Question

Is psychology beneficial at all to a university student. Discuss key features in the study of psychology that make it a scientific discipline.Identify the pros and cons of various psychological research methods.(your answer should be in 25 line)

Answer 1

Psychology has been an emerging new and flourishing subject. Any type of learning is beneficial in some or other way. The discipline of psychology provides a wide understanding of human behavior, actions and mental processes. This understanding can help a person to further use it in a professional setting. Psychology as a whole can be beneficial to all students but it also depends on the hard work they put in and their interest.

The key features that make the study of psychology a scientific discipline is that it uses standardized, objective, empirical evidence, control, predictability, hypothesis testing, and replication to study human behavior, actions and mental process.

Pros of Psychological research are

• Case studies highlight an in-depth investigation and analysis of clinical studies.
• Naturalistic observation helps in describing behavior. It can be used and practiced anywhere and it does not require many resources.
• Laboratory experiments- These are controlled and standardized. These can be replicated in real-life settings.
• Surveys help in proving large amounts of data from the population at one time.
• The psychological test helps in determining various psychological concepts like personality and intelligence.
• The correlational study helps in determining the association between variables.

Cons of psychological research

• Bias and subjective interpretation can be included in case studies
• Observations are unreliable and biased
• In laboratory experiments- situations are usually artificial and a lot of confounding variables cannot be controlled.
• Sample can stand untrue and cannot be generalized as most of them do not adequately represent the population.
• Psychological test have their own demerits of individual mood swings, answering generalized manner, fatigue, etc
• Correlational studies do not highlight cause and effect.