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Some
Introductory Concepts of Psychology
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Recommended
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It is
supposed
to be a science. It is
commonly referred to as a "social science." Psychological
researchers employ the scientific method, and in that regard it is most
definitely a science. Yet the predictive values of it, in practice, are a lot
less reliable than many other sciences would lead us to expect. While many
experiments seem replicable, others are much less so.
Looking at
it through the lens of art makes a lot more sense to many people. While the
study of it is, perhaps, more scientific, the practice of it by
psychologists
would appear to be far
closer to a performance art! I doubt that any therapist in the world would
insist that so long as the exact same steps are followed that the exact same
results will be achieved.
A lot of
people just want to take the whole field and dump it straight into the
landfill or the shredder. "Man is too complex," they will cry. If a
test divides people into 4 or 12 or 16 types, they will note that the options
are too few to be all-encompassing. With enough more options, they will
merely note that the variety is too numerous to be useful, while still
possibly suffering from the other malady as well.
Regardless
of which view you take, there is so much more to psychology than we are going
to get to in this exploration. It's not our task. However, there are some
parts of psychology that seem to more clearly fit our task than others:
Intelligence and Testing, Learning, Memory and Cognition, Motivation and
Emotion, Personality, and Sensation and Perception.
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