Psychology as a Science Essay

According to Russell & Jarvis(2003 469) the word light comes from the Latin word scire, meaning to know thus it is the knowledge of specific hire. psychological comprehension was defined by Atkinson et al. (2000 3, cited by Mestre. et al. 2002 811) as the scientific understand of doings and mental processes. psychology has been universally recognised as a science since the late 1800s when James (1890, cited by Gross 1999 3) stated that Psychology is the Science of Mental Life.Though many praise the study of psychology for its findings and achievements there exit always be those who be sceptical of these findings and whether or non they can be seen as significant. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is widely seen as the rearing father of new psychology, in which we mean psychology as a separate scientific discipline, quite than it had been previously a part of philosophy.Wundt created structuralism, this is the study of the mind by breaking all chains of thought down in to such(pre nominal) things as go outs, feelings and sense experiences, for example, if one were to think of chocolate, one may picture the bar, chip in a feeling of desire for the bar which may produce the sensation of hunger. By studying the conscious mind using introspection he would record the results of his studies, these would be performed under controlled conditions, by which we mean no exterior interferences or influences.However, his methods were heavily criticised as it all studied conscious processes, he was also very select in whom he selected for these tests, children and the mentally crazy for example, were not considered for his studies as he believed they could not use introspection to a successful degree. Thus, introspection cannot be considered a scientific study as it does not aim to discover the mental processes for all humans it does not allow for generalisation as not all realistic subjects put one across been tested. There are many arguments for and against psyc hology as a science, let us focus on the arguments for psychology archetypal.Classical and operant learn are still widely used on various opposite subjects, classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning is the method of instruction a repartee when a conditional stimulus is in place, for example the study of Pavlovs dog the dog was trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, this study was performed under lab conditions and accordingly in a controlled surround in which and influences could be eradicated, this was fully testable and as proposed by Popper(1969, cited by Russell & Jarvis 2003 469) a hypothesis or hypothesis needs to be fully testable to be scientific.This method of conditioning is used in all(prenominal) daylight society, for example, though when young, one is never told that during play time if a instructor or someone of authority blows a whistle one is meant this instant to stop what he or she is doing, it is a natural reaction to consecrate attention to the per son whom commanded the attention and, in a case of a teacher/student situation, follow their instructions. Operant conditioning also follows the design that Popper suggested as it is used every day, when teaching an animal or human, whether they be an adult or a child.For example, operant conditioning is used when teaching a pet a new trick such as sitting down or shaking hands, the pet is initially manoeuvre in what it is supposed to do by its owner, then do by after the act as been performed, over time the pet will learn that if it obeys the command of sit then it will be rewarded, though it is no longer necessary to reward the animal after every completion of the command, instead rewarding it every now and then.This was also found in Skinners box, in which the rat learnt to press a lever in order to receive a food pellet, psychologists would consequently argue that both of these methods of conditioning are considered objective studies which provide turn over findings. Popper also argued that in order for a hypothesis or theory to be considered scientific it must be falsifiable, in practise this sum that for the study to be valid there must also be subjects which prove the study to be false.For example, to say that all lions are mammals would not be falsifiable, as it would be impossible to conduct the amount of study necessary to disprove this theory, however, to say all lions prevail yellow skin, it would only be necessary to find one lion with brownish fur in order to prove this falsifiable, Popper(1959, cited by Hill 2009 19) argued that science advances finished refutation rather than support.Psychology, namely the biological approach, has been helped through the advancements in technology, for example, now it is possible to use medical equipments to see the functions of the thought via electrical pulses, though obviously this does not give us an image of what someone is thinking it does provide us with information as to which different trigg ers the varying reactions which until recently we have not been able to understand, obviously, this provides us with turn over findings.Until the 1950s, Behaviourism dominated psychological experimentation as psychologists such as John Watson believed that only observable behaviour should be investigated if psychology wished to be considered an objective science. Thus, though psychology may not have at present effected the advances in technology the benefit it has seen from these advances are clear, it is now possible for psychologists to view the workings of the brain through the advances in other areas of science, therefore this can only inflate psychologys status as a separate scientific discipline.Despite the arguments for psychology to be considered a science there are, of course, those that believe it should not. Those who are against the idea of psychology as a science believe there are many issues skirt areas of psychology and the methods of investigation it carries out, one area of concern is that of taste random, stratified, opportunity, self-selecting/volunteer.The first in the above list, random sampling, is very seldom used, or at least it is very rare that it can be considered certain true random sampling only occurs when every member of a intention population has an equal chance of being selected (Hill, 2009 35), this is rarely the case as in a large target audience, in order for everyone to have an equal chance there would be a severe debilitate on the available resources so that the list could be compiled many studies do not have the funding or resources available to them to waste on said list, so a truly random list of subjects is rarely achieved.Stratified sampling provides the same constraints on resources as random sampling it is very time consuming and costly, this is due to the method that is used in order to perform stratified sampling dividing the target population in to various subcategories then selecting members of these sub categories in to the proportion necessary to conduct the germane(predicate) research.Opportunity and self-selecting methods of sampling both provide problems in terms of bias, though from different perspectives. In terms of opportunity sampling not only does it give unrepresentative samples it is often biased on the part of the researcher, whom may pick people to take part in their study whom they believe will be more helpful to his or her hypothesis.