Emergence of Psychology as a Science

• Psychology can claim to be scientific as it has the same aims as the natural sciences which are: to describe, understand, predict and control behaviour.
• The learning approaches, cognitive approach and biological approach all rely on the use of scientific methods, such as lab studies, to investigate theories in a controlled and unbiased way.
• Therefore, throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline.
• Psychology is anti-scientific and doesn't attempt to formulate general laws of behaviour.
• It is only concerned with documenting unique subjective experience.
• It makes use of the case study method and is based on interview techniques which are open to bias, and no attempt is made to gather a representative sample of the population.
• For this reason, many claim that a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience is not possible, nor is it desirable, as there are important differences between the subject matter of psychology and the natural sciences.