Okay, so I’ve been digging into this whole “is psychology a social science or humanities” thing, and honestly, it’s been a bit of a head-scratcher. I mean, you hear different opinions everywhere, right?
First, I jumped onto the internet, just to get a general feel for what people were saying. I typed in the question and, boom, tons of articles and forum posts popped up. Some folks were adamant it’s a social science, focusing on the research and data aspects. Others were like, “No way, it’s all about understanding the human experience, so it’s humanities.” It was a mess!
So, I decided I needed to get a bit more organized. I started by listing out the main arguments for each side. For social science, I wrote down things like:
- Psychology uses the scientific method.
- There’s a lot of experiments and data collection.
- They try to find patterns in human behavior.
Then, for the humanities side, I jotted down stuff like:
- It deals with subjective experiences.
- It’s about understanding meaning and purpose.
- Things like philosophy and ethics are important.
Seeing it all laid out like that, I realized it wasn’t so black and white. Psychology kind of straddles the line. I mean, you’ve got your hardcore research-based stuff, like studying brain activity or running behavioral experiments. That’s definitely science-y.
But then you have things like therapy and counseling, which are all about understanding individual stories and helping people find meaning in their lives. That feels more like humanities, right?
My conclusion
It seems to depend on the specific area of focus of psychology you are learning. I figured it is not one or the other. It is both social science and humanities!
