Evaluations

• Modern psychology

  P: One strength is that modern psychology can claim to be scientific.

  E: Psychology shares aims with the natural sciences, such as predicting and controlling behaviour. The cognitive and biological approach both utilize scientific methods to investigate theories in a controlled and objective way.

  E: This reliance on scientific methods indicates that throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has successfully established itself as a science.
• Subjective data

  P: One limitation of psychology is that some approaches use subjective data

  E: The humanistic approach rejects scientific methods, focusing instead on individual, subjective experiences. The psychodynamic approach often uses case studies which lack representative samples.

  E: This reliance on subjective data suggests that a scientific approach to studying human thoughts may not always be desirable
• Paradigm

  P: Philosopher Kuhn argues that psychology cannot be considered a science due to the lack of a paradox of principles (assumptions and methods that all people who work within the subject agree on).

  E: Kuhn states that a true science must have a paradigm. However, in psychology, internal disagreement exists regarding foundational concepts.

  E: Most psychologists agree that psychology studies the mind and behaviour however they also may have differing ways of them.