psychology as a science

• reductionism - reducing complex phenomena into their most basic parts
• holism - understanding the human mind and behaviour that focuses on looking at things as a whole
• falsification - the idea that we cannot prove anything true we can only show something that is not true
• empiricism - the idea that knowledge can only come through our senses, obtaining knowledge through direct evidence
• hypothesis testing - conducting research to test an operationalised prediction
• credibility - the reliability, correctness and believability of content, considers issues such as objectivity, bias and controls
• reliability - a measure of whether something stays the same and whether it is consistent
• validity - the accuracy of data both internally and externally
• use of controls - these are necessary so that testing of a hypothesis is focused on the statement of what a theory predicts without allowing other variables to have an effect on results
• generalisability - a measure of how useful the results of a study are for broader groups of people or situations
• objectivity - all sources of bias are minimised and that personal or subjective ideas are eliminated
• subjectivity - the tendency to interpret data or make judegment in the light of personal feelings, beliefs or experiences
• anthropomorphism - generalising animal experiments to humans and the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to animals
• paradigm - is an agreed subject matter and set of procedures