why is psychology a science essay

Is Psychology a Science?

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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Psychology is a science because it employs systematic methods of observation, experimentation, and data analysis to understand and predict behavior and mental processes, grounded in empirical evidence and subjected to peer review.

Science uses an empirical approach. Empiricism (founded by John Locke) states that the only source of knowledge is our senses – e.g., sight, hearing, etc.

In psychology, empiricism refers to the belief that knowledge is derived from observable, measurable experiences and evidence, rather than from intuition or speculation.

This was in contrast to the existing view that knowledge could be gained solely through the powers of reason and logical argument (known as rationalism).  Thus, empiricism is the view that all knowledge is based on or may come from experience.

Through gaining knowledge through experience, the empirical approach quickly became scientific and greatly influenced the development of physics and chemistry in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The idea that knowledge should be gained through experience, i.e., empirically, turned into a method of inquiry that used careful observation and experiments to gather facts and evidence.

The nature of scientific inquiry may be thought of at two levels:

1. That to do with theory and the foundation of hypotheses. 2. And actual empirical methods of inquiry (i.e. experiments, observations)

The prime empirical method of inquiry in science is the experiment.

The key features of the experiment are control over variables ( independent, dependent , and extraneous ), careful, objective measurement, and establishing cause and effect relationships.

Features of Science

Empirical evidence.

• Refers to data being collected through direct observation or experiment.
• Empirical evidence does not rely on argument or belief.
• Instead, experiments and observations are carried out carefully and reported in detail so that other investigators can repeat and attempt to verify the work.

Objectivity

• Researchers should remain value-free when studying; they should try to remain unbiased in their investigations. I.e., Researchers are not influenced by personal feelings and experiences.
• Objectivity means that all sources of bias are minimized and that personal or subjective ideas are eliminated. The pursuit of science implies that the facts will speak for themselves, even if they differ from what the investigator hoped.
• All extraneous variables need to be controlled to establish the cause (IV) and effect (DV).

Hypothesis testing

• E.g., a statement made at the beginning of an investigation that serves as a prediction and is derived from a theory. There are different types of hypotheses (null and alternative), which need to be stated in a form that can be tested (i.e., operationalized and unambiguous).

Replication

• This refers to whether a particular method and finding can be repeated with different/same people and/or on different occasions to see if the results are similar.
• If a dramatic discovery is reported, but other scientists cannot replicate it, it will not be accepted.
• If we get the same results repeatedly under the same conditions, we can be sure of their accuracy beyond a reasonable doubt.
• This gives us confidence that the results are reliable and can be used to build up a body of knowledge or a theory: which is vital in establishing a scientific theory.

Predictability

• We should aim to be able to predict future behavior from the findings of our research.

The Scientific Process

Before the twentieth century, science largely used induction principles – making discoveries about the world through accurate observations, and formulating theories based on the regularities observed.

Newton’s Laws are an example of this. He observed the behavior of physical objects (e.g., apples) and produced laws that made sense of what he observed.

The scientific process is now based on the hypothetico-deductive model proposed by Karl Popper (1935).  Popper suggested that theories/laws about the world should come first, and these should be used to generate expectations/hypotheses, which observations and experiments can falsify.

As Popper pointed out, falsification is the only way to be certain: ‘No amount of observations of white swans can allow the conclusion that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is an example of this. He formulated a theory and tested its propositions by observing animals in nature.  He specifically sought to collect data to prove his theory / disprove it.

Thomas Kuhn argued that science does not evolve gradually towards truth, science has a paradigm that remains constant before going through a paradigm shift when current theories can’t explain some phenomenon, and someone proposes a new theory. Science tends to go through these shifts; therefore, psychology is not a science as it has no agreed paradigm.

There are many conflicting approaches, and the subject matter of Psychology is so diverse; therefore, researchers in different fields have little in common.

Psychology is really a very new science, with most advances happening over the past 150 years or so.  However, it can be traced back to ancient Greece, 400 – 500 years BC.  The emphasis was a philosophical one, with great thinkers such as Socrates influencing Plato, who in turn influenced Aristotle.

Plato argued that there was a clear distinction between body and soul, believed very strongly in the influence of individual differences on behavior, and played a key role in developing the notion of “mental health,” believing that the mind needed stimulation from the arts to keep it alive.

Aristotle firmly believed that the body strongly affected the mind – you might say he was an early biopsychologist.

Psychology as a science took a “back seat” until Descartes (1596 – 1650) wrote in the 17th century. He believed strongly in the concept of consciousness, maintaining that it was that that separated us from animals.

He did, however, believe that our bodies could influence our consciousness and that the beginnings of these interactions were in the pineal gland – we know now that this is probably NOT the case!

From this influential work came other important philosophies about psychology, including the work by Spinoza (1632 – 1677) and Leibnitz (1646 – 1716). But there still was no single, scientific, unified psychology as a separate discipline (you could certainly argue that there still isn’t”t!).

When asked, “Who is the parent of psychology?” many people answer, “Freud.” Whether this is the case or not is open to debate, but if we were to ask who the parent of experimental psychology is, few would likely respond similarly.  So, where did modern experimental psychology come from, and why?

Psychology took so long to emerge as a scientific discipline because it needed time to consolidate.  Understanding behavior, thoughts, and feelings are not easy, which may explain why it was largely ignored between ancient Greek times and the 16th century.

But tired of years of speculation, theory, and argument, and bearing in mind Aristotle’s plea for scientific investigation to support the theory, psychology as a scientific discipline began to emerge in the late 1800s.

Wilheim Wundt developed the first psychology lab in 1879.  Introspection was used, but systematically (i.e., methodologically). It was really a place from which to start thinking about how to employ scientific methods to investigate behavior.

The classic movement in psychology to adopt these strategies was the behaviorists, who were renowned for relying on controlled laboratory experiments and rejecting any unseen or subconscious forces as causes of behavior. 

And later, cognitive psychologists adopted this rigorous (i.e., careful), scientific, lab-based approach.

Psychological Approaches

Psychoanalysis has great explanatory power and understanding of behavior. Still, it has been accused of only explaining behavior after the event, not predicting what will happen in advance, and being unfalsifiable.

Some have argued that psychoanalysis has approached the status more of a religion than a science. Still, it is not alone in being accused of being unfalsifiable (evolutionary theory has, too – why is anything the way it is? Because it has evolved that way!), and like theories that are difficult to refute – the possibility exists that it is actually right.

Kline (1984) argues that psychoanalytic theory can be broken down into testable hypotheses and tested scientifically. For example, Scodel (1957) postulated that orally dependent men would prefer larger breasts (a positive correlation) but, in fact, found the opposite (a negative correlation).

Although Freudian theory could be used to explain this finding (through reaction formation – the subject showing exactly the opposite of their unconscious impulses!), Kline has nevertheless pointed out that no significant correlation would have refuted the theory.

Behaviorism has parsimonious (i.e., economic / cost-cutting) theories of learning, using a few simple principles (reinforcement, behavior shaping, generalization, etc.) to explain a wide variety of behavior from language acquisition to moral development.

It advanced bold, precise, and refutable hypotheses (such as Thorndike’s law of effect ) and possessed a hard core of central assumptions such as determinism from the environment (it was only when this assumption faced overwhelming criticism by the cognitive and ethological theorists that the behaviorist paradigm/model was overthrown).

Behaviorists firmly believed in the scientific principles of determinism and orderliness. They thus came up with fairly consistent predictions about when an animal was likely to respond (although they admitted that perfect prediction for any individual was impossible).

The behaviorists used their predictions to control the behavior of both animals (pigeons trained to detect life jackets) and humans (behavioral therapies), and indeed Skinner , in his book Walden Two (1948), described a society controlled according to behaviorist principles.

Cognitive psychology – adopts a scientific approach to unobservable mental processes by advancing precise models and conducting experiments on behavior to confirm or refute them.

Full understanding, prediction, and control in psychology are probably unobtainable due to the huge complexity of environmental, mental, and biological influences upon even the simplest behavior (i.e., all extraneous variables cannot be controlled).

You will see, therefore, that there is no easy answer to the question, “is psychology a science?”. But many approaches of psychology do meet the accepted requirements of the scientific method, whilst others appear to be more doubtful in this respect.

Alternatives

However, some psychologists argue that psychology should not be a science. There are alternatives to empiricism, such as rational research, argument, and belief.

The humanistic approach (another alternative) values private, subjective conscious experience and argues for the rejection of science.

The humanistic approach argues that objective reality is less important than a person’s subjective perception and subjective understanding of the world. Because of this, Carl Rogers and Maslow placed little value on scientific psychology, especially using the scientific laboratory to investigate human and other animal behavior.

A person’s subjective experience of the world is an important and influential factor in their behavior. Only by seeing the world from the individual’s point of view can we really understand why they act the way they do. This is what the humanistic approach aims to do.

Humanism is a psychological perspective that emphasizes the study of the whole person. Humanistic psychologists look at human behavior not only through the eyes of the observer but through the eyes of the person doing the behavior. Humanistic psychologists believe that an individual’s behavior is connected to his inner feelings and self-image.

The humanistic approach in psychology deliberately steps away from a scientific viewpoint, rejecting determinism in favor of free will, aiming to arrive at a unique and in-depth understanding. The humanistic approach does not have an orderly set of theories (although it does have some core assumptions).

It is not interested in predicting and controlling people’s behavior – the individuals themselves are the only ones who can and should do that.

Miller (1969), in “Psychology as a Means of Promoting Human Welfare,” criticizes the controlling view of psychology, suggesting that understanding should be the main goal of the subject as a science since he asks who will do the controlling and whose interests will be served by it?

Humanistic psychologists rejected a rigorous scientific approach to psychology because they saw it as dehumanizing and unable to capture the richness of conscious experience.

In many ways, the rejection of scientific psychology in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was a backlash to the dominance of the behaviorist approach in North American psychology.

Common Sense Views of Behavior

In certain ways, everyone is a psychologist. This does not mean that everyone has been formally trained to study and be trained in psychology. 

People have common sense views of the world, of other people, and of themselves. These common-sense views may come from personal experience, from our upbringing as a child, and through culture, etc.

People have common-sense views about the causes of their own and other people’s behavior, personality characteristics they and others possess, what other people should do, how to bring up your children, and many more aspects of psychology.

Informal psychologists acquire common-sense knowledge in a rather subjective (i.e., unreliable) and anecdotal way.  Common-sense views about people are rarely based on systematic (i.e., logical) evidence and are sometimes based on a single experience or observation.

Racial or religious prejudices may reflect what seems like common sense within a group of people. However, prejudicial beliefs rarely stand up to what is actually the case.

Common sense, then, is something that everybody uses in their day-to-day lives, guides decisions and influences how we interact with one another.

However, because it is not based on systematic evidence or derived from scientific inquiry, it may be misleading and lead to one group of people treating others unfairly and in a discriminatory way.

Limitations of Scientific Psychology

Despite having a scientific methodology worked out (we think), some further problems and arguments doubt psychology is ever a science.

Limitations may refer to the subject matter (e.g., overt behavior versus subjective, private experience), objectivity, generality, testability, ecological validity, ethical issues, and philosophical debates, etc.

Science assumes that there are laws of human behavior that apply to each person. Therefore, science takes both a deterministic and reductionist approach.

Science studies overt behavior because overt behavior is objectively observable and can be measured, allowing different psychologists to record behavior and agree on what has been observed. This means that evidence can be collected to test a theory about people.

Scientific laws are generalizable, but psychological explanations are often restricted to specific times and places. Because psychology studies (mostly) people, it studies (indirectly) the effects of social and cultural changes on behavior.

Psychology does not go on in a social vacuum. Behavior changes over time and in different situations. These factors, and individual differences, make research findings reliable for a limited time only.

Are traditional scientific methods appropriate for studying human behavior? When psychologists operationalize their IV, it is highly likely that this is reductionist, mechanistic, subjective, or just wrong.

Operationalizing variables refers to how you will define and measure a specific variable as it is used in your study. For example, a biopsychologist may operationalize stress as an increased heart rate. Still, it may be that in doing this, we are removed from the human experience of what we are studying. The same goes for causality.

Experiments are keen to establish that X causes Y, but taking this deterministic view means that we ignore extraneous variables and the fact that at a different time, in a different place, we probably would not be influenced by X. There are so many variables that influence human behavior that it is impossible to control them effectively. The issue of ecological validity ties in really nicely here.

Objectivity is impossible. It is a huge problem in psychology, as it involves humans studying humans, and it is very difficult to study people’s behavior in an unbiased fashion.

Moreover, in terms of a general philosophy of science, we find it hard to be objective because a theoretical standpoint influences us (Freud is a good example). The observer and the observed are members of the same species are this creates problems of reflectivity.

A behaviorist would never examine a phobia and think in terms of unconscious conflict as a cause, just like Freud would never explain it as a behavior acquired through operant conditioning.

