As a result, psychology is one of the most popular majors on college campuses across the United States (Johnson & Lubin, 2011). Many of these students develop such an interest in the area that they go on to declare psychology as their major. Sometimes, students take a psychology course because it either satisfies a general education requirement or is required for a program of study such as nursing or pre-med. Often, students take their first psychology course because they are interested in helping others and want to learn more about themselves and why they act the way they do. Therefore, psychology is also a social science. No biological organism exists in isolation, and our behavior is influenced by our interactions with others. Given that any behavior is, at its roots, biological, some areas of psychology take on aspects of a natural science like biology. Before this time, the workings of the mind were considered under the auspices of philosophy. It was not until the late 1800s that psychology became accepted as its own academic discipline. An empirical method for acquiring knowledge is one based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities. The scientific method is also a form of empiricism. This is one reason why our scientific understanding of the mind is so limited, since thoughts, at least as we experience them, are neither matter nor energy. In general, science deals only with matter and energy, that is, those things that can be measured, and it cannot arrive at knowledge about values and morality. Thus, psychological science is empirical, based on measurable data. However, we can ask individuals about whether they sing because they are happy since they are able to tell us.
We must ask a different question, perhaps about the brain state of the bird, since this can be measured.
For example, the hypothesis that a bird sings because it is happy is not a hypothesis that can be tested since we have no way to measure the happiness of a bird. Scientists test that which is perceivable and measurable.
Those results are then published or presented at research conferences so that others can replicate or build on the results. The researcher then makes observations or carries out an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis. A theory is the best understanding we have of that part of the natural world. A hypothesis should fit into the context of a scientific theory, which is a broad explanation or group of explanations for some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time. To apply the scientific method, a researcher with a question about how or why something happens will propose a tentative explanation, called a hypothesis, to explain the phenomenon. Psychologists use the scientific method to acquire knowledge. Psychology refers to the scientific study of the mind and behavior. What is creativity? Why do some people become homeless? What are prejudice and discrimination? What is consciousness? The field of psychology explores questions like these.
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