How has the scientific method made a contribution to psychology?
It hasn’t. The scientific method is based around the premise of ceteris paribus, which means that all the subjects in your experiments should be equal with just one variable changing. This cannot be guaranteed in psychology, all subjects are extremely different. For example, suppose that you give your subjects a pill and want to see if the pill makes them happy. You ask them “are you happy?” Some of them will lie, other will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, others will not know exactly what they are feeling, others may be depressed, others may have been happy since before the pill… and so on. The results of such experiment will be pure garbage. You can’t know what’s inside other people’s mind. I think the scientific method should never be applied to studies of psychology, the mind is too complex for ceteris paribus to be guaranteed.