This particular viewpoint that a scientist has is called a paradigm (Kuhn, 1970). Kuhn argues that most scientific disciplines have one predominant paradigm that the vast majority of scientists subscribe to.

Anything with several paradigms (e.g., models – theories) is a pre-science until it becomes more unified. With a myriad of paradigms within psychology, it is not the case that we have any universal laws of human behavior. Kuhn would most definitely argue that psychology is not a science.

Verification (i.e., proof) may be impossible. We can never truly prove a hypothesis; we may find results to support it until the end of time, but we will never be 100% confident that it is true.

It could be disproved at any moment. The main driving force behind this particular grumble is Karl Popper, the famous philosopher of science and advocator of falsificationism.

Take the famous Popperian example hypothesis: “All swans are white.” How do we know for sure that we will not see a black, green, or hot pink swan in the future? So even if there has never been a sighting of a non-white swan, we still haven’t really proven our hypothesis.

Popper argues that the best hypotheses are those which we can falsify – disprove. If we know something is not true, then we know something for sure.

Testability: much of the subject matter in psychology is unobservable (e.g., memory) and, therefore, cannot be accurately measured. The fact that there are so many variables that influence human behavior that it is impossible to control the variables effectively.

So, are we any closer to understanding a) what science is and b) if psychology is a science? Unlikely. There is no definitive philosophy of science and no flawless scientific methodology.

When people use the term “Scientific,” we all have a general schema of what they mean, but when we break it down in the way that we just have done, the picture is less certain. What is science? It depends on your philosophy. Is psychology a science? It depends on your definition. So – why bother, and how do we conclude all this?

Slife and Williams (1995) have tried to answer these two questions:

1) We must at least strive for scientific methods because we need a rigorous discipline. If we abandon our search for unified methods, we’ll lose a sense of what psychology is (if we knew it in the first place).

2) We need to keep trying to develop scientific methods that are suitable for studying human behavior – it may be that the methods adopted by the natural sciences are not appropriate for us.

Further Information

• Psychology as a Science (PDF)

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Psychology’s Status as a Science: Peculiarities and Intrinsic Challenges. Moving Beyond its Current Deadlock Towards Conceptual Integration

School of Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, London, SE10 9LS UK

Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences. Yet even after 140 years as an independent discipline, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. Its key phenomena, mind and behaviour, are poorly defined (and their definition instead often delegated to neuroscience or philosophy) while specific terms and constructs proliferate. A unified theoretical framework has not been developed and its categorisation as a ‘soft science’ ascribes to psychology a lower level of scientificity. The article traces these problems to the peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena, their interrelations with and centrality to everyday knowledge and language (which may explain the proliferation and unclarity of terms and concepts), as well as to their complex relations with other study phenomena. It shows that adequate explorations of such diverse kinds of phenomena and their interrelations with the most elusive of all—immediate experience—inherently require a plurality of epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods that complement those developed for the natural sciences. Their systematic integration within just one discipline, made necessary by these phenomena’s joint emergence in the single individual as the basic unit of analysis, makes psychology in fact the hardest science of all. But Galtonian nomothetic methodology has turned much of today’s psychology into a science of populations rather than individuals, showing that blind adherence to natural-science principles has not advanced but impeded the development of psychology as a science. Finally, the article introduces paradigmatic frameworks that can provide solid foundations for conceptual integration and new developments.

Psychology’s Status as a Discipline

Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences—not least because it explores the very means by which any science is made, for it is humans who perceive, conceive, define, investigate, analyse and interpret the phenomena of the world. Scientists have managed to explore distant galaxies, quantum particles and the evolution of life over 4 billion years—phenomena inaccessible to the naked eye or long deceased. Yet, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. The phenomena of our personal experience, directly accessible to everyone in each waking moment of life, remain challenging objects of research. Moreover, psychical phenomena are essential for all sciences (e.g., thinking). But why are we struggling to scientifically explore the means needed to first make any science? Given the successes in other fields, is this not a contradiction in itself?

This article outlines three key problems of psychology (poor definitions of study phenomena, lack of unified theoretical frameworks, and an allegedly lower level of scientificity) that are frequently discussed and at the centre of Zagaria, Andò and Zennaro’s ( 2020 ) review. These problems are then traced to peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena and the conceptual and methodological challenges they entail. Finally, the article introduces paradigmatic frameworks that can provide solid foundations for conceptual integration and new developments.

Lack of Proper Terms and Definitions of Study Phenomena

Introductory text books are supposed to present the corner stones of a science’s established knowledge base. In psychology, however, textbooks present definitions of its key phenomena—mind (psyche) and behaviour—that are discordant, ambiguous, overlapping, circular and context-dependent, thus inconclusive (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). Tellingly, many popular text books define ‘mind’ exclusively as ‘brain activity’, thus turning psychology’s central object of research into one of neuroscience. What then is psychology as opposed to neuroscience? Some even regard the definition of mind as unimportant and leave it to philosophers, thus categorising it as a philosophical phenomenon and shifting it again out of psychology’s own realm. At the same time, mainstream psychologists often proudly distance themselves from philosophers (Alexandrova & Haybron, 2016 ), explicitly referring to the vital distinction between science and philosophy. Behaviour, as well, is commonly reduced to ill-defined ‘activities’, ‘actions’ and ‘doings’ and, confusingly, often even equated with mind (psyche), such as in concepts of ‘inner and outer behaviours’ (Uher 2016b ). All this leaves one wonder what psychology is actually about.

As if to compensate the unsatisfactory definitional and conceptual status of its key phenomena in general, psychology is plagued with a chaotic proliferation of terms and constructs for specific phenomena of mind and behaviour (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). This entails that different terms can denote the same concept (jangle-fallacies; Kelley 1927 ) and the same terms different concepts (jingle-fallacies; Thorndike 1903 ). Even more basically, many psychologists struggle to explain what their most frequent study phenomena—constructs—actually are (Slaney and Garcia 2015 ). These deficiencies and inconsistencies involve a deeply fragmented theoretical landscape.

Lack of Conceptual Integration Into Overarching Frameworks

Like no other science, psychology embraces an enormous diversity of established epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods. Is that a result of the discipline’s unparalleled complexity and the therefore necessary scientific pluralism (Fahrenberg 2013 ) or rather an outcome of mistaking this pluralism for the unrestrained proliferation of perspectives (Zagaria et al. 2020 )?

The lack of a unified theory in psychology is widely lamented. Many ‘integrative theories’ were proposed as overarching frameworks, yet without considering contradictory presuppositions underlying different theories. Such integrative systems merely provide important overviews of the essential plurality of research perspectives and methodologies needed in the field (Fahrenberg 2013 ; Uher 2015b ). Zagaria and colleagues ( 2020 ) suggested evolutionary psychology could provide the much-needed paradigmatic framework. This field, however, is among psychology’s youngest sub-disciplines and its most speculative ones because (unlike biological phenomena) psychical, behavioural and social phenomena leave no fossilised traces in themselves. Their possible ancestral forms can only be reconstructed indirectly from archaeological findings and investigations of today’s humans, making evolutionary explorations prone to speculations and biases (e.g., gender bias in interpretations of archaeological findings; Ginge 1996 ). Cross-species comparative psychology offers important correctives through empirical studies of today’s species with different cognitive, behavioural, social and ecological systems and different degrees of phylogenetic relatedness to humans. This enables comparisons and hypothesis testing not possible when studying only humans but still faces limitations given human ancestors’ unavailability for direct study (Uher 2020a ).

But most importantly, evolutionary psychology does not provide consistent terms and concepts either; its key constructs ‘psychological adaptations’ and ‘evolved psychological mechanisms’ are as vague, ambiguous and ill-defined as ‘mind’ and ‘behaviour’. Moreover, the strong research heuristic formulated in Tinbergen’s four questions on the causation, function, development and evolution of behaviour is not an achievement of evolutionary psychology but originates from theoretical biology, thus again from outside of psychology.

Psychology—a ‘Soft Science’ in Pre-scientific Stage?

The pronounced inconsistencies in psychology’s terminological, conceptual and theoretical landscape have been likened to the pre-scientific stage of emerging sciences (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). Psychology was therefore declared a ‘soft science’ that can never achieve the status of the ‘hard sciences’ (e.g., physics, chemistry). This categorisation implies the belief that some sciences have only minor capacities to accumulate secured knowledge and lower abilities to reach theoretical and methodological consensus (Fanelli and Glänzel 2013 ; Simonton 2015 ). In particular, soft sciences would have only limited abilities to apply ‘the scientific method’, the general set of principles involving systematic observation, experimentation and measurement as well as deduction and testing of hypotheses that guide scientific practice (Gauch 2015 ). The idea of the presumed lack of methodological rigor and exactitude of ‘soft sciences’ goes back to Kant ( 1798 / 2000 ) and is fuelled by recurrent crises of replication, generalisation, validity, and other criteria considered essential for all sciences.

But classifying sciences into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, implying some would be more scientific than others, is ill-conceived and misses the point why there are different sciences at all. Crucially, the possibilities for implementing particular research practices are not a matter of scientific discipline or their ascribed level of scientificity but solely depend on the particular study phenomena and their properties (Uher 2019 ). For study phenomena that are highly context-dependent and continuously changing in themselves, such as those of mind, behaviour and society, old knowledge cannot have continuing relevance as this is the case for (e.g., non-living) phenomena and properties that are comparably invariant in themselves. Instead, accurate and valid investigations require that concepts, theories and methods must be continuously adapted as well (Uher 2020b ).

The classification of sciences by the degree to which they can implement ‘the scientific method’ as developed for the natural sciences is a reflection of the method-centrism that has taken hold of psychology over the last century, when the craft of statistical analysis became psychologists’ dominant activity (Lamiell 2019 ; Valsiner 2012 ). The development of ever more sophisticated tools for statistical analysis as well as of rating scales enabling the efficient generation of allegedly quantitative data for millions of individuals misled psychologists to adapt their study phenomena and research questions to their methods, rather than vice versa (Omi 2012 ; Toomela and Valsiner 2010 ; Uher 2013 ). But methods are just a means to an end. Sciences must be phenomenon-centred and problem-centred, and they must develop epistemologies, theories, methodologies and methods that are suited to explore these phenomena and the research problems in their field.

Psychology’s Study Phenomena and Intrinsic Challenges

Psychology’s exceptional position among the sciences and its key problems can be traced to its study phenomena’s peculiarities and the conceptual and methodological challenges they entail.

Experience: Elementary to All Empirical Sciences

Experience is elementary to all empirical sciences, which are experience-based by definition (from Greek empeiria meaning experience). The founder of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, already highlighted that every concrete experience has always two aspects, the objective content given and individuals’ subjective apprehension of it—thus, the objects of experience in themselves and the subjects experiencing them. This entails two fundamental ways in which experience is treated in the sciences (Wundt 1896a ).

Natural sciences explore the objective contents mediated by experience that can be obtained by subtracting from the concrete experience the subjective aspects always contained in it. Hence, natural scientists consider the objects of experience in their properties as conceived independently of the subjects experiencing them, using the perspective of mediate experience (mittelbare Erfahrung; Wundt 1896a ). Therefore, natural scientists develop theories, approaches and technologies that help minimise the involvement of human perceptual and conceptual abilities in research processes and filter out their effects on research outcomes. This approach is facilitated by the peculiarities of natural-science study phenomena (of the non-living world, in particular), in which general laws, immutable relationships and natural constants can be identified that remain invariant across time and space and that can be measured and mathematically formalised (Uher 2020b ).

Psychologists, in turn, explore the experiencing subjects and their understanding and interpretation of their experiential contents and how this mediates their concrete experience of ‘reality’. This involves the perspective of immediate experience (unmittelbare Erfahrung), with immediate indicating absence of other phenomena mediating their perception (Wundt 1896a ). Immediate experience comprises connected processes, whereby every process has an objective content but is, at the same time, also a subjective process. Inner experience, Wundt highlighted, is not a special part of experience but rather constitutes the entirety of all immediate experience; thus, inner and outer experience do not constitute separate channels of information as often assumed (Uher 2016a ). That is, psychology deals with the entire experience in its immediate subjective reality. The inherent relation to the perceiving and experiencing subject— subject reference —is therefore a fundamental category in psychology. Subjects are feeling and thinking beings capable of intentional action who pursue purposes and values. This entails agency, volition, value orientation and teleology. As a consequence, Wundt highlighted, research on these phenomena can determine only law-like generalisations that allow for exceptions and singularities (Fahrenberg 2019 ). Given this, it is meaningless to use theories-to-laws ratios as indicators of scientificity (e.g., in Simonton 2015 ; Zagaria et al. 2020 ).

