Psychology is both. It is traditionally classified as a social science, but several of its subfields carry official STEM designations from the U.S. government. Where psychology lands depends on which agency, institution, or degree program you’re looking at, and the distinction has real consequences for funding, degree classification, and immigration benefits.
Why Psychology Is Called a Social Science
Psychology has long been grouped with the social sciences because it studies human behavior, thought, and emotion rather than the physical makeup of the natural world. Unlike chemistry or physics, where two particles of the same type behave identically, psychology deals with people whose responses are shaped by culture, personal history, and social context. That variability is exactly what separates social sciences from natural sciences.
At the same time, psychology uses the scientific method in the same formal way as any natural science: forming hypotheses, running controlled experiments, collecting empirical data, and publishing reproducible results. This is what makes it a science at all, rather than philosophy or opinion. Psychologists conduct quantitative research, qualitative studies, and mixed-method designs. The field was formalized as a science precisely because its practitioners committed to these methods. So the “social” in social science isn’t a qualifier that makes it less scientific. It describes the subject matter, not the rigor.
How the U.S. Government Classifies Psychology
The National Science Foundation lists psychology as a science and engineering field, grouped alongside disciplines like biology, computer science, and mathematics. The NSF recognizes four broad areas within it: clinical psychology, counseling and applied psychology, human development, and research and experimental psychology.
The Department of Homeland Security maintains a separate STEM Designated Degree Program List that determines which degrees qualify for immigration and work-authorization benefits. DHS includes multiple psychology subfields on this list with specific classification codes:
- Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics
- Comparative Psychology
- Developmental and Child Psychology
- Experimental Psychology
- Personality Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology
- Psychopharmacology
- Research and Experimental Psychology, Other
That’s a broad list. It includes subfields like social psychology and developmental psychology that most people would instinctively call “social science.” The government treats them as STEM anyway.
The Classification Gap at Universities
Here’s where it gets confusing. Most colleges and universities classify their undergraduate psychology programs under the code “Psychology, General” (42.0101), which does not carry a STEM designation. That means a psychology degree from one school might count as STEM while the identical curriculum at another school does not.
Some programs have worked with their university administration to reclassify under “Research and Experimental Psychology” (42.2799), which is a STEM designation. The difference isn’t necessarily in what you study. It’s in how your school filed the paperwork. This matters enormously for international students (more on that below) and can affect how the degree is perceived by employers and graduate programs.
The American Psychological Association has pushed for years to close this gap. The APA’s position is that psychology is a “core STEM discipline” because of its direct contributions to scientific and technological innovation. Their argument centers on a practical point: technology requires human operators, and understanding human capacities and limitations is essential for implementing any technological advance. Despite this, psychology is often left off the list of core disciplines when STEM funding and initiatives are distributed.
BA vs. BS in Psychology
The distinction between a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science in psychology reflects the field’s dual identity. At the University of Maryland, for example, BS students must complete all the requirements for the BA plus at least three additional advanced courses (17 credits) in mathematics and science. The BS track requires calculus-level math, pushing students deeper into the quantitative and laboratory side of the discipline.
A BA in psychology leans more toward the social science and liberal arts tradition, with flexibility to pair psychology with humanities or other social sciences. A BS signals a stronger grounding in research methodology and statistics. Neither is inherently better, but if you want your degree to read as more “STEM-adjacent,” the BS track does that.
Why This Matters for International Students
The practical stakes of psychology’s STEM classification are highest for international students on F-1 visas. Students who earn a STEM-designated degree can apply for a 24-month extension of their Optional Practical Training (OPT), giving them up to 36 total months of work authorization in the U.S. after graduation. Students with non-STEM degrees get only 12 months.
To qualify, your specific degree program must appear on the DHS STEM Designated Degree Program List, and your school must be accredited and certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. If your school classified your psychology degree under the general code rather than a STEM-eligible code, you won’t qualify for the extension, even if your coursework was identical to someone at a STEM-classified program. If you’re an international student considering psychology, checking your program’s exact classification code before enrolling is one of the most consequential things you can do.
There’s one additional option: if you previously earned a STEM-designated psychology degree and are currently on OPT under a different, non-STEM degree, you may still be able to use the earlier STEM degree to apply for the extension, as long as the job is directly related to that degree.
Where Different Subfields Fall
Psychology spans a wide spectrum. On one end, behavioral neuroscience and psychopharmacology overlap heavily with biology and medicine, studying brain chemistry, neural pathways, and drug effects. These subfields look and feel like natural science. On the other end, counseling psychology and clinical practice focus on therapeutic relationships, cultural factors, and individual experience, fitting squarely in the social science tradition.
The interesting cases sit in the middle. Social psychology uses rigorous experimental methods to study how people influence each other’s behavior. Developmental psychology tracks cognitive and emotional changes across the lifespan using longitudinal data. Quantitative psychology develops the statistical tools that other sciences rely on. All three appear on the DHS STEM list, even though none involve a microscope or a lab coat. What qualifies them is the methodology: controlled experiments, statistical analysis, and empirical data collection.
The honest answer to “is psychology STEM or social science?” is that the field genuinely straddles both categories. Its subject matter is social. Its methods are scientific. And its official classification depends on which specific subfield you’re in, which degree your school awards, and which government agency is doing the classifying.