psychology as a science

• Behaviourist

  • positive
  • highly objective and experimentally based
  • high degree of replication
• social learning

  • positive
  • research investigations are reliable and allow inferences about cause and effect to be drawn
  • research does tend to be carried out in artificial settings - lack validity
• cognitive

  • positive to a degree
  • most proportions can be easily tested
  • mental processes are unobservable - inference is used to develop models of cognitive processing
• biological

  • positive
  • neurotransmitters in a behaviour can be investigated by administering drugs which change levels of a particular neurotransmitter
• psychodynamic

  • mixed
  • some aspects are open to scientific investigation
  • tends to rely more on case studies
• humanistic

  • negative
  • humanistic psychologists argue that scientific research methods are only suited for natural sciences
  • not appropriate for studying human consciousness and experience