Why many people perceive psychology as unscientific.

Whenever we psychologists dare to venture outside of the hallowed halls of academia or our therapy offices to that foreign land called the “real world,” we are likely at some point to encounter a puzzling and, for us, troubling phenomenon. Specifically, most of us will inevitably hear the assertion from laypersons that psychology—which those of us within the profession generally regard as the scientific study of behavior, broadly construed—is in actuality not a science. Some outsiders go further, insinuating or insisting that much of modern psychology is pseudoscientific.

A paper by Scott O. Lilienfeld explores why there’s this widely diffuse skepticism about psychology examining 6 criticisms commonly directed at its scientific basis.

• “Psychology is merely common sense.”
• “Psychology does not use scientific methods.”
• “Psychology cannot yield meaningful generalizations because everyone is unique”
• “Psychology does not yield repeatable results.”
• “Psychology cannot make precise predictions.”
• “Psychology is not useful to society.”

My personal favorites are the first three.

He also highlights 8 sources for this public skepticism such as: psychology’s failure to police itself; confusion between psychologists and psychotherapists; hindsight bias (the “I knew it all along” effect) and others.

It’s an interesting paper.

I read some of the previous works of Lilienfeld while studying for my thesis, and I really like his approach.