Constructs: Concepts in Science AND Everyday Psychology

The processual and transient nature of immediate experience (and many behaviours) imposes further challenges because, of processual entities, only a part exists at any moment (Whitehead 1929 ). Experiential phenomena can therefore be conceived only through generalisation and abstraction from their occurrences over time, leading to concepts, beliefs and knowledge about them , which are psychical phenomena in themselves as well but different from those they are about (reflected in the terms experien cing versus experien ce ; Erleben versus Erfahrung; Uher 2015b , 2016a ). Abstract concepts, because they are theoretically constructed, are called constructs (Kelly 1963 ). All humans implicitly develop constructs (through abduction, see below) to describe and explain regularities they observe in themselves and their world. They use constructs to anticipate the unknown future and to choose among alterative actions and responses (Kelly 1963 ; Valsiner 2012 ).

Constructs about experiencing, experience and behaviour form important parts of our everyday knowledge and language. This entails intricacies because psychologists cannot simply put this everyday psychology aside for doing their science, even more so as they are studying the phenomena that are at the centre of everyday knowledge and largely accessible only through (everyday) language. Therefore, psychologists cannot invent scientific terms and concepts that are completely unrelated to those of everyday psychology as natural scientists can do (Uher 2015b ). But this also entails that, to first delineate their study phenomena, psychologists need not elaborate scientific definitions because everyday psychology already provides some terms, implicit concepts and understanding—even if these are ambiguous, discordant, circular, overlapping, context-dependent and biased. This may explain the proliferation of terms and concepts and the lack of clear definitions of key phenomena in scientific psychology.

Constructs and language-based methods entail further challenges. The construal of constructs allowed scientists to turn abstract ideas into entities, thereby making them conceptually accessible to empirical study. But this entification misguides psychologists to overlook their constructed nature (Slaney and Garcia 2015 ) by ascribing to constructs an ontological status (e.g., ‘traits’ as psychophysical mechanisms; Uher 2013 ). Because explorations of many psychological study phenomena are intimately bound to language, psychologists must differentiate their study phenomena from the terms, concepts and methods used to explore them, as indicated by the terms psych ical versus psych ological (from Greek -λογία, -logia for body of knowledge)—differentiations not commonly made in the English-language publications dominating in contemporary psychology (Lewin 1936 ; Uher 2016a ).

Psychology’s Exceptional Position Among the Sciences and Philosophy

The concepts of mediate and immediate experience illuminate psychology’s special interrelations with the other sciences and philosophy. Wundt conceived the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften; e.g., physics, physiology) as auxiliary to psychology and psychology, in turn, as supplementary to the natural sciences “in the sense that only together they are able to exhaust the empirical knowledge accessible to us“ (Fahrenberg 2019 ; Wundt 1896b , p. 102). By exploring the universal forms of immediate experience and the regularities of their connections, psychology is also the foundation of the intellectual sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, commonly (mis)translated as humanities; e.g., philology, linguistics, law), which explore the actions and effects emerging from humans’ immediate experiences (Fahrenberg 2019 ). Psychology also provides foundations for the cultural and social sciences (Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften; e.g., sociology; anthropology), which explore the products and processes emerging from social and societal interactions among experiencing subjects who are thinking and intentional agents pursuing values, aims and purposes. Moreover, because psychology considers the subjective and the objective as the two fundamental conditions underlying theoretical reflection and practical action and seeks to determine their interrelations, Wundt regarded psychology also a preparatory empirical science for philosophy (especially epistemology and ethics; Fahrenberg 2019 ).

Psychology’s exceptional position at the intersection with diverse sciences and with philosophy is reflected in the extremely heterogeneous study phenomena explored in its diverse sub-disciplines, covering all areas of human life. Some examples are individuals’ sensations and perceptions of physical phenomena (e.g., psychophysics, environmental psychology, engineering psychology), biological and pathological phenomena associated with experience and behaviour (e.g., biopsychology, neuropsychology, clinical psychology), individuals’ experience and behaviour in relation to others and in society (e.g., social psychology, personality psychology, cultural psychology, psycholinguistics, economic psychology), as well as in different periods and domains of life (e.g., developmental psychology, educational psychology, occupational psychology). No other science explores such a diversity of study phenomena. Their exploration requires a plurality of epistemologies, methodologies and methods, which include experimental and technology-based investigations (e.g., neuro-imaging, electromyography, life-logging, video-analyses), interpretive and social-science investigations (e.g., of texts, narratives, multi-media) as well as investigations involving self-report and self-observation (e.g., interviews, questionnaires, guided introquestion).

All this shows that psychology cannot be a unitary science. Adequate explorations of so many different kinds of phenomena and their interrelations with the most elusive of all—immediate experience—inherently require a plurality of epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods that complement those developed for the natural sciences, which are needed as well. Their systematic integration within just one discipline, made necessary by these phenomena’s joint emergence in the single individual as the basic unit of analysis, makes psychology in fact the hardest science of all.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Strategies of Knowledge Generation

Immediate experience, given its subjective, processual, context-dependent, and thus ever-changing nature, is always unique and unprecedented. Exploring such particulars inherently requires idiographic strategies, in which local phenomena of single cases are modelled in their dynamic contexts to create generalised knowledge from them through abduction. In abduction, scientists infer from observations of surprising facts backwards to a possible theory that, if it were true, could explain the facts observed (Peirce 1901 ; CP 7.218). Abduction leads to the creation of new general knowledge, in which theory and data are circularly connected in an open-ended cycle, allowing to further generalise, extend and differentiate the new knowledge created. By generalising from what was once and at another time as well, idiographic approaches form the basis of nomothetic approaches, which are aimed at identifying generalities common to all particulars of a class and at deriving theories or laws to account for these generalities. This Wundtian approach to nomothetic research, because it is case-by-case based , allows to create generalised knowledge about psychical processes and functioning, thus building a bridge between the individual and theory development (Lamiell 2003 ; Robinson 2011 ; Salvatore and Valsiner 2010 ).

But beliefs in the superiority of natural-science principles misled many psychologists to interpret nomothetic strategies solely in terms of the Galtonian methodology, in which many cases are aggregated and statistically analysed on the sample-level . This limits research to group-level hypothesis testing and theory development to inductive generalisation, which are uninformative about single cases and cannot reveal what is, indeed, common to all (Lamiell 2003 ; Robinson 2011 ). This entails numerous fallacies, such as the widespread belief between-individual structures would be identical to and even reflect within-individual structures (Molenaar 2004 ; Uher 2015d ). Galtonian nomothetic methodology has turned much of today’s psychology into a science exploring populations rather than individuals. That is, blind adherence to natural-science principles has not advanced but, instead, substantially impeded the development of psychology as a science.

Moving Psychology Beyond its Current Conceptual Deadlock

Wundt’s opening of psychology’s first laboratory marked its official start as an independent science. Its dynamic developments over the last 140 years testify to psychology’s importance but also to the peculiarities of its study phenomena and the intricate challenges that these entail for scientific explorations. Yet, given its history, it seems unlikely that psychology can finally pull itself out of the swamps of conceptual vagueness and theoretical inconsistencies using just its own concepts and theories, in a feat similar to that of the legendary Baron Münchhausen. Psychology can, however, capitalise on its exceptional constellation of intersections with other sciences and philosophy that arises from its unique focus on the individual. Although challenging, this constitutes a rich source for perspective-taking and stimulation of new developments that can meaningfully complement and expand its own genuine achievements as shown in the paradigm outlined now.

The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm)

The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals ( TPS-Paradigm 2 ) is targeted toward making explicit and scrutinising the most basic assumptions that different disciplines make about research on individuals to help scientists critically reflect on; discuss and refine their theories and practices; and to derive ideas for new developments (therefore philosophy-of–science ). It comprises a system of interrelated philosophical, metatheoretical and methodological frameworks that coherently build upon each other (therefore paradigm ). In these frameworks, concepts from various lines of thought, both historical and more recent, and from different disciplines (e.g., psychology, life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences, metrology, philosophy of science) that are relevant for exploring research objects in (relation to) individuals were systematically integrated, refined and complemented by novel ones, thereby creating unitary frameworks that transcend disciplinary boundaries (therefore transdisciplinary ; Uher 2015a , b , 2018c ).

The Philosophical Framework: Presuppositions About Research on Individuals

The philosophical framework specifies three sets of presuppositions that are made in the TPS-Paradigm about the nature and properties of individuals and the phenomena studied in (relations to) them as well as about the notions by which knowledge about them can be gained.

• All science is done by humans and therefore inextricably entwined with and limited by human’s perceptual and conceptual abilities. This entails risks for particular fallacies of the human mind (e.g., oversimplifying complexity, Royce 1891 ; reifying linguistic abstractions, Whitehead 1929 ). Scientists researching individuals face particular challenges because they are individuals themselves, thus inseparable from their research objects. This entails risks for anthropocentric, ethnocentric and egocentric biases influencing metatheories and methodologies (Uher 2015b ). Concepts from social, cultural and theoretical psychology, sociology, and other fields (e.g., Gergen 2001 ; Valsiner 1998 ; Weber 1949 ) were used to open up meta-perspectives on research processes and help scientists reflect on their own presuppositions, ideologies and language that may (unintentionally) influence their research.
• Individuals are complex living organisms , which can be conceived as open (dissipative) and nested systems. On each hierarchical level, they function as organised wholes from which new properties emerge not predictable from their constituents and that can feed back to the constituents from which they emerge, causing complex patterns of upward and downward causation. With increasing levels of organisation, ever more complex systems emerge that are less rule-bound, highly adaptive and historically unique. Therefore, dissecting systems into elements cannot reveal the processes governing their functioning and development as a whole; assumptions on universal determinism and reductionism must be rejected. Relevant concepts from thermodynamics, physics of life, philosophy, theoretical biology, medicine, psychology, sociology and other fields (e.g., Capra 1997 ; Hartmann 1964 ; Koffka 1935 ; Morin 2008 ; Prigogine and Stengers 1997 ; Varela et al. 1974 ; von Bertalanffy 1937 ) about dialectics, complexity and nonlinear dynamic systems were used to elaborate their relevance for research on individuals.
• The concept of complementarity is applied to highlight that, by using different methods, ostensibly incompatible information can be obtained about properties of the same object of research that are nevertheless all equally essential for an exhaustive account of it and that may therefore be regarded as complementary to one another. Applications of this concept, originating from physics (wave-particle dilemma in research on the nature of light; Bohr 1937 ; Heisenberg 1927 ), to the body-mind problem emphasise the necessity for a methodical dualism to account for observations of two categorically different realities that require different frames of reference, approaches and methods (Brody and Oppenheim 1969 ; Fahrenberg 1979 , 2013 ; Walach 2013 ). Complementarity was applied to specify the peculiarities of psychical phenomena and to derive methodological concepts (Uher, 2016a ). It was also applied to develop solutions for the nomothetic-idiographic controversy in ‘personality’ research (Uher 2015d ).

These presuppositions underlie the metatheoretical and the methodological framework.

Metatheoretical Framework

The metatheoretical framework formalises a phenomenon’s accessibility to human perception under everyday conditions using three metatheoretical properties: internality-externality, temporal extension, and spatiality conceived complementarily as physical (spatial) and “non-physical” (without spatial properties). The particular constellations of their forms in given phenomena were used to metatheoretically define and differentiate from one another various kinds of phenomena studied in (relation to) individuals: morphology, physiology, behaviour, psyche, semiotic representations (e.g., language), artificial outer-appearance modifications (e.g., clothing) and contexts (e.g., situations; Uher 2015b ).

These metatheoretical concepts allowed to integrate and further develop established concepts from various fields to elaborate the peculiarities of the phenomena of the psyche 3 and their functional connections with other phenomena (e.g., one-sided psyche-externality gap; Uher 2013 ), to trace their ontogenetic development and to explore the fundamental imperceptibility of others’ psychical phenomena and its role in the development of agency, language, instructed learning, culture, social institutions and societies in human evolution (Uher 2015a ). The metatheoretical definition of behaviour 4 enabled clear differentiations from psyche and physiology, and clarified when the content-level of language in itself constitutes behaviour, revealing how language extends humans’ behavioural possibilities far beyond all non-language behaviours (Uher 2016b ). The metatheoretical definition of ‘personality’ as individual-specificity in all kinds of phenomena studied in individuals (see above) highlighted the unique constellation of probabilistic, differential and temporal patterns that merge together in this concept, the challenges this entails and the central role of language in the formation of ‘personality’ concepts. This also enabled novel approaches for conceptual integrations of the heterogeneous landscape of paradigms and theories in ‘personality’ research (Uher 2015b , c , d , 2018b ). The semiotic representations concept emphasised the composite nature of language, comprising psychical and physical phenomena, thus both internal and external phenomena. Failure to consider the triadic relations among meaning, signifier and referent inherent to any sign system as well as their inseparability from the individuals using them was shown to underly various conceptual fallacies, especially regarding data generation and measurement (Uher 2018a , 2019 ).

