Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to describe scientific fields based on the perceived methodological objectivity and rigor. Keyword here: “perceived”.
Typically, the natural sciences are considered "hard sciences", whereas the social sciences are usually described as "soft sciences". But I would like to explain to those who haven’t delved deep into the realm of social sciences (in this case psychology) why these terms are completely misleading, and, as some may believe, not at all synonymous with “easy”.
Psychology is objective.
I often had people say to me that psychology is only theoretical. That although it has some fairly convincing points to make, it has no facts. They say: only “hard” sciences have facts.
Let me start of by saying that there are no “facts” in science. The scientific method we learned since grade school is designed for disproving ideas. One can never prove anything. That’s why we have the theory of gravity, for example.
Psychology adheres to this scientific method just as much as any other science. Psychological phenomena are quantified using computation and statistics just like any other science. Reliability, validity, and parameters are all tested in psychology! The only difference between psychology and other “hard” sciences is what is being studied, not how it is being studied. It can be even be argued that what psychology studies is much more complex than some of the older scientific fields.
Consider the following “hard” science question: if someone pinches you, will you bruise?
· How hard did they pinch?
· How long did they pinch?
· Do you have a blood disorder? /other health disorders?
· Do you exercise?
Now consider the psychological question: If someone pinches you, do you pinch them back?
· Did you experience pain?
· Who is pinching you? A friend, your mom, a child, a stranger?
· What is your religion?
· What is your age?
· What is your gender?
· Who else was there? (any spectators)?
· What is your personality type?
· How does your culture view retaliation?
· How does your family view retaliation?
· Do you have mental health issues?
· What was your mood previous to being pinched?
· Have you been drinking? Doing drugs?
· How much did you sleep?
Furthermore, how do you go about measuring something as intangible as “personality” or “pain”?
Not only are there many factors, but the factors themselves interact with each other and sometimes override others. Understanding the complexity of these factors and how they affect human behavior is not so easy. So yes, there are no “facts” about human behavior, only predictions or theories like any other science.
Another argument I've heard often from people: psychology is just common-sense. People think they know psychology because they are humans engaging in human behaviors and interactions. That fallacy in logic is equal to me thinking I understand how electricity works to the same extent as an electrical engineer just because I use electricity constantly. Psychology is NOT common sense. Psychologists are scientists. They don’t make any claims until it is substantially backed up by scientific data.
Psychology is rigorous.
Psychology is a vast subject with many sub-fields. Health psychology, cognitive psychology, sport psychology, I/O psychology, abnormal psychology, neuroanatomy, behavioral psychology etc. And each one is massively different from each other. Often outsiders, with little insight into what psychology is, will confuse psychology to be only about mental health issues and therapy, because these topics have been popularized in recent years. But it is so much more than that. Each topic within psychology holds a plethora of information and you need to learn to be a good, dedicated student if you wish to fully understand it.
I have never seen this more clearly than when I began my Master’s program in Cognitive Systems. In it, students learn in depth about the fields of cognitive psychology and computer science in order to gain interdisciplinary knowledge that can be applied in our ever-evolving tech world. The program admits both psychology B.S. students and computer science B.S. students. Although learning how to code for my Masters was difficult for me, I watched my computer science classmates suffer with the idea of even studying.
Psychology in my undergraduate had taught me to study merely with the fact that Psychology is a dense and deep topic. I knew how to open books and read and take notes. Perhaps most interestingly, learning about the cognitive workings of the human mind helped me understand how humans learn. It taught me to think critically and deeply about the material I read. It taught me about the importance of sleep in the learning process. It taught me that learning is best when using different forms of media and redundancy. It taught me studying tricks that I otherwise wouldn’t have learned in other disciplines. And it trained me to observe, read and learn mounds of information all at once. Something that became incredibly useful for my Master’s program.
Bottom line, psychology is truly applicable to life and it is by all definitions a real science. Also, it doesn’t hurt that, along the way, we get to learn about the some of the hardest topics in life: understanding others, but even more so, understanding ourselves.
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