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Asked by anon-340946 on 7 Nov 2022.
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Sameer Alladin answered on 7 Nov 2022:
That’s a great observation that psychology theories are always evolving! The reality is that research is never finished – as one lecturer once told me “every study is simply a pilot study for the next one.” Human beings are constantly evolving – we change as our physical and social environments change (and of course, we affect our physical and social environments as well). This constant evolution of how we behave in various contexts means that we’ll always have questions to ask and answers to find. This is actually one of the things I enjoy the most about psychology – that there’s always something new to understand about what it means to be human.
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Sinong Chen answered on 8 Nov 2022:
I risk being quite biased here (given that Psychology is my field). I do think Psychology is incredibly important for people to study because it gives one a better understanding of just how complex people and situations are – which, I think, is quite important for developing holistic thinking. It’s also quite important for developing a more compassionate worldview. I think any field that encourages one to think in a more integrative way about the way the world works is a good thing – and psychology certainly does that by encouraging you to consider biological, social, and individual psychological factors and how they all interact.
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Fiona Ling answered on 8 Nov 2022:
Great understanding of psychology you have! Indeed psychology theories are constantly evolving, which leads to more research to understand people’s behaviour and what’s happening around us. By definition, theories are not laws of nature. Laws of nature (e.g. law of gravity) are unlikely to evolve, but theories can as people come up with new perspectives on how to understand people’s behaviours. So I doubt it’s any time soon we’ll reach a point where we have no more questions to answer!
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Mhairi Bowe answered on 10 Nov 2022:
Science is only ever as good as our current knowledge. That is why we always use the most recent and strongest evidence and we make sure our theories and predictions are testable. If we have robust and reliable evidence that produces the same outcomes multiple times, then we can be more sure about our conclusions but the tests we have and the methods we use are ever evolving. That is why we should never use the word ‘proved’ in scientific study.
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Liz Halstead answered on 23 Nov 2022:
This is a great question, the only thing I would add is that the world around us changes so much, particularly the environment. So we have to keep re evaluating theories in line with current societal attitudes and changes, and the environment around us. I think we will always have research questions to ask and be answered and that is good practice 🙂
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