Psychological Approach To Psychology

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The conceptualisation of psychology being a scientific discipline has caused many controversies through centuries; depending on which psychological or scientific perspective an approach took (Ardila, 2007, p907). As with other forms of development, there is a continuous transformation of knowledge, theories and thinking resulting in paradigm shifts (Branco, 2007, p41). Staats (1981, p241) argues psychology is what Kuhn describes as the preparadigmatic stage; it does not have a single accepted paradigm but instead several competing ones. Others refute this arguing psychology is a multiparadigmatic discipline that needs several competing approaches. The very nature and complexity of human organisms in itself requires a multitude of factors to …show more content…
This evidence however must be the result of experimentation, in which a clear formulated hypothesis is created. Thereby showing the intentions of the experiment and clarifying the research objectives. From a historical perspective this paper will focus on specific key figures that have demonstrated the use of certain psychological approaches within a scientific discipline and if this has contributed significantly to psychology (Wertz, 2014, p5). These perspectives will differ in respect to their ontological and epistemological assumptions (Schuh, 2007, …show more content…
Some psychological phenomenon can be seen and treated as scientific due to the extensive research conducted within it, for example cognitive psychology (Hergenhahn,1997, p517) . While others are still in the early stages of development. In addition to this, the development within experimental psychology may not be due to a paradigm shift, According to Kuhn (1970) theories that have the most scientific disciplines have one dominant paradigm that most researchers work within, anything with several paradigms is a prescience for example models or theories. Consequently from Kuhn’s perspective psychology has not yet developed into a science due to not having a universal set of laws for human

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