How solid of a science is Psychology?

In My Humble Opinion
1

On a scale of mathematics to shit people say when they’re high, where would you place psychology? Mathematics being the highest because there is virtually no debate on whether an answer is right or wrong after its been mathematically proven. Shit you say when your high is the lowest because there is clear evidence of your brain not functioning properly and is easily refuted by people pointing out the simple fact that you are high.

Where does psychology rank on my little scale? To me it just does not seem that solid because it is not based on math like physics and chemistry are. All its research seems to come from surveys about people, who are very unpredictable. Who are also all different, so experiments would have no way of ever really being consistent. I here a load of psychological theories that just don’t seem true to me. Some say that the only way to be happy is to always think happy, then others will say that a depressed person needs psychological help if he ever want to be happy.

My assumptions about psychology may all be incorrect, I am very ignorant on the subject, which is why I made this topic. Does it have a stable foundation like physics or chemistry? And where would it go on the science scale?

2

IANAPsychologist, but given what little I know, I would liken its theoretical basis to that of linguistics or other social sciences. You usually can’t produce final, QED style results in behavioral science, but you can still approach the problems scientifically, by proposing explanations (a.k.a. “theories”) to cover observed phenomena, and by retaining objectivity.

As for how effective the therapy is? It does seem to help some people a great deal.

3

On your scale, I think it goes somewhere in between, call it “shit people say when they’re high that lots of people agree with, and works well enough in the real world, but that one guy in the room has to make a big deal disagreeing with.”

You’re right in that it’s based much (but not entirely) on self-reporting, which is notoriously unreliable as people lie even to themselves. Also on subjective observation (“is he more dysfunctional than me?”) and a lot of guesswork and lucky mistakes with medication (in the case of psychiatry, not psychology).

OTOH, psychiatry seems a little harder, science wise. Here, there is some amount of objective observation and experimentation: when given 50 mg of this drug, violent outburst are reduced by 75%. X pattern of behavior appears often in genetic lines, even when the children are not raised by the parents.

One thing pointed out by someone in another thread recently is that when a psychological pathology is found to be treatable, or when a biological mechanism is found, then that disease is whisked out of the hands of psychology and psychiatry and put into “real” medicine. Age-related dementia gives way to Alzheimer’s, “fits of madness” is now epilepsy. This means that, over time, psychology and psychiatry are left with only those disorders which we don’t know how to treat, or can’t treat very well, or don’t even know what causes them. Hard to make a hard science out of that.

Add to that the fact that people disagree on what actually constitutes a mental illness (we all know Sampiro’s mom is batshit insane, but is she mentally ill?), and we don’t even have a good set of definitions to form our “proofs” from.

But, there’s no doubt in my mind that thousands of lives are saved by psychology and psychiatry every year. Just because it’s not the granite of hard science doesn’t mean it’s useless or bad.

4

First you have to realize that psychology may be the broadest academic discipline of all and is therefore very difficult to make sweeping statements about. Psychology includes clinical psychology, social psychology, psychometrics, behavioral neuroscience, psychopharmacolgy, industrial/organizational psychology, neural modeling, environmental psychology and I am sure that I am forgetting many more.

I went to graduate school in behavioral neuroscience. I did rigid brain and behavioral studies on rats. That’s probably not what you were thinking of when you posed the question but that is as much a part of psychology as anything else. Indeed, it is a direction the whole discipline iis moving in. Likewise, Skinner and Pavlov did work firmly rooted in the scientific method and their work is a foundation of psychology.

In short, you cannot make a statement like that about “psychology” because the question is meaningless.

5

I am a psychologist - albeit an Environmental Psychologist - and though much of the discipline is theoretical, our methodology is certainly scientific. My work involves surveying individuals on a wide variety of environmental factors, someone like Brynda will be around I’m sure, and she is in the clinical realm.

6

Well, first of all, you have to remember that psychology is more than clinical psychology. Other areas, such as social psychology, cognitive psychology, and developmental psychology, base their research on the scientific method (or as you would say, “based on math and stuff”). Even clinical psychology, the hardest of the subtypes of psychology to quantify, has its share of research. For example, there is research (with numbers and everything!) on the efficacy of different types of therapy.

Bottom line: Psychology as an academic discipline is just as scientific as biology. However, the practice of clinical psychology (what most people think of as psychology) is an art based on that science.

7

Why do you feel that way about it?

8

Right you are…And we need more CP’s who have the compassion enough to do a good job! Good on you Brynda for taking on the wondrous challenge, doubly so for going into business for yourself.

9

I hate to admit it but I did not know that the study of behavioral or emotional problems is more specifically called psychiatry (is it not the study of the mind?) I figured this out when WhyNot made the distinction.

So now that I looked up my definitions, I meant for this to be a topic about psychiatry. It might be to late to steer this topic back in the right direction though. :frowning:

10

You’ve got to start hanging out with a better class of pothead. And learn some critical thinking. Using a lame ad hominem like that is not good reasoning.

