Psychology: Is it a science?

Dragon said:
Psychology is a science, but there are sub-fields of it that need to be voted off the island. Social psychology comes to mind. Abnormal psychology has some major failings as well. However, bio-psychology and stuff on memory and learning are fine.
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This seems very reductionist. Why exactly do you think Social Psychology is not worthy of being considered a science?
 
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Aaron Hepi said:
This seems very reductionist. Why exactly do you think Social Psychology is not worthy of being considered a science?
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While I can't answer for Dragon, I will comment that social psychology has been proven to be ineffective in treating mental instability and in general therapy. I'm referring specifically to Freudian and Behavioral psychology, but the same goes for Observational and Experimental psychology.
 
ezra said:
An interesting query that can be easily answered. How about making a thread about it?
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Misunderstood again. Sorry if you think wrong of me.

Dealing with the mind is just like dealing with any other part of the body. We have to figure out what is wrong and try to either fix it, or prescribe meds to help it and its effects. Why would it be called a science?
 
just me said:
Misunderstood again. Sorry if you think wrong of me.
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I love you, please don't ever think otherwise

just me said:
Dealing with the mind is just like dealing with any other part of the body. We have to figure out what is wrong and try to either fix it, or prescribe meds to help it and its effects. Why would it be called a science?
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Like any other type of analysis of the body (like urology or otorhinolaryngology), the good parts of psychology research the human body with a scientific approach. As you know, medical science was based on trial and error for a long time, but has now become much more advanced and effective. Psychology is not any different than other types of medicine, but in some ways it is much more complicated. You can't get inside another persons brain, and we are all different. What psychology does do is research those differences extensively, and try to help as many people as possible. That's what makes it a science.
 
Aaron Hepi said:
This seems very reductionist. Why exactly do you think Social Psychology is not worthy of being considered a science?
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I took a class on it, and much of what they taught us was just not very scientifically rigorous. The Milgram experiment is a good example. They said that it explained the Holocaust, but that conclusion does not match up with the history of much of what went on during the Holocaust (which other researchers outside of the field have pointed out). When my advisor (a philosophy professor) saw that I was taking the class, he flat out said that it is a humanity. And even by the standards of the humanities, it wasn't very critical.
 
Dragon said:
I took a class on it, and much of what they taught us was just not very scientifically rigorous. The Milgram experiment is a good example. They said that it explained the Holocaust, but that conclusion does not match up with the history of much of what went on during the Holocaust (which other researchers outside of the field have pointed out). When my advisor (a philosophy professor) saw that I was taking the class, he flat out said that it is a humanity. And even by the standards of the humanities, it wasn't very critical.
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I don't know what social psych class you took, but no good social psychologist would make the claim that the Milgram experiments explained the Holocaust (except maybe Milgram himself, but that is an experimenter bias). They would only claim that it likely played a role.
 
On second thoughts I'll edit out what I've just written. Don't know how to delete a post.
 
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ezra said:
I love you, please don't ever think otherwise



Like any other type of analysis of the body (like urology or otorhinolaryngology), the good parts of psychology research the human body with a scientific approach. As you know, medical science was based on trial and error for a long time, but has now become much more advanced and effective. Psychology is not any different than other types of medicine, but in some ways it is much more complicated. You can't get inside another persons brain, and we are all different. What psychology does do is research those differences extensively, and try to help as many people as possible. That's what makes it a science.
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R&D
 
I am quite the lacking one.

Research and Development
 
I think aspects of psychology have real value, but there also seems to be a lot of weird and nonsensical junk mixed in. Anyone who's ever studied Freud (or Jung) ought to have at least some sense of this. MBTI, too, has its critics, and though I strongly identify with the NF temperament, I don't think I really buy the whole kit n' caboodle. MBTI doesn't fit very well with my own experience. Including its function-order scheme. I think I use Ni, Ne, Fi, Fe quite a lot. I can't just pick two and make the other two "shadow functions." There are way too many loose ends.

Here are a couple of interesting articles that explore this a bit more:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/19/myers-briggs-test-unscientific
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die

That second article talks about some personality research that really does appear sound, but doesn't go as far into it as I would like. I'm looking into Keirsey's system more. I read somewhere, maybe on this site, that he kind of broke with Jung's wacky ideas and formed a more solid system of his own. From what I understand, it's both more traditional and better grounded in fact.
 
dogman6126 said:
I don't know what social psych class you took, but no good social psychologist would make the claim that the Milgram experiments explained the Holocaust (except maybe Milgram himself, but that is an experimenter bias). They would only claim that it likely played a role.
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Its possible that my professor was just a quack and that the textbook he picked wasn't any good. Are there any social psych books written for a popular audience that you know of? If you can recommend a good book, I might read it.
 
