Status of Psychology as a Science

“The question, whether psychology is a science or not, is of historical interest only. Psychology has its
scientific side and its technological side just as biology or any other scientific discipline has these
facets. So, he who would maintain even today that psychology cannot be a science is trying to get
another jump out of a long dead horse” (Marx & Hillix, 1987). The question about scientificity of
psychology arises because “Psychology appears to be the most undisciplined of all disciplines” (Cohen,
1962). However, from 19th century onwards there has been a general agreement that psychology is, or
at least ought to be, a science.

To evaluate the scientific status of psychology its better to first understand what science is and then to
see to what extent psychology conforms to these notions of science. Science is a systematically ordered
body of knowledge derived through the application of scientific procedure. According to Marx and
Hillix (1987) the two broad notions of science are “Science as a way of thinking” (The Scientific
Attitude) and “Science as a way of doing” (The scientific Method). The discipline of psychology, in
both theory and practice, subsumes these notions of science by closely adhering to scientific standards
like accuracy, objectivity, skepticism and open-mindedness. This scientific temper motivates
psychology to adopt only those methods (for e.g., experimental method) which makes control,
measurement and prediction of behavior possible. However, since the subject matter of psychology is
something as intricate and dynamic as human behavior so there are some understandable limitations to
psychological measurements. Now if you wish to know how the meaningfulness of a task will affect
your behavioural style then you must be ready to go beyond the numeric contingencies and enter in the
arena of indeterminate behavioural randomness which often defies exact quantification (Singh &
Chadha,2010). And often true psychology of real significance happen in such way.

Till few years back psychology suffered from “physics envy” assuming that physics is the most perfect
of all sciences, and if psychology wants to attain the status of science its methodological behavior
should be as close to physics as possible. However, it is itself questionable that how pure and perfect
are these so-called pure sciences. The subject matter of physical sciences is not only sometimes
uncertain (e.g. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the quantum indeterminacy) but also psychological in
nature (Marshal & Zohar, 1995). Hence, there is scientific aspect of psychology like there is
psychological aspect of physics.

References:

Cohen, J. (1962). Humanistic Psychology. NY: Collien Books

Marx, M.H. & Hillix, W.A. (1987). Systems and theories in Psychology. NY: McGraw Hill Co.
Marshal, I. & Zohar, D. (1995). The Quantum Society. NY: William Morrow

Singh, S. & Chadha, N.K. (2010). Work Meaning Model of Leadership. MAIMS Journal of
Management. 5(1):1-9, New Delhi