Psicologia como ciencia

Psychology is a Science

Within the realm of psychology, there have been numerous controversies in the past few decades. Surely these controversies will perhaps persist for many years to come.Before explaining the reasons why, we must first define our terms. The American Heritage Dictionary, defines Psychology as an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mentalprocesses and behavior, while the same source, defines Science as a system of acquiring knowledge gained through scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through suchresearch. Now that this is stated, we can say that psychology is a science. Both psychology and science utilize the scientific method as well as the empirical evidence to conduct their research, by makingobservations, gathering data, forming theories, testing predictions and interpreting their results.
One of these controversies, which will stir the very foundation of psychology, is its uncertaintyas a science. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn suggested in 1962 that psychology is in a pre-paradigmatic state, lacking the agreement on facts found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics. For thatreason and many others, psychologists are using greater statistical controls as well as increasingly sophisticated research design, analysis, statistical, and scientific methods. As a result,psychology can gain the validity, objectivity, and rigor, which are the key attributes in science. If this is gained as a certainty, then psychology can finally be respected and considered a science.Specifically, psychologist use psychometric and statistical methods as well as various well known standardized tests to measure abilities, knowledge, attitudes and personality traits. Many of these tests haveproven to have high validity and reliability; therefore we can trust the results. In addition, psychologist also bases their results in experimental psychological research that is conducted in...