Every now and then people ask themselves: is psychology a science? They might assume that psychology is just a bunch of individuals talking about their feelings all the time. They might even say that psychology is the study of the mind. However, psychology is not a phrenology that focuses on palpating the skull for bumps to determine the person's personality. Phrenology is also a pseudoscience of which psychology is not a part. Pseudoscience may seem like science, but it is missing some key factors needed for scientific research. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Another example of pseudoscience besides phrenology is astrology: when people look at their horoscopes they might think there is science behind it. However, horoscopes are vague and are set up this way so that they can apply to everyone. Psychology, on the other hand, has a scientific basis. Psychology uses the approach of empiricism which obtains information from direct observation (Gravetter & Forzano,2009) and uses all the steps of the scientific method. The steps of the scientific method are to ask a question, do basic research, make a hypothesis, test your hypothesis by doing an experiment, and finally analyze your data and draw a conclusion, then report the results. If they had not followed the scientific method back then, psychological experiments like the one at Stanford Prison would likely not exist along with other experiments and discoveries that have been made about human behavior today. The Stanford prison experiment occurs when a man named Philip Zimbardo wanted to study reports of brutality among guards in American prisons. (McLeod,2009) Even though his experiment was unethical, through his experiment, we learned that when people are given too much power they end up becoming sadistic tyrants. Zimbardo had to follow all the steps of the scientific method to acquire the information he learned about what people do when they have too much power. Science is about understanding the world we live in and using that information to make the world a better place. This is what psychology also tries to do: it aims to explain, predict, describe and possibly change. People who believe that psychology is not a science know very little or nothing about psychology at all. Not only is psychology considered a real science because of its methodology, but some other factors that make psychology scientific are the brilliant researchers/founders of psychology. Psychology is the sister of philosophy. Therefore, psychology was influenced in Greece by people like Socrates or Aristotle (McLeod,2011). However, psychology and philosophy are not the same fields; psychology is designed to study human behavior and why humans behave in certain ways, while philosophy examines how people relate to knowledge. Psychology was part of the branch of philosophy until 1870 (“History of Psychology,” n.d.) when the father of psychology Wilhelm Wundt opened the first experimental laboratory dedicated to psychology in 1879 in Germany. Wundt analyzed the human mind differently than philosophy. In this way, he separated psychology from philosophy by proposing ideas such as introspection and structuralism. (“Discover Wilhelm Wundt's Contributions to Psychology,” n.d.). Structuralism examines the structure of minds, and introspection examines internal thoughts and feelings. Wundt's work also contributed to understanding how to apply experimental methods in.