For those who believe Psychology is a "soft subject"

I cant remember sorry, its an older paper perhaps 08 or 09.. i did this paper as a mock and i remember because this was the only mark i dropped.

how applicable is psychology? how useful is it in real life?

It's not easy, but memorising information just does not challenge your logical or critical thinking skills very much. As you put it, even the "criticisms" you learn by heart! - you don't develop your own. You are not required to think on your feet in exams. For some people the focus on memorisation makes it a harder subject, for some people it makes it a lot easier.

I think Psychology (and Biology) are not "soft" A-Levels (and they are anyway not at degree level), but they could be made more conceptual (and a lot more fun). For example, instead of being required to regurgitate information, one could put more focus on scientific method (developing and testing hypotheses) and data analysis. Applying what you have memorised from case studies to new and non-intuitive situations.

The pace was slow, and in essays it was a matter of regurgitating pre-learned arguments about study reliability

It's very different at A2. I cannot stress that enough. 2 x 12 mark essays and short answer questions v.s. five 25 mark essays including synopticity and research methods which include statistical tests...ect.

I understand what you mean though. It was quite frustrating at AS.

The idea of an a-level student having a working knowledge of research methods and statistical analysis is kind of laughable.

The A-level is awful. The academic discipline is not.

/thread.

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.

I suppose I don't necessarily disagree with you completely, but I do find it interesting that you ask us to find facts whilst making very broad, baseless, and unsupported generalisations in the first half of your post.

Ignoring that, these are the reasons why I believe A-Level Psychology is not a 'hard science', anywhere close to on a par with the more traditional sciences.
That said, and as you can see from my other posts in this topic, I do not hold the same, low opinion of Psychology at a higher level. We are talking about A-Level.

1)
It is recognised by Cambridge University under the group of "A-levels of More Limited Suitability ".
Moveover, it is listed as "Psychology (Arts)"
It is not listed as being suitable for STEM (Sci. Tech. Eng. Maths) subjects.
The only subjects "Generally Suitable Science A-levels" are the 2 maths' and the 3 'hard' sciences.
Source

2)
The people at my school who do Psychology are all the lazy, less intelligent people.
I suppose this isn't a verifiable source, so you will just have to take my word for it, but it also appears to be the same at many other schools and colleges from what I have read in this topic.

I don't claim to be an expert on the matter, I don't even do Psychology.
All I can say is that the general consensus from universities and my own school is that it simply isn't a hard science, or even a science at all, at A-Level.

Probably because you're...at nottingham

Yes this exactly this. Especially the boldened bits.

Guys honestly I don't care what you think. I'm just saying what I believe and I stand by it.

Why?

I want to know what makes people think that Psychology is a soft subject?

Candidates are required to memorise a lot of relevant information and be able to apply the criteria correctly. Candidates are required to learn many Psychological studies, which sometimes include great amounts of details and have to learn criticisms for each topic. How is this easy? There is quite a lot of content to have to memorise which by itself can be perceived as challenging

A2 Psychology - is quite challenging. You have to outline large essays, include many studies and criticisms usually consisting of 3 or more pages all in 25 minutes.
You have to do this for three essays.

The PSYA3 results which came out were not the best set of results nationally. If Psychology was hard shouldn't most people be scoring grade A's and B's?

No trolling. Simply a debate!

What is scientific about conjecture and mysticism?

Because it doesn't require any indepth learning or putting things into practise. All you need to be able to do is remember things - any dummy can do that.

You haven't put your thoughts across as opinion though, you've put them across as fact, so don't be surprised/offended when people correct you!

People didn't correct me, they just said 'Bull.' I'd appreciate it if they could back up what they said instead of just offending me, like they haven't said anything wrong (which I still think I didn't because I do know for a fact that some unis don't consider psych as a tough course). By all means, I don't mind being corrected cz I'm not that kind of person, I do however mind being talked back at with attitude.