience; it's chosen for its clickbait value not because it's representative of what's going on in psychology research at time of publication.

A point that's worth considering is that it's become a lot less respected since it became a female-dominated field. Same with biology, I think.

I read a sociology article about this that suggested that it's a cause-and-effect relationship; as soon as women become a majority in a subject all the "but is it really that difficult?" and "is it really valid?" and "it's really subjective, though, not like real science/medicine/whatever" starts up - whether reasonably or not (and like I said, it's got its issues, like any other field, I'm not denying that) - and the pay graduates can expect goes down.

I'm having no luck finding it to link, and it may only have been speculative anyway, but regardless, it's a good reminder to bear in mind cultural biases around the ideas of logic and objectivity.

As an aside, I really like Frenchie85's point. I loved studying the field on a more meta level; they're really interesting ideas to think about.

This question makes an easy topic to set for students, but I'm not sure it actually shed much light on anything of consequence.

Psychology is a natural phenomenon, ergo it can be studied scientifically. A more open question is how rigorously scientific the practice of psychological research currently is. Depending on which bit of the field you look at your mileage may vary.

As much as economics is.

Could psychology be less rigorous than other sciences because we don't have the technology to quantify and record important data like the brain?

It's like when Galileo started recording his observations in astronomy then I bet (religious beliefs aside) other scientists did not respect his work very much. Not an expert myself but I would imagine that technological advancements made studying astronomy easier thus increasing its rigor.

Economics is a social science. My Economics degree is a BSc.