Psychology studies only abstract phenomenons.

The argument

Psychology is what is known as a "soft science" — a science that studies the abstract: behaviours, interactions, thoughts, feelings and the like. This is in opposition to the "hard sciences", which study the concrete, natural world. The distinction is not a ranking of rigour but a description of subject matter, and almost everything else about how the two operate follows from it. The difficulty is that human behaviour is an intangible product of the mind. It cannot be physically studied in the way the natural world can: there is no specimen to weigh, no sample to isolate, and the object of study is available only through its effects. It is also susceptible to countless variables — personality, environment, personal experiences and others — most of which cannot be held constant while one of them is varied. A chemist can control the conditions of a reaction; a psychologist cannot control the life a participant has already lived. As a result behaviour is difficult to interpret and even more difficult to predict. None of this, however, puts psychology outside science. Human behaviour can be observed, theorized about, hypothesized about and experimented upon, just as the physical realm can. The method is the same: a claim is formulated so that it could fail, a test is designed that could show it failing, and the result is reported whether or not it was the expected one. What differs is the precision available, not the discipline of the procedure. The results may be intangible and abstract, but they give valuable insight into the human mind and are useful in practical applications wherever human behaviours are reasonably predictable. Psychology is therefore a science — one whose subject resists measurement, which is why it is not a hard one.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Psychology studies more than just the abstract. Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology which studies the physical brain in order to understand human behaviors. Since the physical brain can be studied, more concrete data can be used to interpret the abstract workings of the mind. In this way, Psychology should be considered a hard science; or in the very least, neuropsychology should.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Neuropsychology, which is a branch of psychology, studies the physical mind to understand human behaviors. [Rejecting P2] Psychology is a hard science.