Methodological Framework

The metatheoretical framework is systematically linked to the methodological framework featuring three main areas.

• General concepts of phenomenon-methodology matching . The three metatheoretical properties were used to derive implications for research methodology, leading to new concepts that help to identify fallacies and mismatches (e.g., nunc-ipsum methods for transient phenomena, intro questive versus extro questive methods to remedy methodological problems in previous concepts of introspection; Uher 2016a , 2019 ).
• Methodological concepts for comparing individuals within and across situations, groups and species were developed (Uher 2015e ). Approaches for taxonomising individual differences  in various kinds of phenomena in human populations and other species were systematised on the basis of their underlying rationales. Various novel approaches, especially behavioural ones, were developed to systematically test and complement the widely-used lexical models derived from everyday language (Uher 2015b , c , d , 2018b , c ).
• Theories and practices of data generation and measurement from psychology, social sciences and metrology, the science of measurement and foundational to the physical sciences, were scrutinised and compared. These transdisciplinary analyses identified two basic methodological principles of measurement underlying metrological concepts that are also applicable to psychological and social-science research (data generation traceability, numerical traceability; Uher 2020b ). Further analyses explored the involvement of human abilities in data generation across the empirical sciences (Uher 2019 ) and raters’ interpretation and use of standardised assessment scales (Uher 2018a ).

Empirical demonstrations of these developments and analyses in various empirical studies involving humans of different sociolinguistic backgrounds as well as several nonhuman primate species (e.g., Uher 2015e , 2018a ; Uher et al. 2013a , b ; Uher and Visalberghi 2016 ) show the feasibility of this line of research. Grounded in established concepts from various disciplines, it offers many possibilities for fruitful cross-scientific collaborations waiting to be explored in order to advance the fascinating science of individuals.

Author Contributions

I declare I am the sole creator of this research.

Funding Information

This research was conducted without funding.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

I declare to have no conflicting or competing interests.

2 http://researchonindividuals.org .

3 The psyche is defined as the “entirety of the phenomena of the immediate experiential reality both conscious and non-conscious of living organisms” (Uher 2015c , p. 431, derived from Wundt 1896a ).

4 Behaviours are defined as the “external changes or activities of living organisms that are functionally mediated by other external phenomena in the present moment” (Uher 2016b , p. 490).

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1.1 Psychology as a Science

Learning objectives.

• Explain why using our intuition about everyday behavior is insufficient for a complete understanding of the causes of behavior.
• Describe the difference between values and facts and explain how the scientific method is used to differentiate between the two.

Despite the differences in their interests, areas of study, and approaches, all psychologists have one thing in common: They rely on scientific methods. Research psychologists use scientific methods to create new knowledge about the causes of behavior, whereas psychologist-practitioners , such as clinical, counseling, industrial-organizational, and school psychologists, use existing research to enhance the everyday life of others. The science of psychology is important for both researchers and practitioners.

In a sense all humans are scientists. We all have an interest in asking and answering questions about our world. We want to know why things happen, when and if they are likely to happen again, and how to reproduce or change them. Such knowledge enables us to predict our own behavior and that of others. We may even collect data (i.e., any information collected through formal observation or measurement ) to aid us in this undertaking. It has been argued that people are “everyday scientists” who conduct research projects to answer questions about behavior (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). When we perform poorly on an important test, we try to understand what caused our failure to remember or understand the material and what might help us do better the next time. When our good friends Monisha and Charlie break up, despite the fact that they appeared to have a relationship made in heaven, we try to determine what happened. When we contemplate the rise of terrorist acts around the world, we try to investigate the causes of this problem by looking at the terrorists themselves, the situation around them, and others’ responses to them.

The Problem of Intuition

The results of these “everyday” research projects can teach us many principles of human behavior. We learn through experience that if we give someone bad news, he or she may blame us even though the news was not our fault. We learn that people may become depressed after they fail at an important task. We see that aggressive behavior occurs frequently in our society, and we develop theories to explain why this is so. These insights are part of everyday social life. In fact, much research in psychology involves the scientific study of everyday behavior (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1967).

The problem, however, with the way people collect and interpret data in their everyday lives is that they are not always particularly thorough. Often, when one explanation for an event seems “right,” we adopt that explanation as the truth even when other explanations are possible and potentially more accurate. For example, eyewitnesses to violent crimes are often extremely confident in their identifications of the perpetrators of these crimes. But research finds that eyewitnesses are no less confident in their identifications when they are incorrect than when they are correct (Cutler & Wells, 2009; Wells & Hasel, 2008). People may also become convinced of the existence of extrasensory perception (ESP), or the predictive value of astrology, when there is no evidence for either (Gilovich, 1993). Furthermore, psychologists have also found that there are a variety of cognitive and motivational biases that frequently influence our perceptions and lead us to draw erroneous conclusions (Fiske & Taylor, 2007; Hsee & Hastie, 2006). In summary, accepting explanations for events without testing them thoroughly may lead us to think that we know the causes of things when we really do not.

Research Focus: Unconscious Preferences for the Letters of Our Own Name

A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research (Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2005) demonstrates the extent to which people can be unaware of the causes of their own behavior. The research demonstrated that, at least under certain conditions (and although they do not know it), people frequently prefer brand names that contain the letters of their own name to brand names that do not contain the letters of their own name.

The research participants were recruited in pairs and were told that the research was a taste test of different types of tea. For each pair of participants, the experimenter created two teas and named them by adding the word stem “oki” to the first three letters of each participant’s first name. For example, for Jonathan and Elisabeth, the names of the teas would have been Jonoki and Elioki.

The participants were then shown 20 packets of tea that were supposedly being tested. Eighteen packets were labeled with made-up Japanese names (e.g., “Mataku” or “Somuta”), and two were labeled with the brand names constructed from the participants’ names. The experimenter explained that each participant would taste only two teas and would be allowed to choose one packet of these two to take home.

One of the two participants was asked to draw slips of paper to select the two brands that would be tasted at this session. However, the drawing was rigged so that the two brands containing the participants’ name stems were always chosen for tasting. Then, while the teas were being brewed, the participants completed a task designed to heighten their needs for self-esteem, and that was expected to increase their desire to choose a brand that had the letters of their own name. Specifically, the participants all wrote about an aspect of themselves that they would like to change.

After the teas were ready, the participants tasted them and then chose to take a packet of one of the teas home with them. After they made their choice, the participants were asked why they chose the tea they had chosen, and then the true purpose of the study was explained to them.

The results of this study found that participants chose the tea that included the first three letters of their own name significantly more frequently (64% of the time) than they chose the tea that included the first three letters of their partner’s name (only 36% of the time). Furthermore, the decisions were made unconsciously; the participants did not know why they chose the tea they chose. When they were asked, more than 90% of the participants thought that they had chosen on the basis of taste, whereas only 5% of them mentioned the real cause—that the brand name contained the letters of their name.

Once we learn about the outcome of a given event (e.g., when we read about the results of a research project), we frequently believe that we would have been able to predict the outcome ahead of time. For instance, if half of a class of students is told that research concerning attraction between people has demonstrated that “opposites attract” and the other half is told that research has demonstrated that “birds of a feather flock together,” most of the students will report believing that the outcome that they just read about is true, and that they would have predicted the outcome before they had read about it. Of course, both of these contradictory outcomes cannot be true. (In fact, psychological research finds that “birds of a feather flock together” is generally the case.) The problem is that just reading a description of research findings leads us to think of the many cases we know that support the findings, and thus makes them seem believable. The tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict is called the hindsight bias , or the tendency to think that we could have predicted something that has already occurred that we probably would not have been able to predict.

Why Psychologists Rely on Empirical Methods

All scientists, whether they are physicists, chemists, biologists, sociologists, or psychologists, use empirical methods to study the topics that interest them. Empirical methods include the processes of collecting and organizing data and drawing conclusions about those data. The empirical methods used by scientists have developed over many years and provide a basis for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data within a common framework in which information can be shared. We can label the scientific method as the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures that scientists use to conduct empirical research .

Psychologists use a variety of techniques to measure and understand human behavior.

Tim Sheerman-Chase – “Volunteer Duty” Psychology Testing – CC BY 2.0 CAFNR – CC BY-NC 2.0

Although scientific research is an important method of studying human behavior, not all questions can be answered using scientific approaches. Statements that cannot be objectively measured or objectively determined to be true or false are not within the domain of scientific inquiry. Scientists therefore draw a distinction between values and facts. Values are personal statements such as “Abortion should not be permitted in this country,” “I will go to heaven when I die,” or “It is important to study psychology.” Facts are objective statements determined to be accurate through empirical study. Examples are “There were more than 21,000 homicides in the United States in 2009,” or “Research demonstrates that individuals who are exposed to highly stressful situations over long periods of time develop more health problems than those who are not.”

Because values cannot be considered to be either true or false, science cannot prove or disprove them. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1.1 “Examples of Values and Facts in Scientific Research” , research can sometimes provide facts that can help people develop their values. For instance, science may be able to objectively measure the impact of unwanted children on a society or the psychological trauma suffered by women who have abortions. The effect of capital punishment on the crime rate in the United States may also be determinable. This factual information can and should be made available to help people formulate their values about abortion and capital punishment, as well as to enable governments to articulate appropriate policies. Values also frequently come into play in determining what research is appropriate or important to conduct. For instance, the U.S. government has recently supported and provided funding for research on HIV, AIDS, and terrorism, while denying funding for research using human stem cells.

Although scientists use research to help establish facts, the distinction between values and facts is not always clear-cut. Sometimes statements that scientists consider to be factual later, on the basis of further research, turn out to be partially or even entirely incorrect. Although scientific procedures do not necessarily guarantee that the answers to questions will be objective and unbiased, science is still the best method for drawing objective conclusions about the world around us. When old facts are discarded, they are replaced with new facts based on newer and more correct data. Although science is not perfect, the requirements of empiricism and objectivity result in a much greater chance of producing an accurate understanding of human behavior than is available through other approaches.

Levels of Explanation in Psychology

The study of psychology spans many different topics at many different levels of explanation which are the perspectives that are used to understand behavior . Lower levels of explanation are more closely tied to biological influences, such as genes, neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones, whereas the middle levels of explanation refer to the abilities and characteristics of individual people, and the highest levels of explanation relate to social groups, organizations, and cultures (Cacioppo, Berntson, Sheridan, & McClintock, 2000).

The same topic can be studied within psychology at different levels of explanation, as shown in Figure 1.3 “Levels of Explanation” . For instance, the psychological disorder known as depression affects millions of people worldwide and is known to be caused by biological, social, and cultural factors. Studying and helping alleviate depression can be accomplished at low levels of explanation by investigating how chemicals in the brain influence the experience of depression. This approach has allowed psychologists to develop and prescribe drugs, such as Prozac, which may decrease depression in many individuals (Williams, Simpson, Simpson, & Nahas, 2009). At the middle levels of explanation, psychological therapy is directed at helping individuals cope with negative life experiences that may cause depression. And at the highest level, psychologists study differences in the prevalence of depression between men and women and across cultures. The occurrence of psychological disorders, including depression, is substantially higher for women than for men, and it is also higher in Western cultures, such as in the United States, Canada, and Europe, than in Eastern cultures, such as in India, China, and Japan (Chen, Wang, Poland, & Lin, 2009; Seedat et al., 2009). These sex and cultural differences provide insight into the factors that cause depression. The study of depression in psychology helps remind us that no one level of explanation can explain everything. All levels of explanation, from biological to personal to cultural, are essential for a better understanding of human behavior.

Figure 1.3 Levels of Explanation

The Challenges of Studying Psychology

Understanding and attempting to alleviate the costs of psychological disorders such as depression is not easy, because psychological experiences are extremely complex. The questions psychologists pose are as difficult as those posed by doctors, biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists, if not more so (Wilson, 1998).

A major goal of psychology is to predict behavior by understanding its causes. Making predictions is difficult in part because people vary and respond differently in different situations. Individual differences are the variations among people on physical or psychological dimensions. For instance, although many people experience at least some symptoms of depression at some times in their lives, the experience varies dramatically among people. Some people experience major negative events, such as severe physical injuries or the loss of significant others, without experiencing much depression, whereas other people experience severe depression for no apparent reason. Other important individual differences that we will discuss in the chapters to come include differences in extraversion, intelligence, self-esteem, anxiety, aggression, and conformity.

Because of the many individual difference variables that influence behavior, we cannot always predict who will become aggressive or who will perform best in graduate school or on the job. The predictions made by psychologists (and most other scientists) are only probabilistic. We can say, for instance, that people who score higher on an intelligence test will, on average, do better than people who score lower on the same test, but we cannot make very accurate predictions about exactly how any one person will perform.

