> The problem with Psych is that you can't really experiment on humans in a meaningful way While absolutely valid this isn't the only problem: One other compli

> The problem with Psych is that you can't really experiment on humans in a meaningful way While absolutely valid this isn't the only problem: One other complication is that conclusions from experimental studies often don't apply to the real world, i.e. people behave differently in experimental settings. Thus in any case you can either have good control over confounding varables but very limited scope (experimental studies) or bad control over the setting but the ability to observe real live behavior (field studies). But it gets worse: Two people with identical behaviour can have quite different motivations and thus identical observable behaviour can result in quite different consequences. I.E. 5 hours a day playing games can be both healthy behavour or an addiction/a means of suppressing thoughts or memories, depending on the person. So you'll always have that massive confounder called the mind, in every setting. Which means you have to inspect the mind itself, which only works indirectly, i.e. by interacting with the person, asking questions, trying to find out the motivation behind a particular action. And the person often doesn't really know, because a particular decision probably wasn't chosen consciously.