- anthropology 
- behavioral sciences
- economics
- human geography
- linguistics
- sociology
- media studies
- musicology
- political science
- psychology
- gender studies

Disciplines in Social science

H. Gardner imagined cognitive science as the integration of various disciplines. These disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence are represented in his hexagon.

Gardner's Hexagon

Developed by Edward Titchener, a student of Wilhelm Wundt, structuralism was a school of thought that sought to understand the mind by analyzing its basic components. A key characteristic of this approach was its focus on the contents of mental processes, aiming to identify the fundamental elements of consciousness, rather than investigating the purpose or function of those processes.

Structuralism

Psychology is formally defined as the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. It focuses on understanding how individuals act, think, and feel, along with the underlying cognitive and physiological mechanisms. As a scientific discipline, it seeks to answer fundamental questions about a wide range of human phenomena by relying on empirical evidence rather than common sense.

Psychology

The science of societies and how the individuals that make up societies interact with one another.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

San Jose State University

Georgetown University

Trinity College (CT)

Google

The systematic buildup of knowledge through testing hypotheses and theory.

Science

Branches of Empirical Science

Wikipedia

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Written content refers to any information or expression conveyed through the written word. This encompasses a wide array of formats, including but not limited to books, articles, essays, reports, blogs, newsletters, social media posts, scripts, and official documents. The purpose of written content can vary greatly, serving educational, informational, persuasive, entertainment, or documentation needs among others.

Written Content

Social Science

Involves documenting data following a series of steps and interpreting and analyzing the results to increase knowledge.

Research

Sciences can be broken up into two main categories:
- Empirical Science
- Formal Science

Categories of Science

The suffix that simply means the "scientific study of"

-ology

Psychology is classified as a science because it adopts the same general empirical approach to understanding the natural world as other scientific disciplines. Although psychology specifically focuses on human behavior and mental processes, it illustrates its scientific nature by relying on systematic observation and empirical evidence to answer questions, rather than relying on unverified claims or common sense.

Psychology as a Science

The scientific approach is characterized by three fundamental elements: it is grounded in systematic empiricism (structured observation), it addresses empirical questions (inquiries about the observable world), and it produces public knowledge (sharing findings openly). Together, these components ensure that scientific inquiry relies on objective and recorded evidence, focuses on answerable problems, and allows for community scrutiny.

Features of Science

Distinct scientific disciplines, such as astronomy, biology, and chemistry, are not united by their specific subject matter (e.g., celestial bodies versus living organisms) or by the specialized equipment and techniques they use. Instead, the fundamental commonality that ties all sciences together is their shared, general approach to investigating and understanding the natural world.

Unifying Characteristic of Sciences

Scientific research in psychology and other disciplines aims to achieve three primary objectives. The first is to describe phenomena through careful observation. The second is to predict future events by identifying systematic relationships between variables. The final objective is to explain these phenomena by determining their underlying causal mechanisms.

The Three Goals of Science

Which of the following best describes the fundamental nature of science in psychological research?

A psychology researcher gathers numerous personal stories from acquaintances about why people procrastinate on tasks and compiles them into a summary report, but never formulates a testable prediction or systematically evaluates these ideas against collected data. This approach would be considered scientific because it produces organized knowledge about procrastination.

A researcher is interested in whether 'mindfulness meditation' improves focus in college students. Arrange the following steps of their investigation in the correct logical order to demonstrate the systematic scientific process of building knowledge.

In psychological research, the scientific process involves distinct components that work together to build knowledge systematically. Analyze each of the following research actions and match it to the core scientific component it represents.

A researcher evaluates a claim that 'personal experience' is a sufficient scientific method for understanding human behavior. The researcher concludes the claim is invalid because science requires the ______ buildup of knowledge through the testing of hypotheses and theory.

You are designing a research program to explore the relationship between sleep quality and academic performance. To align with the definition of science as the systematic buildup of knowledge, which protocol should you propose?

In the context of research methods, science is defined as the systematic buildup of knowledge that occurs without the need for testing hypotheses or theories.

In the study of psychological research, 'science' is defined as a specific process for acquiring knowledge. Match each core component of this process to the description that best explains its role in the systematic acquisition of information.

A cognitive psychologist is reviewing a newly proposed research program that gathers empirical observations without connecting them to any overarching explanatory framework. In analyzing this program's scientific validity based on the definition of science, the researcher determines that the program is incomplete because science requires the systematic buildup of knowledge through testing hypotheses and _____.

Science concerned with natural phenomena.

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