Another reason that it is difficult to predict behavior is that almost all behavior is multiply determined , or produced by many factors. And these factors occur at different levels of explanation. We have seen, for instance, that depression is caused by lower-level genetic factors, by medium-level personal factors, and by higher-level social and cultural factors. You should always be skeptical about people who attempt to explain important human behaviors, such as violence, child abuse, poverty, anxiety, or depression, in terms of a single cause.

Furthermore, these multiple causes are not independent of one another; they are associated such that when one cause is present other causes tend to be present as well. This overlap makes it difficult to pinpoint which cause or causes are operating. For instance, some people may be depressed because of biological imbalances in neurotransmitters in their brain. The resulting depression may lead them to act more negatively toward other people around them, which then leads those other people to respond more negatively to them, which then increases their depression. As a result, the biological determinants of depression become intertwined with the social responses of other people, making it difficult to disentangle the effects of each cause.

Another difficulty in studying psychology is that much human behavior is caused by factors that are outside our conscious awareness, making it impossible for us, as individuals, to really understand them. The role of unconscious processes was emphasized in the theorizing of the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who argued that many psychological disorders were caused by memories that we have repressed and thus remain outside our consciousness. Unconscious processes will be an important part of our study of psychology, and we will see that current research has supported many of Freud’s ideas about the importance of the unconscious in guiding behavior.

Key Takeaways

• Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior.
• Though it is easy to think that everyday situations have commonsense answers, scientific studies have found that people are not always as good at predicting outcomes as they think they are.
• The hindsight bias leads us to think that we could have predicted events that we actually could not have predicted.
• People are frequently unaware of the causes of their own behaviors.
• Psychologists use the scientific method to collect, analyze, and interpret evidence.
• Employing the scientific method allows the scientist to collect empirical data objectively, which adds to the accumulation of scientific knowledge.
• Psychological phenomena are complex, and making predictions about them is difficult because of individual differences and because they are multiply determined at different levels of explanation.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

• Can you think of a time when you used your intuition to analyze an outcome, only to be surprised later to find that your explanation was completely incorrect? Did this surprise help you understand how intuition may sometimes lead us astray?
• Describe the scientific method in a way that someone who knows nothing about science could understand it.
• Consider a behavior that you find to be important and think about its potential causes at different levels of explanation. How do you think psychologists would study this behavior?

Brendl, C. M., Chattopadhyay, A., Pelham, B. W., & Carvallo, M. (2005). Name letter branding: Valence transfers when product specific needs are active. Journal of Consumer Research, 32 (3), 405–415.

Cacioppo, J. T., Berntson, G. G., Sheridan, J. F., & McClintock, M. K. (2000). Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: Social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological approaches. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (6), 829–843.

Chen, P.-Y., Wang, S.-C., Poland, R. E., & Lin, K.-M. (2009). Biological variations in depression and anxiety between East and West. CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, 15 (3), 283–294.

Cutler, B. L., & Wells, G. L. (2009). Expert testimony regarding eyewitness identification. In J. L. Skeem, S. O. Lilienfeld, & K. S. Douglas (Eds.), Psychological science in the courtroom: Consensus and controversy (pp. 100–123). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (2007). Social cognition: From brains to culture . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life . New York, NY: Free Press.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hsee, C. K., & Hastie, R. (2006). Decision and experience: Why don’t we choose what makes us happy? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10 (1), 31–37.

Kelley, H. H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 15, pp. 192–240). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Seedat, S., Scott, K. M., Angermeyer, M. C., Berglund, P., Bromet, E. J., Brugha, T. S.,…Kessler, R. C. (2009). Cross-national associations between gender and mental disorders in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66 (7), 785–795.

Wells, G. L., & Hasel, L. E. (2008). Eyewitness identification: Issues in common knowledge and generalization. In E. Borgida & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (pp. 159–176). Malden, NJ: Blackwell.

Williams, N., Simpson, A. N., Simpson, K., & Nahas, Z. (2009). Relapse rates with long-term antidepressant drug therapy: A meta-analysis. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, 24 (5), 401–408.

Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge . New York, NY: Vintage Books

Introduction to Psychology Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Social Psychology — Why Psychology Is Considered A Science

A Discussion of Whether Psychology is a Science

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Published: Dec 16, 2021

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Works Cited

• Bunge, M. (2009). Is psychology a unified science? Cognitive Systems Research, 10(2), 162-176.
• Craver, C. F. (2007). Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
• Fuchs, T., & Mahr, A. (2019). Psychology as science: The theoretical framework of psychology as a natural science. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy (pp. 38-53). Routledge.
• Gergen, K. J. (2015). The science of psychology as methodologically embodied skepticism. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology: Global Perspectives (pp. 225-242). Oxford University Press.
• Kuhn, T. S. (2012). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
• Lambert, A. J. (2013). Toward a positive psychology of religion: Belief science in the postmodern era. Journal of Humanistic Psychology , 53(2), 195-215.
• Popper, K. R. (2002). The logic of scientific discovery. Routledge.
• Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
• Thagard, P. (2012). The cognitive science of science: Explanation, discovery, and conceptual change. MIT Press.
• Wundt, W. (1897). Outlines of Psychology. Wilhelm Engelmann.

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• Table Of Contents

psychology , scientific discipline that studies mental states and processes and behaviour in humans and other animals.

The discipline of psychology is broadly divisible into two parts: a large profession of practitioners and a smaller but growing science of mind , brain , and social behaviour. The two have distinctive goals, training, and practices, but some psychologists integrate the two.

(Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.)

In Western culture , contributors to the development of psychology came from many areas, beginning with philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle . Hippocrates philosophized about basic human temperaments (e.g., choleric, sanguine , melancholic) and their associated traits. Informed by the biology of his time, he speculated that physical qualities, such as yellow bile or too much blood, might underlie differences in temperament ( see also humour ). Aristotle postulated the brain to be the seat of the rational human mind, and in the 17th century René Descartes argued that the mind gives people the capacities for thought and consciousness : the mind “decides” and the body carries out the decision—a dualistic mind-body split that modern psychological science is still working to overcome. Two figures who helped to found psychology as a formal discipline and science in the 19th century were Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and William James in the United States . James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890) defined psychology as the science of mental life and provided insightful discussions of topics and challenges that anticipated much of the field’s research agenda a century later.

During the first half of the 20th century, however, behaviourism dominated most of American academic psychology. In 1913 John B. Watson , one of the influential founders of behaviourism, urged reliance on only objectively measurable actions and conditions, effectively removing the study of consciousness from psychology. He argued that psychology as a science must deal exclusively with directly observable behaviour in lower animals as well as humans, emphasized the importance of rewarding only desired behaviours in child rearing, and drew on principles of learning through classical conditioning (based on studies with dogs by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and thus known as Pavlovian conditioning ). In the United States most university psychology departments became devoted to turning psychology away from philosophy and into a rigorous empirical science.

Beginning in the 1930s, behaviourism flourished in the United States, with B.F. Skinner leading the way in demonstrating the power of operant conditioning through reinforcement. Behaviourists in university settings conducted experiments on the conditions controlling learning and “shaping” behaviour through reinforcement, usually working with laboratory animals such as rats and pigeons. Skinner and his followers explicitly excluded mental life, viewing the human mind as an impenetrable “black box,” open only to conjecture and speculative fictions. Their work showed that social behaviour is readily influenced by manipulating specific contingencies and by changing the consequences or reinforcement (rewards) to which behaviour leads in different situations. Changes in those consequences can modify behaviour in predictable stimulus-response (S-R) patterns. Likewise, a wide range of emotions , both positive and negative, may be acquired through processes of conditioning and can be modified by applying the same principles.

Concurrently, in a curious juxtaposition , the psychoanalytic theories and therapeutic practices developed by the Vienna-trained physician Sigmund Freud and his many disciples—beginning early in the 20th century and enduring for many decades—were undermining the traditional view of human nature as essentially rational. Freudian theory made reason secondary: for Freud, the unconscious and its often socially unacceptable irrational motives and desires, particularly the sexual and aggressive, were the driving force underlying much of human behaviour and mental illness . Making the unconscious conscious became the therapeutic goal of clinicians working within this framework.

Freud proposed that much of what humans feel, think, and do is outside awareness, self-defensive in its motivations, and unconsciously determined. Much of it also reflects conflicts grounded in early childhood that play out in complex patterns of seemingly paradoxical behaviours and symptoms. His followers, the ego psychologists, emphasized the importance of the higher-order functions and cognitive processes (e.g., competence motivation , self-regulatory abilities) as well as the individual’s psychological defense mechanisms . They also shifted their focus to the roles of interpersonal relations and of secure attachment in mental health and adaptive functioning, and they pioneered the analysis of these processes in the clinical setting.

After World War II , American psychology, particularly clinical psychology, grew into a substantial field in its own right, partly in response to the needs of returning veterans. The growth of psychology as a science was stimulated further by the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the opening of the Russian-American space race to the Moon . As part of this race, the U.S. government fueled the growth of science. For the first time, massive federal funding became available, both to support behavioral research and to enable graduate training. Psychology became both a thriving profession of practitioners and a scientific discipline that investigated all aspects of human social behaviour, child development , and individual differences, as well as the areas of animal psychology, sensation , perception , memory , and learning.

Training in clinical psychology was heavily influenced by Freudian psychology and its offshoots. But some clinical researchers, working with both normal and disturbed populations, began to develop and apply methods focusing on the learning conditions that influence and control social behaviour. This behaviour therapy movement analyzed problematic behaviours (e.g., aggressiveness , bizarre speech patterns, smoking , fear responses) in terms of the observable events and conditions that seemed to influence the person’s problematic behaviour. Behavioral approaches led to innovations for therapy by working to modify problematic behaviour not through insight, awareness, or the uncovering of unconscious motivations but by addressing the behaviour itself. Behaviourists attempted to modify the maladaptive behaviour directly, examining the conditions controlling the individual’s current problems, not their possible historical roots. They also intended to show that such efforts could be successful without the symptom substitution that Freudian theory predicted. Freudians believed that removing the troubling behaviour directly would be followed by new and worse problems. Behaviour therapists showed that this was not necessarily the case.

To begin exploring the role of genetics in personality and social development , psychologists compared the similarity in personality shown by people who share the same genes or the same environment . Twin studies compared monozygotic (identical) as opposed to dizygotic (fraternal) twins, raised either in the same or in different environments . Overall, these studies demonstrated the important role of heredity in a wide range of human characteristics and traits, such as those of the introvert and extravert , and indicated that the biological-genetic influence was far greater than early behaviourism had assumed. At the same time, it also became clear that how such dispositions are expressed in behaviour depends importantly on interactions with the environment in the course of development, beginning in utero.

Is Psychology Really a Science?

Some people say no. are they right.

Posted October 6, 2017

I remember the first time I heard the words "physics envy." I was attending a lecture by a relatively famous psychologist who was up at the chalkboard explaining a complex theory. He had drawn an intricate network of boxes and arrows all looping back on one another. As he gesticulated toward each part of the diagram, mind-numbing jargon filled the air. After about 15 minutes, he must have been afraid that he was losing his audience, because he stepped back from the blackboard, scratched his chin, and made a joke.

"Sometimes I think psychologists use all this psychobabble because we have physics envy," he said, grinning. Everyone chuckled.

Though he clearly achieved his goal of lightening the mood, I found myself plagued by his curious turn of phrase. I wondered if psychologists might indeed be jealous of their physicist colleagues, whom nobody doubted were real scientists. To make themselves feel better, perhaps psychologists do compensate by using confusing technical terms. His apparently harmless joke seemed to imply that psychology was not a real science.

It's a question as old as the field itself: Is psychology a science or is it better classified as one of the humanities, like philosophy , theology, or literature? I have to admit it’s a bit of a sore spot. As a psychologist, I’ve been poked at more than once by would-be debaters hoping to start an argument. “You don’t really think psychology is a science, do you?” they ask, incredulously.

So let's take a moment to consider a couple of perspectives on what makes something scientific.

One view is that science involves measuring things with great precision. Biologists place cells under powerful microscopes, measuring them to the minutest detail. Astrophysicists measure the rate of expansion of the universe to astounding decimals. And chemists measure precisely what happens to molecules when exposed to heat, cold, or any number of other treatments. Judged from this perspective, psychology clearly falls short. To measure depression , the best we can often do is to use psychological tests that ask people perhaps a few dozens questions about their mood. But this method isn’t foolproof—people can lie or even be self- deceived . As an alternative, we might ask someone to submit to an fMRI or similar brain scan. But this is hardly a direct way of measuring depression. In order to know how the splotches of brain activity that appear on the screen translate into lived experience, we still need to ask the person. Like sociology, economics, and other social sciences, psychology necessarily relies on indirect measurements. But all of these fields are nonetheless known as sciences, even if we do put the word "social" in front of them. So accuracy of measurement may not be the best criterion by which to judge what is and what is not a science.

