2 The Scientific Study of Psychology and Neuroscience
written by Jennifer Stamp & Kevin LeBlanc
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Define psychology and neuroscience
- Understand the merits of an education in psychology and neuroscience
According to Wikipedia, psychology is often defined in simple terms as “the study of mind and behaviour” and neuroscience as “the scientific study of the nervous system, its functions, and disorders” yet these definitions don’t really capture how these disciplines operate. Instead, it’s useful to think of psychology and neuroscience as the scientific study of experience. In this view, researchers draw on both human and non-human animal data to understand how the brain gives rise to perception, thought, emotion, and behaviour, and (ideally) apply this knowledge to real-world questions and everyday life.
Good science requires clearly defined methods and outcomes that are tested under conditions designed to minimize bias, and these methods are described in detail in peer-reviewed scientific publications so that others can evaluate and replicate the findings. This transparency allows readers to judge the strength of the evidence for themselves. Importantly, bad science should not be confused with pseudoscience. Pseudoscience may appear scientific on the surface, but it does not follow established principles for collecting, analyzing, or reporting data. The Tricky Topic below explores what psychology and neuroscience are, how they operate as sciences, and how to distinguish them from pseudoscience.
TRICKY TOPIC: WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY & NEUROSCIENCE?
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For a full transcript of this video, click here.
When explaining behaviour in daily life, we tend to use common sense explanations based on practical experiences. For instance, almost everyone has occasions of absent-mindedness such as forgetting where they left their keys because they were distracted by other thoughts or tasks. This experience suggests a link between distraction and memory lapses. This explanation is intuitive, but it isn’t directly measurable. To study this scientifically, psychological researchers translate such intuitive ideas into observable and quantifiable predictions.
A researcher could turn this into a testable hypothesis by asking whether memory performance declines when attention is split between tasks. This allows specific predictions, such as people will recall fewer words when they must simultaneously monitor tones or respond to visual cues. In this way, “distraction” is operationalized in terms of measurable changes in attention and performance. By converting broad, intuitive explanations into clear behavioural and biological predictions, researchers can study behaviour in ways that are clearly testable.
This emphasis on measurability also points to an important limitation in the scientific study of the mind: while thoughts and experiences are real to us, they do not always map neatly onto physical quantities in a direct or straightforward way. Instead, science is grounded in empiricism, the idea that knowledge is derived from systematic observation and experimentation rather than from pure logic or appeals to authority.
In the past, the study of mental phenomena was primarily the domain of philosophy, but towards the end of the 19th century psychology emerged as a distinct scientific discipline. Today, psychology and neuroscience are firmly established as empirical sciences alongside fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. The field of psychology is highly associated with the natural sciences because both behaviour and cognition can be understood through biological process taking place in the brain. However, behaviour is also constantly influenced by interactions within its social and environmental settings, which connects psychology to broader social scientific approaches as well.
Why Study Psychology and Neuroscience?
Psychology and neuroscience offer complementary approaches to explaining behaviour at different levels. Neuroscience focuses on biological process and aims to understand how physical brain structure and neurological processes produce sensations, perceptions, thinking, emotions, and actions. Neuroscientists investigate the development of the nervous system, changes in its functioning due to experiences, and alterations in function caused by injuries. Psychology takes a broader perspective on behaviour and mental processes, examining them in the context in which they occur. This includes how the world is perceived and interpreted, how learning and memory operate, how emotion shapes decision-making, and how social and environmental factors influence behaviour.
These disciplines require strong scientific and critical thinking skills, including how to evaluate evidence, interpret data, and assess the reliability and validity of different claims. In doing so, they help build an understanding of general principles of behaviour while also capturing meaningful differences between individuals and the influence of broader cultural and environmental contexts, with applications that extend from everyday life to professional, clinical, and research settings.
