Why psychology is a different kind of science

In this post, we’ll explore the reasons why psychology is different from the other sciences. Though the other sciences quite often do share the same complexity as psychology, still there are some aspects of psychology that are very much peculiar to it.

Without further ado, let’s begin…

A psychologist studying the behavior of others is certainly a big deal but the rare individuals who also study themselves and try to figure out the complexities of their own behavior are definitely among the true students of the discipline.

The only thing in the world trying to understand itself is the human mind. That’s the most fascinating thing about psychology. It turns the observer, which observes the world and how it works in all the other sciences, into an object of observation itself.

So if it is the mind which observes the world and in psychology, we observe the mind itself, what exactly is observing the mind in action? Is it the mind which is observing itself in action or do we have some deeper level of awareness that watches over the workings of the mind?

When we say we have an awareness that observes the mind, doesn’t that imply we are aware of the awareness that is aware of the mind? It is an infinite regress and makes one’s mind go like “Error 404: page can’t be found”.

There’s no one way to look at human behavior; there are different angles and perspectives from which you can study it. For the sake of simplicity, I have categorized human behavior into three broad categories:

Such diverse ways of looking at the same thing (human behavior) and at different levels are unique to psychology.

Psychology is by no means a linear cause-and-effect science because not only can there be more than one cause behind the same behavior but also there can be a single cause that can lead to many different kinds of behaviors, depending on the individual.

For instance, a person may smoke (effect) because he wants to alleviate stress and anxiety (cause 1) or assert his masculinity because he saw masculine actors on screen do it (cause 2) or be accepted among his smoker peers (cause 3). Additionally, it can also be that he smokes because of the combined effect of all these causes.

A person who suffers a major setback in life (cause) may become depressed (effect 1) or form beliefs like “I’m not good enough” (effect 2) or comfort himself by saying everything is OK (effect 3) or commit suicide (effect 3) or choose to fight back and survive (effect 4).

The chosen effect will not only depend on the person’s personality but also on dozens of other factors that are often extremely difficult if not impossible to account for. An observed behavior seldom depends on a single factor and even though researchers try their best to create controlled conditions, many subjective factors are often overlooked or ignored in various psychological studies.

This is why psychology experiments and studies are rarely repeated or retested. Sometimes even the passage of time can be a crucial factor that governs behavior. You can’t step into the same river twice when it comes to human behavior.

The exact conditions in which a behavior was first observed cannot be 100% replicated and change in even a seemingly unimportant variable such as the ‘passage of time’ can have significant effects.

Unlike many other sciences which assume that phenomena occur according to some pre-set universal laws that are context-independent, psychology is highly context dependent. In fact, context is everything.