Perhaps the clearest definition of a “science” is any endeavor that uses the scientific method . Like all scientists, psychology researchers form hypotheses, devise experiments to gather data, and carefully analyze the results. Psychology journals are filled with such studies. Judged from this perspective, psychology is clearly a science. Though not every study is equally well done , of course, psychology investigators are increasingly held to higher and higher standards of evidence.

So why do people persist in questioning the field’s scientific chops?

The problem is that much of what is written about psychology in the popular press isn’t based on the science. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the way the human mind works, leading to a cacophony of conflicting ideas. Self-help books, podcasts, and web pages often propound notions that either have never been scientifically tested or have been tested without success. Though the academic field represented by most professional journals is overtly scientific, the ideas that make their way into public consciousness often are only tenuously related to that field. We psychologists deserve some of the blame for this. Sometimes out of laziness or honest mistakes, at least some psychologists prefer to communicate from the standpoint of personal experience, rather than to base what they teach on scientific findings.

Good science involves an attitude of skepticism, particularly about what we think we know from personal experience. Consider the commonly held belief that opposites attract, a so-called “fact” that I’ve seen many psychologists endorse. Though it may seem intuitively obvious that people with widely differing personalities and values would make good romantic partners, research generally shows just the opposite . In fact, the longest lasting relationships tend to be characterized by deep similarities. Every year, I mention this tidbit to students in one of my university courses. Invariably, whenever I share a counterintuitive finding like this one, someone raise his or her hand and says, “My partner and I are opposites, and we get along great. That proves the research is wrong!” But one person’s experience doesn’t prove or disprove anything. That’s because psychological science isn’t based on a single individual’s experience, but rather concerns what is true the majority of the time for the majority of people. There will always be exceptions to every rule. Though these exceptions are important to understand because every person matters, science is most concerned with figuring out what the general rules are first. So we should be very careful not to regard scientific findings as untrue just because they don't fit with what we think we already know from anecdotal experience.

So, is psychology a science? Yes, particularly if we base our judgment on the research that appears in scientific journals. But most people in the general public don’t read scientific journals. Instead, that research is often filtered through teachers in their classrooms, therapists in their clinics, self-help writers at their keyboards, podcasters at their microphones, and even what we tell one another. What happens to scientific findings after they leave the lab can be at least as important in influencing the public as the findings themselves.

We all share in that responsibility.

David B. Feldman is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University. Listen to his podcast, “ Psychology in 10 Minutes ,” on any podcast app, through SoundCloud , iTunes , or by subscribing to the show’s RSS feed .

David B. Feldman, Ph.D. , is a professor in the department of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University.

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5 reasons psychology is a science

The debate rages on - psychology: science; art; or pseudoscience? Despite the field of psychology ever-increasingly gaining recognition as a Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) discipline, some commentators still claim therapeutic methods do not hold up to scrutiny, and that social topics such as creativity and self-esteem are too subjective for accurate scientific study. So what holds it back?

In other portions of the scientific spectrum – chemistry and physics, for example – emerging theories enhance or support each other. In psychology, however, theories often contradict or compete with one another, struggling to sufficiently convince or satisfy those working in the field. Events such as this prevent psychology from being ranked amongst the hard sciences, with some even considering it a belief system akin to religion.

Reasons for this often relate to empiric proof, and inconsistent results: two reacting chemicals will always behave in the same manner, however human decisions cannot be accurately predicted when presented with choice – the evolutionary instinct of fight or flight being a key example.

Whilst human behaviour cannot be fully and conclusively predicted in each environment, situation or individual, there are strong, general trends which often relate to our evolutionary and cultural histories. One such example is that globally, we all correlate facial expressions with the emotions that incite them.

Despite any actual or perceived differences between fields of psychology and other branches of science, psychologists do rely on scientific methods. This is important for both practitioners and researchers in the field, generating new knowledge about behaviour and its causes, and using this research to benefit people’s lives.

Mind the gap

Be it human or animal behaviour, psychology deals with the mind, focussing study on what it is that makes us “tick”. This includes influences on our day-to-day life and our unconscious processing of it. Most people are unaware what actually influences their behaviour, and how their behaviour is impacted.

Supporting evidence

Practitioners in the field have been keen to distance their occupations from the realm of pseudopsychology. Psuedosciences lack key, distinguishing features which categorise a science, such as empirical evidence, objectivity, and consideration of alternatives and it is important to make this distinction.

Branching out

Humans are known to be fallible; our common sense and intuition have obvious limitations and cannot be relied upon for all the answers. Without careful investigation, many myths and opinions would remain as the popular antidote. In fact, research conducted in the varied branches of psychology – both basic and applied - is generally done so by people with doctoral degrees or other qualified practitioners exhibiting clear scientific attitudes of curiosity, scepticism, objectivity, and critical thinking.

Challenge accepted

Modern psychology seeks not simply to observe, but to explain. In their quest for answers, researchers challenge commonly held beliefs, and counter confirmation bias through objectivity. By considering alternatives before accepting a claim as true, researchers are able to give strength to their argument and establish a clearer picture of the rich tableau of behaviour.

Do the math

The clinical practise of psychology aims to aid society to function better through application of scientific research. Scientific research helps establish whether or not treatments in clinical practice are effective using mathematics – the language of science. As a “hub science”, findings within this field link often with others, including natural sciences, medicine as well as social sciences.

But do you need one final good reason? The clue’s in the name! Why not earn your Bachelor of Science , with a  BSc (Hons) Psychology (BPS) or MSc Psychology (BPS) from Arden University, both of which are available to study from any location worldwide via online learning.

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Psychology’s Status as a Science: Peculiarities and Intrinsic Challenges. Moving Beyond its Current Deadlock Towards Conceptual Integration

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• Published: 17 June 2020
• Volume 55 , pages 212–224, ( 2021 )

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• Jana Uher   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2450-4943 1  

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Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences. Yet even after 140 years as an independent discipline, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. Its key phenomena, mind and behaviour, are poorly defined (and their definition instead often delegated to neuroscience or philosophy) while specific terms and constructs proliferate. A unified theoretical framework has not been developed and its categorisation as a ‘soft science’ ascribes to psychology a lower level of scientificity. The article traces these problems to the peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena, their interrelations with and centrality to everyday knowledge and language (which may explain the proliferation and unclarity of terms and concepts), as well as to their complex relations with other study phenomena. It shows that adequate explorations of such diverse kinds of phenomena and their interrelations with the most elusive of all—immediate experience—inherently require a plurality of epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods that complement those developed for the natural sciences. Their systematic integration within just one discipline, made necessary by these phenomena’s joint emergence in the single individual as the basic unit of analysis, makes psychology in fact the hardest science of all. But Galtonian nomothetic methodology has turned much of today’s psychology into a science of populations rather than individuals, showing that blind adherence to natural-science principles has not advanced but impeded the development of psychology as a science. Finally, the article introduces paradigmatic frameworks that can provide solid foundations for conceptual integration and new developments.

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Psychology’s Status as a Discipline

Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences—not least because it explores the very means by which any science is made, for it is humans who perceive, conceive, define, investigate, analyse and interpret the phenomena of the world. Scientists have managed to explore distant galaxies, quantum particles and the evolution of life over 4 billion years—phenomena inaccessible to the naked eye or long deceased. Yet, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. The phenomena of our personal experience, directly accessible to everyone in each waking moment of life, remain challenging objects of research. Moreover, psychical phenomena are essential for all sciences (e.g., thinking). But why are we struggling to scientifically explore the means needed to first make any science? Given the successes in other fields, is this not a contradiction in itself?

This article outlines three key problems of psychology (poor definitions of study phenomena, lack of unified theoretical frameworks, and an allegedly lower level of scientificity) that are frequently discussed and at the centre of Zagaria, Andò and Zennaro’s ( 2020 ) review. These problems are then traced to peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena and the conceptual and methodological challenges they entail. Finally, the article introduces paradigmatic frameworks that can provide solid foundations for conceptual integration and new developments.

Lack of Proper Terms and Definitions of Study Phenomena

Introductory text books are supposed to present the corner stones of a science’s established knowledge base. In psychology, however, textbooks present definitions of its key phenomena—mind (psyche) and behaviour—that are discordant, ambiguous, overlapping, circular and context-dependent, thus inconclusive (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). Tellingly, many popular text books define ‘mind’ exclusively as ‘brain activity’, thus turning psychology’s central object of research into one of neuroscience. What then is psychology as opposed to neuroscience? Some even regard the definition of mind as unimportant and leave it to philosophers, thus categorising it as a philosophical phenomenon and shifting it again out of psychology’s own realm. At the same time, mainstream psychologists often proudly distance themselves from philosophers (Alexandrova & Haybron, 2016 ), explicitly referring to the vital distinction between science and philosophy. Behaviour, as well, is commonly reduced to ill-defined ‘activities’, ‘actions’ and ‘doings’ and, confusingly, often even equated with mind (psyche), such as in concepts of ‘inner and outer behaviours’ (Uher 2016b ). All this leaves one wonder what psychology is actually about.

As if to compensate the unsatisfactory definitional and conceptual status of its key phenomena in general, psychology is plagued with a chaotic proliferation of terms and constructs for specific phenomena of mind and behaviour (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). This entails that different terms can denote the same concept (jangle-fallacies; Kelley 1927 ) and the same terms different concepts (jingle-fallacies; Thorndike 1903 ). Even more basically, many psychologists struggle to explain what their most frequent study phenomena—constructs—actually are (Slaney and Garcia 2015 ). These deficiencies and inconsistencies involve a deeply fragmented theoretical landscape.

Lack of Conceptual Integration Into Overarching Frameworks

Like no other science, psychology embraces an enormous diversity of established epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods. Is that a result of the discipline’s unparalleled complexity and the therefore necessary scientific pluralism (Fahrenberg 2013 ) or rather an outcome of mistaking this pluralism for the unrestrained proliferation of perspectives (Zagaria et al. 2020 )?

The lack of a unified theory in psychology is widely lamented. Many ‘integrative theories’ were proposed as overarching frameworks, yet without considering contradictory presuppositions underlying different theories. Such integrative systems merely provide important overviews of the essential plurality of research perspectives and methodologies needed in the field (Fahrenberg 2013 ; Uher 2015b ). Zagaria and colleagues ( 2020 ) suggested evolutionary psychology could provide the much-needed paradigmatic framework. This field, however, is among psychology’s youngest sub-disciplines and its most speculative ones because (unlike biological phenomena) psychical, behavioural and social phenomena leave no fossilised traces in themselves. Their possible ancestral forms can only be reconstructed indirectly from archaeological findings and investigations of today’s humans, making evolutionary explorations prone to speculations and biases (e.g., gender bias in interpretations of archaeological findings; Ginge 1996 ). Cross-species comparative psychology offers important correctives through empirical studies of today’s species with different cognitive, behavioural, social and ecological systems and different degrees of phylogenetic relatedness to humans. This enables comparisons and hypothesis testing not possible when studying only humans but still faces limitations given human ancestors’ unavailability for direct study (Uher 2020a ).

But most importantly, evolutionary psychology does not provide consistent terms and concepts either; its key constructs ‘psychological adaptations’ and ‘evolved psychological mechanisms’ are as vague, ambiguous and ill-defined as ‘mind’ and ‘behaviour’. Moreover, the strong research heuristic formulated in Tinbergen’s four questions on the causation, function, development and evolution of behaviour is not an achievement of evolutionary psychology but originates from theoretical biology, thus again from outside of psychology.

Psychology—a ‘Soft Science’ in Pre-scientific Stage?

The pronounced inconsistencies in psychology’s terminological, conceptual and theoretical landscape have been likened to the pre-scientific stage of emerging sciences (Zagaria et al. 2020 ). Psychology was therefore declared a ‘soft science’ that can never achieve the status of the ‘hard sciences’ (e.g., physics, chemistry). This categorisation implies the belief that some sciences have only minor capacities to accumulate secured knowledge and lower abilities to reach theoretical and methodological consensus (Fanelli and Glänzel 2013 ; Simonton 2015 ). In particular, soft sciences would have only limited abilities to apply ‘the scientific method’, the general set of principles involving systematic observation, experimentation and measurement as well as deduction and testing of hypotheses that guide scientific practice (Gauch 2015 ). The idea of the presumed lack of methodological rigor and exactitude of ‘soft sciences’ goes back to Kant ( 1798 / 2000 ) and is fuelled by recurrent crises of replication, generalisation, validity, and other criteria considered essential for all sciences.

But classifying sciences into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, implying some would be more scientific than others, is ill-conceived and misses the point why there are different sciences at all. Crucially, the possibilities for implementing particular research practices are not a matter of scientific discipline or their ascribed level of scientificity but solely depend on the particular study phenomena and their properties (Uher 2019 ). For study phenomena that are highly context-dependent and continuously changing in themselves, such as those of mind, behaviour and society, old knowledge cannot have continuing relevance as this is the case for (e.g., non-living) phenomena and properties that are comparably invariant in themselves. Instead, accurate and valid investigations require that concepts, theories and methods must be continuously adapted as well (Uher 2020b ).

