For those who believe Psychology is a "soft subject"

The only thing more tiresome than people pretending psychology is a super difficult discipline by trying to impress people with jargon is the physics nerds whining about how any subject without laws isn't a science. You deserve each other and this whole thread should just be set on fire.

Your personal experience is hardly a basis for empirical data.

... So what you're telling me is only mathematics and theoretical physics are 'sciences' and everything else isn't?

That said, there are mathematical formula which describe various cognitive neurophysiological events for example. Take the learning of dopaminergic neurons of the orbitofrontal cortex, the activity of which is described in the Rescorla–Wagner model.



See above. Classical conditioning is governed by long-term potentiation of neural circuits which is ultimately defined by biochemistry and mathematical laws.

Oh I guess I quoted the wrong person. It was a response to the idea that grades are balanced to give equal numbers of As/Bs/Cs etc for each subject.

Not exactly. A science is not a science unless it can be proven with experiment. In that sense, psychology trumps mathematics, because unless applied to the real world, maths is an abstract construction.

If psychology can be quantified through expressions as in the Rescorla–Wagner model you mentioned, then psychology has gone up in my books. How do you measure things in psychology? Surely you can't define psychology in terms of distances, masses, forces, charges etc?

Ultimately, everything can be defined by physics, by the same token. Of course, it's not practical to do so, which is why people study psychology, but in terms of fundamentality, physics is the basis of chemistry, which is the basis of biology and so on.

Scientists take it as a joke.
It is usually taken at A-level by people who can't do proper science.
It is not a very hard A-level.

Agreed, but your definition of science is wrong.

??science |?s??ns|
noun
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment : the world of science and technology.


There is no reference to laws, just observation and experimentation which psychology wholeheartedly embraces.

Okay guys. Here's the thing. Psychology is studied as a science in some places, as an art in others. But where it is studied as a science any and all findings are backed up by numerous studies with actual evidence. How do you think any other science came to be? Studies. Evidence.
What makes it so different?

You guys also need to remember that compared to other sciences psychology is an extremely new area of scientific (and yes it IS scientific) research. So no, we unfortunately don't have the answers to everything already. Physics and maths may have it figured out already, but we're just skimming the surface at this point. So much is waiting to be uncovered. Understanding Alzheimer's, treating schizophrenia, preventing suicide. In my opinion our causes are more just than maths, for example.

You can't argue with the fact that psychology does have a place in health services. It is important. Otherwise the NHS would not employ CBT psychologists and various other clinical psychologists. Without psychological research we wouldn't know how to help people with psychosis, people suffering from debilitating mental illness. Psychology is advancing medical research. We might not use drugs as a first resort, but then it's treating the mind and not a physical injury as such (in most cases).

Trying to understand the way the mind works is no less important than understanding how the body works. So why belittle it?

If you study psychology (and I mean past A level, at degree level) you'll understand that nothing is said without being backed up by empirical (as far as possible with behaviour you have to understand) studies. And a lot of them. Okay, so things progress and people come up with newer, better theories to explain things. This happens in so many other fields too.

Before the rest of y'all start I know terrible things have been done in the name of psychological research, but then again, terrible things have been done in the name of advancements in medicine. The point is times change.

Go away and actually do some research on psychology, read some journals, find out about the advancements, then come back here and try again.

Neg rep me if you want, I honestly don't care. But I won't have people belittling a field that has improved the lives of so many people.

Okay guys. Here's the thing. Psychology is studied as a science in some places, as an art in others.

Is that the definition of a scientist or the definition of an artist?
A scientist would say that something could only be absolutely defined with numbers.
For example, the colour red is defined as a photon with a frequency of between 400 and 484 THz. A force of 1 newton is described as the force needed to accelerate a mass of 1 Kg by 1 ms^-2 and so on.
Simply defining red as "something that looks similar to this" or saying a force is a "push or a pull" is arbitrary.

Personal experience is all we have to go by since conducting such a study of switching classes would probably not be allowed. It's hard to show either side of the argument without personal experience.

Okay guys. Here's the thing. Psychology is studied as a science in some places, as an art in others. But where it is studied as a science any and all findings are backed up by numerous studies with actual evidence. How do you think any other science came to be? Studies. Evidence.
What makes it so different?

You guys also need to remember that compared to other sciences psychology is an extremely new area of scientific (and yes it IS scientific) research. So no, we unfortunately don't have the answers to everything already. Physics and maths may have it figured out already, but we're just skimming the surface at this point. So much is waiting to be uncovered. Understanding Alzheimer's, treating schizophrenia, preventing suicide. In my opinion our causes are more just than maths, for example.

You can't argue with the fact that psychology does have a place in health services. It is important. Otherwise the NHS would not employ CBT psychologists and various other clinical psychologists. Without psychological research we wouldn't know how to help people with psychosis, people suffering from debilitating mental illness. Psychology is advancing medical research. We might not use drugs as a first resort, but then it's treating the mind and not a physical injury as such (in most cases).

Trying to understand the way the mind works is no less important than understanding how the body works. So why belittle it?

If you study psychology (and I mean past A level, at degree level) you'll understand that nothing is said without being backed up by empirical (as far as possible with behaviour you have to understand) studies. And a lot of them. Okay, so things progress and people come up with newer, better theories to explain things. This happens in so many other fields too.

Before the rest of y'all start I know terrible things have been done in the name of psychological research, but then again, terrible things have been done in the name of advancements in medicine. The point is times change.

Go away and actually do some research on psychology, read some journals, find out about the advancements, then come back here and try again.

Neg rep me if you want, I honestly don't care. But I won't have people belittling a field that has improved the lives of so many people.

What do you mean by that? You'd be hard pressed to find an arts psych degree that is respectable (discounting the use of BA in tradition).

No, that is the oxford English dictionary definition of science. I see no point to your post in relation to what I said or to psychology, rephrase?

I don't disagree with you, Psychology is important and, at a higher level, a Science (although I don't necessarily agree that Psychology A-Level is on a par with the more classical, 'hard' subjects).

But one thing I feel I do have to disagree with is your comments on Maths and Physics.
Psycology is the study and science of the human brain, is it not? Physics is the study and science of the universe and the laws which govern it. While we are a long, long way off, it is conceivable that we will one day know everything there is to know about the human brain. I do not think the same can be said for the universe.

Psychology may embrace the scientific ideas of experiment and observation, but you can't say with a degree of certainty what will happen in a situation, because there aren't as many variables in psychology that can be measured and defined in terms of numbers.

Unless you can quantify something with equations and measurements, then it isn't very useful. At what point does red become orange? Simply describing something as red can't help you answer that question. In order to do that you must define red light in terms of frequency or wavelength.
Because psychology is a qualitative subject (or at least I thought so until recently), it isn't useful for making predictions. It's only arbitrary description and it's subjective.

Psychology may embrace the scientific ideas of experiment and observation, but you can't say with a degree of certainty what will happen in a situation, because there aren't as many variables in psychology that can be measured and defined in terms of numbers.

How do you measure things in psychology? Surely you can't define psychology in terms of distances, masses, forces, charges etc?