Dragon said:
Its possible that my professor was just a quack and that the textbook he picked wasn't any good. Are there any social psych books written for a popular audience that you know of? If you can recommend a good book, I might read it.
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The only really good book I can think of is The Social Animal by David Brooks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Animal_(Brooks_book)). While this book is not limited to social psychology, it does include it. I believe it mentions the Milgram experiments, but I can't remember for certain. It tells the story of two peoples lives, and does an excellent job of adding in psych information. It was the textbook for my cognitive psych class, so it does have an emphasis on cognitive material.
 
Wayfarer said:
I think aspects of psychology have real value, but there also seems to be a lot of weird and nonsensical junk mixed in. Anyone who's ever studied Freud (or Jung) ought to have at least some sense of this. MBTI, too, has its critics, and though I strongly identify with the NF temperament, I don't think I really buy the whole kit n' caboodle. MBTI doesn't fit very well with my own experience. Including its function-order scheme. I think I use Ni, Ne, Fi, Fe quite a lot. I can't just pick two and make the other two "shadow functions." There are way too many loose ends.

Here are a couple of interesting articles that explore this a bit more:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/19/myers-briggs-test-unscientific
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die

That second article talks about some personality research that really does appear sound, but doesn't go as far into it as I would like. I'm looking into Keirsey's system more. I read somewhere, maybe on this site, that he kind of broke with Jung's wacky ideas and formed a more solid system of his own. From what I understand, it's both more traditional and better grounded in fact.
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I will say that modern psychology actually rejects almost all that Jung and Freud claimed. Yes, including MBTI to an extent. My personality Psych professor this semester actually spent a good half hour explaining that. A lot of psychologists would agree that Freud was very much crazy, lol. But notice something here. These are two people who basically founded the field. Sure their ideas were crazy, but that isn't any different than the other sciences. One of the first theories of gravity was Aristotle and his elements. He said that things fell to the ground because they had more of the element Earth than of the element Air, so their natural state was to be on the ground with the rest of the Earth. It wasn't until about 2300 years later that Einstein learned that it was actually the curvature of space. Even Newton didn't form the idea of gravity until about 2050 years after Aristotle. The fact that the start of psychology had ridiculous theories is no different than physics. It is all a process of improving.
 
dogman6126 said:
The only really good book I can think of is The Social Animal by David Brooks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Animal_(Brooks_book)). While this book is not limited to social psychology, it does include it. I believe it mentions the Milgram experiments, but I can't remember for certain. It tells the story of two peoples lives, and does an excellent job of adding in psych information. It was the textbook for my cognitive psych class, so it does have an emphasis on cognitive material.
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The same David Brooks that writes for the NYT? That is interesting. I usually find myself not agreeing with him, but I'll check out the book.
 
It was recently found in a metareview of papers in psychology that 40% of studies (out of 100) stand up to replication. There is a lot of experimental noise in psychology as a subject. I think that every important study should be replicated for confirmation. You would have to ensure that enough resources are made available for replication studies as well, or else validation would be questionable as well.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/opinion/psychology-is-not-in-crisis.html
 
ImaginaryBloke said:
It was recently found in a metareview of papers in psychology that 40% of studies (out of 100) stand up to replication. There is a lot of experimental noise in psychology as a subject. I think that every important study should be replicated for confirmation. You would have to ensure that enough resources are made available for replication studies as well, or else validation would be questionable as well.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/opinion/psychology-is-not-in-crisis.html
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Yeah, this was interesting. I heard about this in one of my classes. It is becoming more and more common for researchers to replicate their studies at least once in the same paper before submitting.

Some problems are that some studies we can't replicate. Some older studies, before ethics boards where properly in place, were done and not replicated. For example, the Stanford Prison Experiment. However, we certainly cannot replicate that study, lol. Unfortunately, some of our best research comes from studies like that.
 
There are a LOT of psychology that fits more into pop psychology and/or pseudoscience (.....including MBTI),

but in general I don't see why psychology cannot be a science.

Because for a science to be a science it needs to primarily fit in the scientific method more than anything.
As long as they are able to do so, within the parameter described, and other people can replicate it, then it -is- a science.
 
We're currently studying psychology in science class... So yeah I'm sure it's a science
 
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