The classification of sciences by the degree to which they can implement ‘the scientific method’ as developed for the natural sciences is a reflection of the method-centrism that has taken hold of psychology over the last century, when the craft of statistical analysis became psychologists’ dominant activity (Lamiell 2019 ; Valsiner 2012 ). The development of ever more sophisticated tools for statistical analysis as well as of rating scales enabling the efficient generation of allegedly quantitative data for millions of individuals misled psychologists to adapt their study phenomena and research questions to their methods, rather than vice versa (Omi 2012 ; Toomela and Valsiner 2010 ; Uher 2013 ). But methods are just a means to an end. Sciences must be phenomenon-centred and problem-centred, and they must develop epistemologies, theories, methodologies and methods that are suited to explore these phenomena and the research problems in their field.

Psychology’s Study Phenomena and Intrinsic Challenges

Psychology’s exceptional position among the sciences and its key problems can be traced to its study phenomena’s peculiarities and the conceptual and methodological challenges they entail.

Experience: Elementary to All Empirical Sciences

Experience is elementary to all empirical sciences, which are experience-based by definition (from Greek empeiria meaning experience). The founder of psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, already highlighted that every concrete experience has always two aspects, the objective content given and individuals’ subjective apprehension of it—thus, the objects of experience in themselves and the subjects experiencing them. This entails two fundamental ways in which experience is treated in the sciences (Wundt 1896a ).

Natural sciences explore the objective contents mediated by experience that can be obtained by subtracting from the concrete experience the subjective aspects always contained in it. Hence, natural scientists consider the objects of experience in their properties as conceived independently of the subjects experiencing them, using the perspective of mediate experience (mittelbare Erfahrung; Wundt 1896a ). Therefore, natural scientists develop theories, approaches and technologies that help minimise the involvement of human perceptual and conceptual abilities in research processes and filter out their effects on research outcomes. This approach is facilitated by the peculiarities of natural-science study phenomena (of the non-living world, in particular), in which general laws, immutable relationships and natural constants can be identified that remain invariant across time and space and that can be measured and mathematically formalised (Uher 2020b ).

Psychologists, in turn, explore the experiencing subjects and their understanding and interpretation of their experiential contents and how this mediates their concrete experience of ‘reality’. This involves the perspective of immediate experience (unmittelbare Erfahrung), with immediate indicating absence of other phenomena mediating their perception (Wundt 1896a ). Immediate experience comprises connected processes, whereby every process has an objective content but is, at the same time, also a subjective process. Inner experience, Wundt highlighted, is not a special part of experience but rather constitutes the entirety of all immediate experience; thus, inner and outer experience do not constitute separate channels of information as often assumed (Uher 2016a ). That is, psychology deals with the entire experience in its immediate subjective reality. The inherent relation to the perceiving and experiencing subject— subject reference —is therefore a fundamental category in psychology. Subjects are feeling and thinking beings capable of intentional action who pursue purposes and values. This entails agency, volition, value orientation and teleology. As a consequence, Wundt highlighted, research on these phenomena can determine only law-like generalisations that allow for exceptions and singularities (Fahrenberg 2019 ). Given this, it is meaningless to use theories-to-laws ratios as indicators of scientificity (e.g., in Simonton 2015 ; Zagaria et al. 2020 ).

Constructs: Concepts in Science AND Everyday Psychology

The processual and transient nature of immediate experience (and many behaviours) imposes further challenges because, of processual entities, only a part exists at any moment (Whitehead 1929 ). Experiential phenomena can therefore be conceived only through generalisation and abstraction from their occurrences over time, leading to concepts, beliefs and knowledge about them , which are psychical phenomena in themselves as well but different from those they are about (reflected in the terms experien cing versus experien ce ; Erleben versus Erfahrung; Uher 2015b , 2016a ). Abstract concepts, because they are theoretically constructed, are called constructs (Kelly 1963 ). All humans implicitly develop constructs (through abduction, see below) to describe and explain regularities they observe in themselves and their world. They use constructs to anticipate the unknown future and to choose among alterative actions and responses (Kelly 1963 ; Valsiner 2012 ).

Constructs about experiencing, experience and behaviour form important parts of our everyday knowledge and language. This entails intricacies because psychologists cannot simply put this everyday psychology aside for doing their science, even more so as they are studying the phenomena that are at the centre of everyday knowledge and largely accessible only through (everyday) language. Therefore, psychologists cannot invent scientific terms and concepts that are completely unrelated to those of everyday psychology as natural scientists can do (Uher 2015b ). But this also entails that, to first delineate their study phenomena, psychologists need not elaborate scientific definitions because everyday psychology already provides some terms, implicit concepts and understanding—even if these are ambiguous, discordant, circular, overlapping, context-dependent and biased. This may explain the proliferation of terms and concepts and the lack of clear definitions of key phenomena in scientific psychology.

Constructs and language-based methods entail further challenges. The construal of constructs allowed scientists to turn abstract ideas into entities, thereby making them conceptually accessible to empirical study. But this entification misguides psychologists to overlook their constructed nature (Slaney and Garcia 2015 ) by ascribing to constructs an ontological status (e.g., ‘traits’ as psychophysical mechanisms; Uher 2013 ). Because explorations of many psychological study phenomena are intimately bound to language, psychologists must differentiate their study phenomena from the terms, concepts and methods used to explore them, as indicated by the terms psych ical versus psych ological (from Greek -λογία, -logia for body of knowledge)—differentiations not commonly made in the English-language publications dominating in contemporary psychology (Lewin 1936 ; Uher 2016a ).

Psychology’s Exceptional Position Among the Sciences and Philosophy

The concepts of mediate and immediate experience illuminate psychology’s special interrelations with the other sciences and philosophy. Wundt conceived the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften; e.g., physics, physiology) as auxiliary to psychology and psychology, in turn, as supplementary to the natural sciences “in the sense that only together they are able to exhaust the empirical knowledge accessible to us“ (Fahrenberg 2019 ; Wundt 1896b , p. 102). By exploring the universal forms of immediate experience and the regularities of their connections, psychology is also the foundation of the intellectual sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, commonly (mis)translated as humanities; e.g., philology, linguistics, law), which explore the actions and effects emerging from humans’ immediate experiences (Fahrenberg 2019 ). Psychology also provides foundations for the cultural and social sciences (Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften; e.g., sociology; anthropology), which explore the products and processes emerging from social and societal interactions among experiencing subjects who are thinking and intentional agents pursuing values, aims and purposes. Moreover, because psychology considers the subjective and the objective as the two fundamental conditions underlying theoretical reflection and practical action and seeks to determine their interrelations, Wundt regarded psychology also a preparatory empirical science for philosophy (especially epistemology and ethics; Fahrenberg 2019 ).

Psychology’s exceptional position at the intersection with diverse sciences and with philosophy is reflected in the extremely heterogeneous study phenomena explored in its diverse sub-disciplines, covering all areas of human life. Some examples are individuals’ sensations and perceptions of physical phenomena (e.g., psychophysics, environmental psychology, engineering psychology), biological and pathological phenomena associated with experience and behaviour (e.g., biopsychology, neuropsychology, clinical psychology), individuals’ experience and behaviour in relation to others and in society (e.g., social psychology, personality psychology, cultural psychology, psycholinguistics, economic psychology), as well as in different periods and domains of life (e.g., developmental psychology, educational psychology, occupational psychology). No other science explores such a diversity of study phenomena. Their exploration requires a plurality of epistemologies, methodologies and methods, which include experimental and technology-based investigations (e.g., neuro-imaging, electromyography, life-logging, video-analyses), interpretive and social-science investigations (e.g., of texts, narratives, multi-media) as well as investigations involving self-report and self-observation (e.g., interviews, questionnaires, guided introquestion).

All this shows that psychology cannot be a unitary science. Adequate explorations of so many different kinds of phenomena and their interrelations with the most elusive of all—immediate experience—inherently require a plurality of epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods that complement those developed for the natural sciences, which are needed as well. Their systematic integration within just one discipline, made necessary by these phenomena’s joint emergence in the single individual as the basic unit of analysis, makes psychology in fact the hardest science of all.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Strategies of Knowledge Generation

Immediate experience, given its subjective, processual, context-dependent, and thus ever-changing nature, is always unique and unprecedented. Exploring such particulars inherently requires idiographic strategies, in which local phenomena of single cases are modelled in their dynamic contexts to create generalised knowledge from them through abduction. In abduction, scientists infer from observations of surprising facts backwards to a possible theory that, if it were true, could explain the facts observed (Peirce 1901 ; CP 7.218). Abduction leads to the creation of new general knowledge, in which theory and data are circularly connected in an open-ended cycle, allowing to further generalise, extend and differentiate the new knowledge created. By generalising from what was once and at another time as well, idiographic approaches form the basis of nomothetic approaches, which are aimed at identifying generalities common to all particulars of a class and at deriving theories or laws to account for these generalities. This Wundtian approach to nomothetic research, because it is case-by-case based , allows to create generalised knowledge about psychical processes and functioning, thus building a bridge between the individual and theory development (Lamiell 2003 ; Robinson 2011 ; Salvatore and Valsiner 2010 ).

But beliefs in the superiority of natural-science principles misled many psychologists to interpret nomothetic strategies solely in terms of the Galtonian methodology, in which many cases are aggregated and statistically analysed on the sample-level . This limits research to group-level hypothesis testing and theory development to inductive generalisation, which are uninformative about single cases and cannot reveal what is, indeed, common to all (Lamiell 2003 ; Robinson 2011 ). This entails numerous fallacies, such as the widespread belief between-individual structures would be identical to and even reflect within-individual structures (Molenaar 2004 ; Uher 2015d ). Galtonian nomothetic methodology has turned much of today’s psychology into a science exploring populations rather than individuals. That is, blind adherence to natural-science principles has not advanced but, instead, substantially impeded the development of psychology as a science.

Moving Psychology Beyond its Current Conceptual Deadlock

Wundt’s opening of psychology’s first laboratory marked its official start as an independent science. Its dynamic developments over the last 140 years testify to psychology’s importance but also to the peculiarities of its study phenomena and the intricate challenges that these entail for scientific explorations. Yet, given its history, it seems unlikely that psychology can finally pull itself out of the swamps of conceptual vagueness and theoretical inconsistencies using just its own concepts and theories, in a feat similar to that of the legendary Baron Münchhausen. Psychology can, however, capitalise on its exceptional constellation of intersections with other sciences and philosophy that arises from its unique focus on the individual. Although challenging, this constitutes a rich source for perspective-taking and stimulation of new developments that can meaningfully complement and expand its own genuine achievements as shown in the paradigm outlined now.

The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm)

The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals ( TPS-Paradigm Footnote 1 ) is targeted toward making explicit and scrutinising the most basic assumptions that different disciplines make about research on individuals to help scientists critically reflect on; discuss and refine their theories and practices; and to derive ideas for new developments (therefore philosophy-of–science ). It comprises a system of interrelated philosophical, metatheoretical and methodological frameworks that coherently build upon each other (therefore paradigm ). In these frameworks, concepts from various lines of thought, both historical and more recent, and from different disciplines (e.g., psychology, life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences, metrology, philosophy of science) that are relevant for exploring research objects in (relation to) individuals were systematically integrated, refined and complemented by novel ones, thereby creating unitary frameworks that transcend disciplinary boundaries (therefore transdisciplinary ; Uher 2015a , b , 2018c ).

The Philosophical Framework: Presuppositions About Research on Individuals

The philosophical framework specifies three sets of presuppositions that are made in the TPS-Paradigm about the nature and properties of individuals and the phenomena studied in (relations to) them as well as about the notions by which knowledge about them can be gained.

All science is done by humans and therefore inextricably entwined with and limited by human’s perceptual and conceptual abilities. This entails risks for particular fallacies of the human mind (e.g., oversimplifying complexity, Royce 1891 ; reifying linguistic abstractions, Whitehead 1929 ). Scientists researching individuals face particular challenges because they are individuals themselves, thus inseparable from their research objects. This entails risks for anthropocentric, ethnocentric and egocentric biases influencing metatheories and methodologies (Uher 2015b ). Concepts from social, cultural and theoretical psychology, sociology, and other fields (e.g., Gergen 2001 ; Valsiner 1998 ; Weber 1949 ) were used to open up meta-perspectives on research processes and help scientists reflect on their own presuppositions, ideologies and language that may (unintentionally) influence their research.

