A preface to scientific psychology.Psychology as a science.

Abstract

Psychology is concerned with understanding scientifically the actions of men, particularly those actions which we might call characteristically human. Without attempting at the moment to specify exactly what we mean by the "characteristically human," let us say that the term is a little broader than the "exclusively human" and that it includes not only those activities like abstract reasoning and planning which are unique to man, but also acts like sensing and perceiving and states like being afraid and being hungry which man shares with the higher animals, but which are distinctive in him because they are influenced by the uniquely human. Thus man responds not only to the sensory reality of sounds but to their artistic quality as music, fears criticism as well as pain, and finds more than sensory satisfaction in food and drink and sex. Psychology can claim no distinction in being interested in this kind of actions. What is distinctive is the manner of its interest or, better, the method by which it seeks to understand this characteristically human activity. To say that its method is scientific is, without attaching any laudatory associations to the term, to say that psychology should be: 1. Based on controlled observation and, wherever possible, measurement; 2. Empiriological in its explanations, i.e., attempting to understand in terms of experience and to predict the course of future experience. Let us try to explain each of these characteristics of scientific method more fully with special reference to psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)