Psychology follows the scientific method

The argument

What makes a field a science is its method, not its subject matter. The hard sciences are identified by their use of the scientific method to draw conclusions about the natural world: observing phenomena, measuring them, gathering data, forming hypotheses, testing those hypotheses experimentally, and building theories that survive the tests and are revised when they do not. Psychology employs every facet of that procedure. It observes behaviour and records it systematically rather than anecdotally; it measures — reaction times, error rates, physiological responses, scored responses on validated instruments — so that claims can be stated quantitatively and compared across studies; it gathers data from samples designed to support inference beyond the individuals studied; it formulates hypotheses precisely enough to be shown wrong; it tests them under controlled conditions in which variables are manipulated and alternative explanations ruled out; and it develops theories held provisionally and abandoned when the evidence goes against them. No step in the list is omitted. Objections to psychology's scientific standing usually rest not on method but on the difficulty of its subject: minds are harder to get at than falling bodies, and the measurements are noisier. But difficulty of subject matter is not a methodological deficiency. Other established sciences also study systems too large, too slow or too variable to place inside a laboratory, and no one concludes from that they are not sciences. What matters is whether conclusions are reached by observation, measurement and test, or instead by authority, intuition and assertion. Psychology reaches its conclusions the first way. Since the scientific method is the criterion by which the hard sciences are defined, and psychology satisfies it in full, psychology must be considered a real science.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Simply using the scientific method does not make psychology a science. Science observes concrete cause and effect processes which reveal truths about how the world works. Psychology relies on observing human behaviors which are unpredictable, yielding conclusions which are abstract at best.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Using the scientific method alone isn't enough to classify something as a science.