Individuals are complex living organisms , which can be conceived as open (dissipative) and nested systems. On each hierarchical level, they function as organised wholes from which new properties emerge not predictable from their constituents and that can feed back to the constituents from which they emerge, causing complex patterns of upward and downward causation. With increasing levels of organisation, ever more complex systems emerge that are less rule-bound, highly adaptive and historically unique. Therefore, dissecting systems into elements cannot reveal the processes governing their functioning and development as a whole; assumptions on universal determinism and reductionism must be rejected. Relevant concepts from thermodynamics, physics of life, philosophy, theoretical biology, medicine, psychology, sociology and other fields (e.g., Capra 1997 ; Hartmann 1964 ; Koffka 1935 ; Morin 2008 ; Prigogine and Stengers 1997 ; Varela et al. 1974 ; von Bertalanffy 1937 ) about dialectics, complexity and nonlinear dynamic systems were used to elaborate their relevance for research on individuals.

The concept of complementarity is applied to highlight that, by using different methods, ostensibly incompatible information can be obtained about properties of the same object of research that are nevertheless all equally essential for an exhaustive account of it and that may therefore be regarded as complementary to one another. Applications of this concept, originating from physics (wave-particle dilemma in research on the nature of light; Bohr 1937 ; Heisenberg 1927 ), to the body-mind problem emphasise the necessity for a methodical dualism to account for observations of two categorically different realities that require different frames of reference, approaches and methods (Brody and Oppenheim 1969 ; Fahrenberg 1979 , 2013 ; Walach 2013 ). Complementarity was applied to specify the peculiarities of psychical phenomena and to derive methodological concepts (Uher, 2016a ). It was also applied to develop solutions for the nomothetic-idiographic controversy in ‘personality’ research (Uher 2015d ).

These presuppositions underlie the metatheoretical and the methodological framework.

Metatheoretical Framework

The metatheoretical framework formalises a phenomenon’s accessibility to human perception under everyday conditions using three metatheoretical properties: internality-externality, temporal extension, and spatiality conceived complementarily as physical (spatial) and “non-physical” (without spatial properties). The particular constellations of their forms in given phenomena were used to metatheoretically define and differentiate from one another various kinds of phenomena studied in (relation to) individuals: morphology, physiology, behaviour, psyche, semiotic representations (e.g., language), artificial outer-appearance modifications (e.g., clothing) and contexts (e.g., situations; Uher 2015b ).

These metatheoretical concepts allowed to integrate and further develop established concepts from various fields to elaborate the peculiarities of the phenomena of the psyche Footnote 2 and their functional connections with other phenomena (e.g., one-sided psyche-externality gap; Uher 2013 ), to trace their ontogenetic development and to explore the fundamental imperceptibility of others’ psychical phenomena and its role in the development of agency, language, instructed learning, culture, social institutions and societies in human evolution (Uher 2015a ). The metatheoretical definition of behaviour Footnote 3 enabled clear differentiations from psyche and physiology, and clarified when the content-level of language in itself constitutes behaviour, revealing how language extends humans’ behavioural possibilities far beyond all non-language behaviours (Uher 2016b ). The metatheoretical definition of ‘personality’ as individual-specificity in all kinds of phenomena studied in individuals (see above) highlighted the unique constellation of probabilistic, differential and temporal patterns that merge together in this concept, the challenges this entails and the central role of language in the formation of ‘personality’ concepts. This also enabled novel approaches for conceptual integrations of the heterogeneous landscape of paradigms and theories in ‘personality’ research (Uher 2015b , c , d , 2018b ). The semiotic representations concept emphasised the composite nature of language, comprising psychical and physical phenomena, thus both internal and external phenomena. Failure to consider the triadic relations among meaning, signifier and referent inherent to any sign system as well as their inseparability from the individuals using them was shown to underly various conceptual fallacies, especially regarding data generation and measurement (Uher 2018a , 2019 ).

Methodological Framework

The metatheoretical framework is systematically linked to the methodological framework featuring three main areas.

General concepts of phenomenon-methodology matching . The three metatheoretical properties were used to derive implications for research methodology, leading to new concepts that help to identify fallacies and mismatches (e.g., nunc-ipsum methods for transient phenomena, intro questive versus extro questive methods to remedy methodological problems in previous concepts of introspection; Uher 2016a , 2019 ).

Methodological concepts for comparing individuals within and across situations, groups and species were developed (Uher 2015e ). Approaches for taxonomising individual differences  in various kinds of phenomena in human populations and other species were systematised on the basis of their underlying rationales. Various novel approaches, especially behavioural ones, were developed to systematically test and complement the widely-used lexical models derived from everyday language (Uher 2015b , c , d , 2018b , c ).

Theories and practices of data generation and measurement from psychology, social sciences and metrology, the science of measurement and foundational to the physical sciences, were scrutinised and compared. These transdisciplinary analyses identified two basic methodological principles of measurement underlying metrological concepts that are also applicable to psychological and social-science research (data generation traceability, numerical traceability; Uher 2020b ). Further analyses explored the involvement of human abilities in data generation across the empirical sciences (Uher 2019 ) and raters’ interpretation and use of standardised assessment scales (Uher 2018a ).

Empirical demonstrations of these developments and analyses in various empirical studies involving humans of different sociolinguistic backgrounds as well as several nonhuman primate species (e.g., Uher 2015e , 2018a ; Uher et al. 2013a , b ; Uher and Visalberghi 2016 ) show the feasibility of this line of research. Grounded in established concepts from various disciplines, it offers many possibilities for fruitful cross-scientific collaborations waiting to be explored in order to advance the fascinating science of individuals.

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The psyche is defined as the “entirety of the phenomena of the immediate experiential reality both conscious and non-conscious of living organisms” (Uher 2015c , p. 431, derived from Wundt 1896a ).

Behaviours are defined as the “external changes or activities of living organisms that are functionally mediated by other external phenomena in the present moment” (Uher 2016b , p. 490).

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Uher, J. Psychology’s Status as a Science: Peculiarities and Intrinsic Challenges. Moving Beyond its Current Deadlock Towards Conceptual Integration. Integr. psych. behav. 55 , 212–224 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09545-0

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Home > Blog > Academic Degrees > Health Science News > How Is Psychology a Science: What You Should Know

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How Is Psychology a Science: What You Should Know

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: July 7, 2021

There’s been a long debate about the question: “Is psychology a science?” By defining what psychology is and looking at the ways in which academics have defined science, we can come to see how psychology is classified as a science.

To get to this endpoint, let’s explore the details about psychology and science.

What is Psychology?

The term psychology can be broken down into its root words that are Greek. Psyche means “mind” or “soul.” Logos means “the study of.” Psychology is the study of mental processes and human behavior.

Psychology consists of the following scientific steps:

• Collecting facts
• Developing theories and hypotheses to explain the facts
• Testing the theories

What Makes Psychology a Science?

Regardless of how you view psychology, it’s either going to be placed into the social sciences or science category. To support psychology as a science, we turn to the idea of empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is able to be supported and verified by way of observation and experience, as opposed to simply relying on logic or theory.

Through empirical evidence, psychologists can understand human behavior because of observation. Since the mind cannot be directly observed, it is through actions that psychologists are able to better grasp what may be happening in the mind.

Going deeper, psychology leverages the following:

• Reasoning: Psychologists rely on scientific reasoning to interpret and design psychological research and interpret phenomena.
• Discipline: At the core of psychology sits the scientific method. Psychologists conduct studies and contribute to research based on verifiable evidence.
• Research: Like traditional science, psychologists make use of quantitative and qualitative research methods that are necessary for performing analysis and drawing conclusions.
• Application: To practice psychology in a practical setting, students must complete further education beyond a bachelor’s degree. In most instances, a psychologist will need to obtain a PhD. This advanced education will consist of research skills and robust knowledge and application of the scientific method.

Key Characteristics of a Science

To define any field as a science, it generally will cover these key elements:

Objectivity

When conducting any study, researchers must remain unbiased and objective. They cannot let their own emotions and feelings enter the process. Additionally, while it’s not always possible to fully remove bias, it is necessary to minimize it as much as possible. That’s a main tenet of science.

Empirical evidence

Evidence is collected through experiments and observations. Again, this negates the entry of belief. While data is being collected, the information is diligently recorded so that other researchers can review the validity and the process.

In order to deduce cause and effect (independent variables and dependent variables), variables must be controlled.

Hypothesis testing

To start off the process, an observation is made. Then, scientists, academics, and researchers create their hypothesis, which is a prediction that’s rooted in theory. These hypotheses should be clearly stated and then tested through unbiased experiments.

Predictability

Based on the findings of research, scientists should technically be able to forecast and predict the future.

Replication

When scientists develop experiments, they should be able to be replicated to test if the outcomes are the same given different variables. When the same results occur based on the same conditions, then that provides credibility and accuracy to the findings, which can give way to the creation of a scientific theory or discovery.

Social Science: A Definition

It’s clear to see how psychology maintains the elements of science. However, the argument exists because it also can fall into the category of a social science based on the definition.

A social science is any academic study or science that looks at human behavior in a social and cultural aspect. Such studies include: sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, and for some, psychology.

Psychology as a Social Science

When it comes to studying psychology in college, most institutions will classify psychology under social science. As a student, you’ll study social behaviors, human development, and emotions, which all include social science methods. However, depending on the speciality of psychology you can pursue, some align more closely with hard science and others with social science.

For example, neuropsychology and biological psychology are closer to physical sciences. Social psychology, as you probably guessed, is closely aligned to the social sciences.

What Do Psychologists Do?

The main goal of a psychologist is to understand humans’ emotions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In both the short term and long term, clinical psychologists work with patients to help them deal with and overcome their problems.

Psychologists have the opportunity to work in a variety of settings and study various sub disciplines. For example, a psychologist can work as a clinical psychologist, child psychologist, career counselor, professor, or neuropsychologist, to name a few.

Psychologists can be found working in private practice, rehabilitation facilities, schools, hospitals, clinics, corporations, sports teams, and other settings.

How to Become a Psychologist

To practice as a psychologist, you must complete the licensure process. Before becoming licensed, you’ll need to earn a degree.

Here are the basics steps you’ll need to follow to work in this rewarding field:

• Undergraduate Studies: Begin by earning your bachelor’s degree. You can do so in psychology or a related field like education, communication, or sociology, for example.
• Graduate Studies: To specialize, you’ll continue your formal education with a master’s, doctor of psychology (PsyD), PhD in Psychology, or education specialist (EdS) in Psychology.
• Intern: Based on your level of study, you’ll have to fulfill a specified number of hours working under a licensed psychologist and learning from them while completing projects.
• Licensure: To legally call yourself a psychologist and work as a psychologist, you’ll have to obtain licensure . The steps to do so will vary by state and location. However, the general idea is that you will have to pass national exams and work under supervision of a licensed psychologist. Some states also may require an oral examination or jurisprudence examination to understand the legal issues concerning psychology.

The Bottom Line

No matter how you look at it, the answer is yes to the question, “Is psychology a science?” While some people will argue that psychology is a social science, others will view it as a hard science.

Regardless of how you categorize the area of study and career, there are a variety of subspecialties and career paths to choose within the realm.

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• Introduction to Psychology

10 Reasons why Psychology is a Science

On this page we will explore 10 reasons on why Psychology is a Science .

Psychology is a science because it follows the empirical method. The scientific status of any endeavor is determined by its method of investigation, not what it studies, or when the research was done, and certainly not by who did the investigation. All sciences use the empirical method. Empiricism emphasizes objective and precise measurement. 

Psychology and the other behavioral or social sciences (sociology, anthropology, economics, political science) are not as precise in their measurements as are biology, chemistry or physics, but to the extent that psychologists use empirical evidence, their findings may be referred to as scientific.

List of 10 Reasons why Psychology is a Science

Psychology is regarded as a Science because it fullfills all scientific requirements below:

• Refers to data being collected through direct observation or experiment.
• Empirical evidence does not rely on argument or belief.
• Instead, experiments and observations are carried out carefully and reported in detail so that other investigators can repeat and attempt to verify the work .
• Researchers should remain totally value free when studying; they should try to remain totally unbiased in their investigations . I.e. Researchers are not influenced by personal feelings and experiences.
• Objectivity means that all sources of bias are minimized and that personal or subjective ideas are eliminated. The pursuit of science implies that the facts will speak for themselves, even if they turn out to be different from what the investigator hoped.
• All extraneous variables need to be controlled in order to be able to establish cause (IV) and effect (DV).
• Tests Hypothesis: E.g. a statement made at the beginning of an investigation that serves as a prediction and is derived from a theory. There are different types of hypotheses (null and alternative), which need to be stated in a form that can be tested (i.e. operationalized and unambiguous).
• Replication and reliability: whether a particular method and finding can be repeated with different/same people and/or on different occasions, to see if the results are similar.
• Eliminates bias through scientific methods: If a dramatic discovery is reported, but it cannot be replicated by other scientists it will not be accepted.
•  Predicts behaviour based on finding: We should be aiming to be able to predict future behavior from the findings of our research.

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