Evaluation

• Modern psychology


  One strength is that research in modern psychology can claim to be scientific:

  • Psychology aims to describe, understand, predict, and control behaviour like natural science
  • The learning approaches, cognitive and biological approach all rely on the use of scientific methods e.g. lab studies
  • This suggests that throughout the 20th century and beyond, psychology has established itself as a scientific discipline
• Subjective data


  One limitation with psychology is that not all approaches use objective methods:

  • The humanistic approach rejects scientific approach, preferring to focus on individual experiences and subjective experience
  • The psychodynamic approach makes use of case studies, which don't use representative samples
  • Human beings are active participants in research, responding to demand characteristics, for example
  • Therefore a scientific approach to the study of human thought and experience may not always be desirable or possible