The Importance of Psychology in Modern Science
The biggest problem facing psychology‘s status as a hard science is the mind numbingly high
number of variables in any given situation and the inability to quantify the effect of said
variables. Up to the present, a person’s mind has been slightly influenced by a constant influx
of stimuli, and there is no way to measure the potency of these stimuli when also coupled with
someone’s genes. There’s no way to be exact, only general tendencies can be observed. A
common approach people take to dismiss the “soft” sciences, such as psychology, lies in
targeting the field’s ability to quantify the data it is investigating. “Hard” sciences such as
physics, math, and chemistry, are very straightforward in that they are highly quantifiable.
There are defined sets of rules, and if those rules are repeatedly broken, the rule-set changes.
Things are relatively predictable with hard sciences, and when things become harder to
quantify, more confounding variables are introduced into the study environment.
The argument that psychology is not a valid science because it is difficult to quantify is a
flawed way of thinking, much like the misconception that someone with mental illness
will display their symptoms openly; the unfortunate stigma surrounding mental illness is that it
prevents patients from seeking treatment. The invisible nature of mental health problems, the
fact that they do not show up on an x–ray, which no blood test can diagnose depression,
underlies much of the discrimination people with mental health issues face. Humans are
strongly predisposed to believe in what they can see. For many people, it is hard to accept that
severe anxiety, for example, might incapacitate someone from leaving their house as genuinely
as if they were suffering from a physical paralysis. Untreated mental illnesses are a growing
concern in the United States, with about 43.8 billion adults with mental illness (the is
