What is the Psychology (IX)

Criticisms of psychology often come from perceptions that it is a "fuzzy" science. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn's, 1962, critique implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics. Psychologists and philosophers have addressed the issue in various ways.

Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not scientific (due to the largely correlational nature of survey research). Other phenomena that psychologists are interested in, such as; personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic.

Misuses of hypothesis-testing occur in psychology, particularly by psychologists without doctoral training in experimental psychology and statistics. Research has documented that many psychologists confuse statistical significance with practical importance. Statistically significant but practically unimportant results are common with large samples. Some psychologists have responded with an increased use of effect size statistics, rather than sole reliance on the Fisherian p < .05 significance criterion (whereby an observed difference is deemed "statistically significant" if an effect of that size or larger would occur with 5% (or less) probability in independent replications, assuming the truth of the null-hypothesis of no difference between the treatments).

Source: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Related Post(s):
1. What is the Psychology (I)
2. What is the Psychology (II)
3. What is the Psychology (III)
4. What is the Psychology (IV)
5. What is the Psychology (V)
6. What is the Psychology (VI)
7. What is the Psychology (VII)
8. What is the Psychology (VIII)
9. What is the Psychology (IX)
10. What is the Psychology (X)