Psychology as a sceince
- Created by: elliebedwellxo
- Created on: 02-05-16 11:59
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- Psychology as a science
- Helps to shape and change psychological research
- Arguments For
- Psychologists often use scientific methods to test a hypothesis by manipulation of the IV and rigorous control of procedures
- Arguments Against
- Psychologists study human behaviour and humans cannot be investigated in the same way as physical materials or forces that are investigated in sciences such as Chemistry or Physics
- Psychologists are to a large degree with internal mental processes that are not directly observable and therefore not open to scientific scrutiny
- Freud
- Difficult to falsify - e.g. Oedipus complex in Little Hans could not be observed
- Loftus and Palmer
- Scientific guidelines and controls - enabled cause and effect to be established
- Cognitive approach
- favours scientific method, using lab experiments to investigate mental processes
- enables cause and effect to be established
- quantitative data - easy to replicate bringing academic credibility to psychology as a discipline
- favours scientific method, using lab experiments to investigate mental processes
- Strengths
- High control, standardised procedures - easily replicable
- Gain an understanding of hormone imbalances, change in brain shape and structure, etc through use of scientific methods
- e.g. Maguire - different volume of hippocampus in taxi drivers compared to non
- can treat depression by seeing how the drug treatments effect the nervous system etc
- Can see the role of inheritance
- e.g. genetic predisposition for a mental illness (Gottesman and Shields) - monozygotic and dizygotic twins and schizophrenia
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