Psychology is a branch of science – we all know that. Still, we are curious on the a field is considered as a branch of science. Let’s find out more about Psychology as a science:
What is Science?
For starters, let us define the word “Science”. It is defined as “any systems of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation.” (Britannica, 2020). Science has a broad meaning, but its overall purpose is to uncover the general truths about life, the operations of fundamental laws and lastly, the pursuit for greater knowledge.
There are 3 major groups that comprises Science: Formal science, Natural Science and Social Science. To have a brief understanding of the 3 main branches, here are its definition:
Formal Science – from the name itself, it is concerned with the formal systems. Under this branch are those that involves calculations and intelligence like logic, mathematics, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, information theory and even linguistics. It more focused on the quantitative side of science.
Natural Science – This branch is more about the curiosity of a person. It is more focused on the qualitative side of science and experimentations. Physics, chemistry, biology, zoology are the most popular subjects under natural sciences. It incorporates nature through the use of scientific methods or experiments.
Social Science – Lastly, social sciences are more focused on the society, relationships, behaviors and the wonders of the mind. Social Science explains the relationship between the society and the social behaviors around us. Like natural sciences, this branch of science is more focused on the qualitative experiments. Psychology, Anthropology, Economics, History, Political sciences and Sociology falls under this branch of Science.
What is Psychology?
Psychology has been defined as the “scientific study of the mind and behavior” (American Psychological Association, 2020). Psychology is considered as a new science as it has been discovered over the past hundred couple of years unlike the others. As a new science, many has not been known about it and researches are continuous to increase the knowledge regarding the human mind.
Psychology can be traced back to the Greeks, who might have studied and practiced it without truly defining or considering it as a branch of science. It is not until the 1800, when Wilhelm Wundt was able to name it officially as a branch of science and continued his studies regarding the mental processes of the humans. Since then, many more followed his footsteps and many theories were made.
The most popular theories were Piaget’s Theory of Development, Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development and Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory. These theories were studied, practiced and applied not only by psychologist and psychiatrists, but also by teachers, health professionals and even the layperson.
You may be applying psychology without you knowing. Here are some advantages you will get from understanding and studying psychology:
- Improve your communication skills.
From the gestures, habits, stance and even a person talks, you will get a lot of idea on how to talk or what your approach to a person should be. Psychology help you think better when having conversations with other people. It also allows you to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication.
- Handle stress better.
Getting an insight on the best ways to cope with everyday problems is not only health for your mind but also helps lessen the stress that you have. Psychology developed coping mechanism that are proven to help you cope with certain situations that are unavoidable.
- A good career.
Psychologists has a bright future ahead of them. Studying psychology is a good tool to pursue a career than involves socialization or communicating with the community like criminal psychologists, school counselor, politician and many more.
- Understanding more about yourself.
We have to admit that we don’t know ourselves all too well. Studying psychology may help you find out your qualities that you never knew and hone them
- Enhance your memory.
This maybe the most popular use of psychology that everyone would want to know is how to enhance someone’s memory. There are many teaching centers who’s specializes in memory techniques that can be used at school. It is amazing how our brain works and how it is able to store so much knowledge and information for a long time.
Psychology as a Science
We previously discussed about science and psychology. We now know that Psychology is under the umbrella of Social Sciences, a branch of science that focus on the social processes and human mind.
Psychology is said to follow the empirical method of research. In this method, one should have an objective and quantitative observation in a systematically controlled environment. This can be seen on researches done by known psychologist like Freud, Kohlberg and the Piaget where they create a controlled situation and applied a stimulus where they observed the effects of that stimuli on the persons in the situation. The data from these experiments were gathered and discussed.
Psychology is considered as a science because of its use of the scientific process in order to prove the hypothesis that they have. It is not easy to study the behavior and mental processes of a person. Psychology proved that it was hard but never impossible.