Is psych a science

• Features making something a science

  • Objectivity
  • Control
  • Predictability
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Replication
• Arguments for psych been a science

  Allport said psychology has the same aims of science:

  • to predict
  • Understand
  • Control
• Arguments for psych been a science

  • Behaviourist, cognitive and biological approaches all use scientific procedures to investigate theories
• Arguments against psych been science

  • Other approaches in psych don't use objective methods to study behaviour.
  • Unreliable methods that can be biased or interpreted differently by researchers
• Arguments against psych been science

  Hard to get a representative sample for a population for a study so the findings can't be generalised
• Arguments against psych been science

  • Psychological experiments are vulnerable to extraneous variables such as demand characteristics