why is psychology a science many people think that psychology is not a scientific discipline they claim that case histories and therapeutic techniques used in psychology are not valid ways of studying and treating mental disorders some even go beyond criticizing research methods and claim that statistics a commonly used technique for data analysis is not a valid way of establishing scientific truths the media seems to be legitimate evidence that science and psychology as a fraud psychology is considered a social science because psychological principles affect social life people and institutions alike oftentimes the purpose of any psychological research is to make the world a better place to live in that is socially just like other scientists psychologists embrace scientific values in their research in turn these values shape psychologists and manifest themselves as attitudes in which all scientific studies are made any person who embodies these characteristics is considered to be a scientist in this light biologists chemists physicists are no different from each other when they practice curiosity a scientist has a curious mind he constantly finds interest in anything related to his field of study for instance psychologists are eternally interested in find out the causes of behaviors and mental processes skepticism a scientist does not accept claims at face value he digs deep and questions supposed truths and assumptions made in his field of study for instance psychologists challenge sweeping and simplistic claims on the nature of personality and intelligence objectivity human language is said to be full of ambiguity in order to eliminate confusion and prevent misinterpretation a scientist strives to clarify his words thus a psychologist may define classroom self-esteem as the frequency in which a student participates in class critical thinking a scientist is critical not just of other people's work but also of himself he evaluates the evidence and the method rigorously I identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of a research study for example psychologists typically include recommendations at the last part of their research studies to indicate how future studies can improve upon them thus psychologists do not try to hide the limitations of their studies but instead exposes them to help consumers make informed choices about their studies some disciplines in psychology are straightforwardly sciences and some are less so please note that I'm treating something being a science as having the characteristics of Sciences there's a u.s. tendency to treat science merely as a status award showing the activity as approved of in much the same way that something might be called art I'm not using that definition because it doesn't produce a useful result for this question definitely a science animal behavior under some of the strictest controls for any science experiment ever the relationship between experimental conditions and observable behavior as rigorously analyzed it follows the experimental method uses the same format for its experiments as biology or chemistry and is famously cautious in its conclusions cognitive psychology builds models of human behavior and then tests them under controlled conditions not obviously different from anything done by other sciences say that it is the behavior of people being measured rather than something else medical model based clinical psychology psychiatry psychotherapy so there's some debate as to whether medicine as a science I'm inclined to say no because it uses case studies rather than experimentation and results are necessarily partly an evaluation rather than an empirical measure however if it is then the studies around patients would also qualify science based but weak experimental controls social psychology developmental psychology these are set up as sciences and follow the scientific model however they have great difficulty enforcing proper experimental controls because to put the subjects in a controlled environment will itself influence their behavior there are some clever ways around this but in general the problem remains correlation based artificial intelligence economics sociology experimental philosophy anthropology these disciplines use scientific tools specifically the statistical analysis of correlations arising from observable data however they don't practice proper experimental controls and they often rely on single instance case studies such as specific groups historical instances or particular systems as such their analysis shows that particular things are correlated but doesn't show anything more the meat of the work tends to be informed speculation around the correlations not science no not even a little bit mathematics philosophy politics these disciplines are around working out the logical consequences of certain beliefs or axioms they can make use of observation and measurement but rarely rely on it