Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Discuss using psychological research the status of
psychology as a science
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It must have a definable subject matter (a paradigm), it should use
theories which should be unbiased and objective, it should use hypotheses which, according to
Popper (1963), need to be falsifiable – they must be capable of being empirically tested and shown
to be wrong, and finally it should make use of empirical methods e
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laboratory experiments
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g
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Originally, conscious human
thought could be considered as the paradigm
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This
has been argued to be closest to paradigm psychology, as it offers a clear definition of the subject
matter and has a clear methodology
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g
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It must also be noted that there are a number of
approaches contradicting the causes of human behaviour and which methods should be used to
study it, for example Freud used case studies and retrospective data whereas Pavlov used objectivity
in his classical conditioning experiment
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Theories should be unbiased and objective, and psychology has many examples of how this is the
case
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Another example is Bandura (1961) “Transmission of aggression in children” where he set up a laboratory study using controlled
conditions to see if the effect of watching a role model be violent has an impact on aggressive acts in
children (to test his Social Learning Theory)
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Researchers
may also exhibit bias, so although the theory may well be objective, testing it would become
problematic as the researcher’s own thoughts and feelings may affect the validity of the findings
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According to Popper (1963) theories should be falsifiable, so we need hypotheses (null and
alternative)
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g
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This theory was subsequently demonstrated to be false and led to reformulation of his
theory
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Defenders of Freud say if his
theories are difficult to refute, the probability remains that there is some truth in his beliefs, and
psychology’s status as a science should not be rejected based on a small sample of un-testable
theories in favour of the vast quantity of easily tested theories
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Gibson and Walk (1960) conducted a laboratory experiment which used a
‘visual cliff’ in order to establish whether depth perception is innate or a learned skill is another
study which confirms this, and Loftus and Palmer (1974) systematically varied the wording of a
leading question to see its effects on the reliability of eye witness testimony, so the applications to
the real world are very broad
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There are
also problems with conducting experiments on people rather than inanimate objects used in physics
and chemistry for example, such as demand characteristics and experimenter bias
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Although psychological research already receives funding from firms such as
advertising agencies, it would most definitely experience increased interest and funding if its
research was verifiable and consistent
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e
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The debate continues on whether psychology can claim to be a science or not, and many universities
class the subject as a ‘social science’ while others place it in the ‘science’ category, indicating mixed
feelings about which department it should be put into
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g
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Especially when considering behaviour such as ‘will to live’ which Shimizu & Pelham (2008)
studied by examining the death registry of 70 million Americans over the past 65 years
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g
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This can be explained in terms of that they ‘willed’ themselves to live until the holiday was over, and
as soon as it was they died

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