Discuss the extent to which Psychology can be considered a science, using core studies to back up your answer.

In order for psychology to be considered a science it needs to show cause and effect, showing that one variable is directly influencing the other. This is seen in many experiments conducted in psychology, particularly in high controlled lab experiments such as Grant et al’s study into context dependant memory. The participants who tested in the same conditions as they studied in did significantly better in the recall tests than those who studied and tested in different conditions. The control of the extraneous variables, such as giving them all the same article, rest time before the test and having them all take it at the same time in the same environment, showed clearly that the context of studying and the test conditions influenced how well the participants performed on the recall test. The idea that psychology has cause and effect is further supported by Baron-Cohen’s study into theory of mind as the results and the high controls, such as ensuring all participants had a normal or higher IQ and all of them took the same eyes task, strange stories task, basic emotion task and gender recognition task, clearly showed that those with autism performed poorly while the control groups of those with Tourettes and ‘normal’ participants did not struggle, proving that autism was the cause of problems with theory of mind, not developmental disorders in general.To be considered a science psychology also needs to have quantifiable measures or empirical data so that data is easy to sort and compare. Many of psychological studies provide such data, as is seen in Moray’s study into dichotic listening which found that the attentional barrier was broken twenty times when then participants name was used compared to the four times when no name was used. While arguably in psychology it is impossible to always collect quantifiable data when making observations on people’s behaviour, most of the time this has to be converted into data that can be sorted and compared, such as in Piliavin’s study into diffusion of responsibility, most of the data collected was qualitative in assessing how people responded to an actor collapsing on the subway which was later analysed and converted to conclude that the actor was helped immediately around 90% of the time, providing quantifiable data. Arguably however psychology could not be considered a science as much of its research fails to be entirely objective due to factors such as observer bias, demand characteristics and social desirability bias. This is seen in studies such as Chaney et al’s into how positive reinforcement impacts medical adherence in children due to its use of self-report measures. Data was collected by asking parents to fill out questionnaires and then calling them at random to ask if they had used the Funhaler the day before, however since a parent is unlikely to admit to failing to medicate their child, the result may not be entirely objective.However, overall most psychology experiments meet the criteria to have psychology be considered a science in that they strive for high reliability and validity, and therefore replicability, cause and effect, manipulation of variables and hypothesis testing. For example, nearly all the core studies use standardised procedures, like in Levine where the three conditions of dropping a pen, picking up some magazines and a blind man crossing the street were used identically in every country, therefore they are replicable and therefore reliable, supporting the idea that psychology can be considered a science.