Argumentative Essay: Is Psychology A Science?

This essay will explore the question of whether or not psychology is a science, a debate as old as the fairly new field itself. Becoming popular in the 20th century, psychology is a forever changing and evolving subject that tackles the complexity that is human nature. Having previously been explored through the likes of law, philosophy and literature, psychology started to be viewed in a more scientific way, thanks to the works of psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget. However, the topic’s attempt to be viewed similarly as the natural sciences emerged controversial. On the other hand, the study of natural sciences such as physics and biology is one that is one that has been around for centuries, with various key

To not do so can result in a vast selection of negative outcomes, the worst being fatality – a rare but devastating effect. An example of this can be seen in the case of Candace Newmaker. Candace was a 10-year-old child who died as a result of attachment therapy to aid her bonding with her adoptive mother, Jeane Newmaker. Newmaker hired Connel Watkins – an unlicensed psychotherapist – to carry out a two week ‘rebirthing therapy’ course. It is cases such as this that highlights the problems with referring to psychology as a science, as it leads the public to trust and not question the theories and the people that push them. The study of ‘The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations’ in which psychologists found that people who read explanations that were filled with ‘logically irrelevant neuroscience information’ were more inclined to trust it than if this was lacking. While this level of trust is suitable in – for example – drug therapies as the result of biological studies, it may not be so in psychology-based therapies that are much harder to

Put forward by John Locke, the idea of empiricism is what the way in which science is categorised is centred around. The key features of a science are as followed: empirical evidence, objectivity, control, predictability, hypothesis testing and replication. When we apply these features to psychology, some issues begin to emerge. Empiricism is knowledge being obtained through observation and experimentation, however some concepts such as the id, ego and superego – put forward by Freud – are unmeasurable as they are based on the subconscious of which even a patient cannot be aware. Science must also be objective, however this is difficult in a field such as psychology where much of the research is based on self-report which carries many issues as it relies on retrospective data and the recording of things emotional, which is automatically subjective. Control must be had over all variables of a scientific experiment, but this is very difficult to do when working with people as the subjects. This is because we cannot control every aspect of a person’s life for it is both unethical and impossible (e.g. whether or not a person smokes, whether they are male or female etc.) and so therefore psychologists must make assumptions about various variable’s effect on the experimental data. A theory should allow us to predict future events that present in the same situation,