Good afternoon. I am a student at massey University New Zealand.
I am currently studying "Psychology as a natural Science"

Wilhelm Wundt as some of you know, is known to be the "founder" of Psychology, and his research has turned out to become a " Natural Science"

Now it is much debating if Psychology should be a science, as religions often bring up the term "free will" for some bizzar reason, and that it is satans gateway to obtain a beings mental structure.

This brings me to B.F Skinners theory(I believe he studied in Psychology Behaviorisms), Skinner did not deny the existence of internal mental events, however he insisted that they could not be studied scientifically, moreover there was no need to study them. according to skinner, if the stimulus of food is followed by the response of eating, we can fully describe what is happening without making any guesses about whether the animal is experiencing hunger. like watson, skinner also emphasized how environmental factors mold behaviour.

aw well. i have to go before finishing everything i wanted to say, but il put the rest down another day. basicly my debate here is, can behavior be recorded as a natural science apposed to a social science.

This post was edited by Ouija on Jul 12 2011 08:10am

i believe it can be both, because imo environmental factors mold behavior but also you are born wif it a mixture of both

Science is a process or a tool that lets people understand how the world works, so by that measure psychology is definitely a science because it's a process for understanding how the human mind functions.

Personally I see it more as a social science since social sciences study human society and understanding the human mind (motivation for doing what they do etc) seems like it would be the foundation of trying to understand society as a whole.

this

I believe that it coiuld be both aswell and i also agree that enviromental factors could/can play a very big factor behind the true details of pyschology