The View of Russian Psychology Students on Whether Psychology is a Science

Abstract

The Psychology as Science Scale (Friedrich, 1996) was administered to 525 psychology students from nine Russian universities to assess their beliefs about the nature of the discipline. About half of students (49.6%) generally agreed that psychology may be called a scientific discipline. Specifically, 71. 5% of the students agreed that psychology is a natural science, similar to biology, chemistry, and physics, 39. 9% of students agreed that psychological research is important and training in psychological methodology is necessary, and 43.1% of students agreed that human behavior is highly predictable. Students who took three methodology courses shared significantly stronger beliefs in the need for psychological research and the importance of training in methodology compared to students who did not take any methodology courses. Furthermore, students with a specialist degree had significantly stronger beliefs that psychology is a science compared to students who have just finished school. In terms of the effect of students’ career aspirations, students who wanted to be academic psychologists and clinicians had significantly stronger beliefs that psychology is a science compared to students who did not have clarity about their future careers. Regardless of the study limitations, these findings have potential implications for Russian psychology instructors.

Myths in psychology: psychological misconceptions among Spanish psychology students

“…Reaching a higher academic year could indicate a greater interest in the discipline, and with it, a greater desire to further delve into psychology ( Furnham & Hughes, 2014 ). However, although there is a decrease in the belief in myths according to academic year, these preconceptions do not always disappear completely ( Aleksandrova-Howell et al, 2020 ; Brown, 1983 ; Gaze, 2014 ). For example, Gardner & Dalsing (1986) found that a change only occurs when the person has participated in psychology-related courses to the subject of between 19 and 70 h. In other cases, such as that of Vaughan’s study ( 1977 ), it was found that university students from different degrees started, on average, defending 40% of a series of misconceptions about Psychology.…”

“…Despite the extensive research on myths in Psychology in other countries—see, for example, Russia ( Aleksandrova-Howell et al, 2020 ), North America ( Basterfield et al, 2020 ; Bensley & Lilienfeld, 2017 ; Brown, 1983 ; Gardner & Brown, 2013 ), United Kingdom ( Furnham, Callahan & Rawles, 2003 ; Furnham & Hughes, 2014 ; Furnham & Grover, 2019 ), or India ( Kishore et al, 2011 )—a study of the same characteristics has not yet been carried out in Spain.…”