Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches

What is the idographic approach?

An approach to research that focuses more on the individual case as a means of understanding behaviour, rather than aiming to formulate general laws of behaviour

What methods in psychology is the idiographic approach normally associated with?

Methods in psychology that produce qualitative data, such as case studies, unstructured interviews and other self-report measures

What is one of the central aims of idiographic research?

To describe the richness of human experience and gain insight into the person's unique way of viewing the world

What is the nomothetic approach?

The nomothetic approach attempts to study human behaviour through the development of general principles and universal laws

What is the main aim of the nomothetic approach?

to produce general laws of human behaviour

What methods in psychology is the nomothetic approach normally associated with?

Methods that would be regarded as 'scientific' within psychology such as experiments

These involve the study of large numbers of people in order to establish ways in which people are similar

What are some examples of the idiographic approach in psychology?

Humanistic Psychology e.g Rogers and Maslow were interested in only documenting the conscious experience of the individual, they were more concerned with investigating unique experience than producing general laws of behaviour

Psychodynamic Approach as Freud's use of the case study method when detailing the lives of his patients

What are some examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology?

Much of the research from behaviourist, cognitive and biological psychologists would be nomothetic

Skinner and other behaviourists ,for example, studied the responses of rats, cats, pigeons etc. to develop the laws of learning

How does having in-depth qualitative methods act as a strength for the idiographic approach?

- provides a complete and global account of the individual

- this may complement the nomothetic approach by shedding further light on general laws or indeed by challenging such laws

- for example, a single case may generate hypotheses for further study

How does having a restricted nature of work act as a weakness of the idiographic approach?

- supporters of this approach must recognise the narrow and restricted nature of their work

- one of the criticisms levelled at freud is that many of his key concepts, like the Oedipus complex, were largely developed from the detailed study of a single case e.g Little Hans

- generalisations like this can't be made without further examples

- methods associated with this approach like case studies aren't as scientific as they are open to bias and subjectivity by the researcher

How does having a more scientific approach to research act as a strength for the nomothetic approach?

- the processes involved in nomothetic research tend to be more scientific, mirroring those employed within the natural sciences

- for example, testing under standardised conditions, using data sets with group averages, statistical analysis etc

- such processes have enabled psychologists to establish norms of typical behaviour, giving psychology better scientific credibility

How does overlooking the richness of human experience act as a weakness for the nomothetic approach?

- the preoccupation within the nomothetic approach on general laws, prediction and control has been accused of 'losing the whole person' within psychology

- knowing that there is a 1% lifetime risk of developing Sz tells us little about what life is like for someone who is experiencing the disorder

- similarly, in lab studies involving tests of memory, pps are treated as series of scores rather than individuals and their subjective experience is ignored

- thus ignoring the richness of human experience