Regardless, psychology is scientific by design. You’ve got your hypothesis. You’ve got your experiment. You’ve got a hypothesis accepted or rejected. It all checks out.

Some psychology is bad science; however, for the most part psychology does strive for scientific validity.

11

Shoot, sorry about that, I totally missed the last post. Psychiatry is a branch of the medical sciences and is itself a science. For example, clinical trials on a psychiatric drug are scientific. What you’re probably thinking is something like Jung, perhaps, or Freud’s fruitier notions? That’s not what psychiatry is about.

12

You still don’t have the distinction.

Psychiatry: Psychiatrists are MDs who went through medical school just like your surgeon or proctologist. They then complete a 2 year residency during which they learn about psychiatric medications and how to conduct therapy. Research in the field of psychiatry tends to focus on medications or other medical treatments (electroconvulsive therapy, etc), but can be case studies of interesting cases or research studies of psychotherapy as well. Because they are more expensive and because meds tend to be more needed for more severe mental illnesses, psychiatrists tend to see either a)depressed and anxious folks for medication only or b) seriously mentally ill folks, such as those with persistent schizophrenia.

Psychology: As pointed out above, psychology is largely an academic discipline, and is the study of human behavior and emotions. Subfields include social (study of how people think and behave, with an emphasis on normal behavior), developmental (study of human development), cognitive (study of human thought and language), industrial/organizational (study of business relationships, such as negotiation, etc), and others I am too lazy to type out. One such subfield is clinical psychology, which is the study of pathological behavior. Some clinical psychologists are researchers, others are practitioners–they see patients. We (I am a clinical psychologist who practices) tend to see more depressed and anxious folks, although some work with those who have severe mental illness. We have PhDs, which means we studied for at least 5 years past a BS or BA. We dont’ precribe medications.

13

The difference mainly lies where they stick their finger…

14

I think the OP is framing the divide in a different way. There exist concrete models to deal with mathematical objects, to deal with physical interactions in physics, and even in biology, there’s a schemata to deal with basic functions, and so on. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘model’ in the same mold, with regards to the psyche.

15

All I was trying to say was that out of all the statements made by people, those made under the influence of drugs have the least credibility.

Doesn’t being high imply a handicap on your critical thinking?

16

Oh, fair enough. That’s different from what you actually wrote, which was:

Being high doesn’t make one’s point untrue or invalid or whatever. It’s not, “You’re full of it because you’re high,” rather it’s, “You’re full of it, and you’re high.” I thought you were discounting what a high person says simply for the fact of being high, when that is not a valid form of reasoning.

I mean, you may, after having experience w/ people who are high, decide that what they’re saying is probably nonsense, because that’s what high people usually say; however, that’s just a hueristic rather than a form of inference, IMO.

I wouldn’t agree with that at all, notwithstanding the question “high on what?” of course. I’ve known plenty of people who were plenty smart when they were high.

I didn’t mean to attempt a hijack, by the way. Sorry about that.

I’m not entirely sure about that. IIRC, Feynman once said that math works w/ physics simply because math is prepackaged logic that can be applied to whatever satisfies the assumptions. (Or something like that.) Various types of psychology do use some quantitative methods. Neuropsych is heavily dependent on chemistry, of course, and the patterns of electrical activitiy in the brain are certainly amenable to math. As experimental economics becomes more closely joined with psychology, the basic math models of behavior that economists use will more heavily influence psychology, IMO. In cognitive psychology, timing reactions, and more importantly timing the difference in them, is used to make inferences about what’s going on inside one’s head.

So, to a large degree, yes, you’re correct, but in another sense, I think there may be some nuance that is relevant and meaningful. I don’t know about schemata in biology, so I’m helpless to know if there’s an analog there.

I guess I’m worried that the OP is thinking of, say, Frasier Crane and his psychoanalysis as the typical psychiatrist, and is forming an incorrect picture of the field on which to base the question.

17

I am a clinical psychologist who does both research and practice, although my practice at this point is the far smaller of the two.

We do develop constructs and models and hypotheses and test them statistically. Whether they are as reliable constructs as other disciplines is certainly debatable, but they are there. We routinely pose questions such as “Does poor parenting directly predict disruptive behavior, or is the relationship recursive?” We have to define what we mean by “poor parenting” and have defensible measures of it (likewise for “disruptive behavior”), but I would argue that the science is well above the level of “shit.”

18

A key distinction in my mind is how objectively quantifiable something is.

How hot something is, how dense it is, and other physical properties can be quantified with much more precision then, say, “how poor the parenting was” or “how disruptive the behavior is”.

I’m not saying that you can’t quantify such things, or that attempts to do so are “shit”, just that they’re inherently less precise then many of the things that the physical sciences deal with.

19

Same problem with all the other social sciences, but you don’t usually see this sort of thread about economics or sociology.

20

Well, to be fair, it was an honest question. At least, it seemed that way to me. Most people don’t know much about psychology.