While some people are completely absorbed by psychology, others don’t regard this subject as scientific at all. In addition to it, the current time of particularly auspicious for the evolvement and development of various rather strange psychological methods and theories which make us believe in psychology itself less and less.
Yet, both those who are interested in psychology and are trying to deploy its tools in the real life as well as those who do not treat psychology seriously are right to a certain extent. Let’s try to understand together, whether psychology is really a branch of science or it is more of a pseudoscientific creation.
Why psychology differs a lot from other scientific subjects?
Even if you are not particularly keen on any other scientific subjects, you might have a feeling that psychology is not exactly the same science as, for instance, mathematics, astronomy, biology or history. Actually, this is so because there are several characteristics describing any subject as scientific. Such features are, for example, a systematised order of knowledge related to particular science and widely excepted methodology for experiments. Furthermore, any scientific branch should be characterised by the possibility of checking a theory by experimentation and the results of these experiments should be repeatable no matter whether they prove a theory or not.
Finally, it is undeniably very crucial for any form of science to be free of subjective opinions of the scientist.
When it comes to psychology, it is obvious that many of these points do not work exactly like they should be. For instance, it is not easy to repeat the results of many psychological experiments even though these results may seem completely logical to the researchers. At the same time, widely excepted methods used by other scientific subjects for experiments can’t be applied thus easily to the psychological experiments.
Needless to say, it is extremely difficult to avoid any subjective opinions about psychological cases. The mere subject of psychology is the mind of a human being which is very unstable itself. For that reason, psychological experiments will always be susceptible to the ideas of the researchers who are carrying them out.
Still, there is one more rather serious aspect of psychology which makes it so different from other scientific subjects. Unfortunately, during the long existence of psychology, multiple scientists have hardly found any ideas which would be accepted by the majority of psychologists. While there are so many researchers working on this subject, various psychological theories are coming and going leaving space for new believes. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is not the way other branches of science are working which tend to accept a particular theory after conducting in-depth research and are developing further theories on this basis of knowledge of the subject.
Finally, you might have witnessed a number of strange psychological theories designed in the recent time. Unfortunately, it is rather easy to deceive people by offering them poorly crafted psychological ideas which are supposed to make the lives of the people reading pseudopsychological books or attending trendy trainings which were created by people who have no idea about real psychology.
Why psychology is important?
Now, when you are aware of the issues connected to psychology, it is time to decide whether such an unstable subject is of any significance at all.
Certainly, because of the subject psychology is focusing on, it is rather difficult for the scientists to gain any meaningful results, but serious experts specialising in the human mind are doing their best to find out answers to many crucial questions which can improve our life a lot.
The tedious work of real psychologists helps millions of people around the world to overcome their old traumas and to get rid of many psychological problems torturing them in the present time. At the same time, understanding the way the mind is functioning also helps to reveal various general patterns which can then be adapted in different contexts. For instance, employers can improve the productivity of their staff by understanding the psychology of a working place better. Not only will it increase the income of a company, but it will also make the employees more satisfied by their work and start finding their jobs more rewarding.
Thus, even though some scientists working in other branches might not consider psychology as a real scientific subject, psychology is definitely at least a part of the scientific world. No matter how difficult it is, psychologists are revealing various patterns of human behaviour which definitely makes psychology a branch of science.