Essay
Psychology: Controversies: Scientific Status
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A fully written essay based on the scientific status of psychology. Argues for and against. Worth 20/25 marks.
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Scientific status of PsychologyPsychology is often defined as the ‘science of behaviour and experience’. The
term ‘science’ refers to knowledge based on systematic and objective methods
of data collection that can be replicated to demonstrate the validity and
reliability of results. This essay will examine whether Psychology may be a
considered a science amongst the ‘natural’ sciences.
One benefit of Psychology being defined as a science is by collecting scientific
data in an objective way, this ensures researchers do not display bias or
prejudice when conducting psychological investigations. Raine (1997) used PET
scans to make observations about the differences in brain structure between
non-murderers and murderers who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
He discovered, through the use of highly scientific and objective brain scans
(PET scans), that difference did exist e.g. reduced activity in brain areas of the
NGRI participants such as the prefrontal cortex and the corpus collosum. Such
research suggests that objectivity is a benefit for psychology because
researchers do not form conclusions based on their own subjectivity, but base
them on scientific facts. Therefore, psychology should be deemed a science.
On the other hand, it is not always possible for psychological information to be
collected with minimum bias, prejudice, and expectation from researchers.
Although psychology does use scientific methods such as experiments, the
discipline also uses non-scientific methods such as case studies and interviews.
For example, Bowlby used case studies and interviews to conclude that
juvenile thieves committed crime due to separation from the mother in the
first year of life. Such conclusions could be subjective due to Bowlby wanting to
prove his own hypothesis, as well as the children and mothers displaying
socially desirable behaviour during interviews. A cost of psychology as a
science is that such qualitative methodologies could not be used as
experiments would be favoured, meaning that qualitative information about
participants could never be gathered. Psychology cannot rely only on the
scientific method therefore should not be solely defined as a science, because
qualitative information about participants makes for better therapies tailored
to individual needs.
Another argument in favour of Psychology as a science is that many methods
used to conduct psychological investigations into human behaviour use
scientific methods similar to the natural sciences. Psychologists seek to use
experiments, consisting of standardised procedures, in order to quantify
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