idiographic and nomothetic

what is an idiographic approach

one that studies people as unique individuals with the focus of the study being their subjective experiences, motivations and values

does no compare people against eachother but describes the experiences of each individual to gain insight,

use qualitative data, self report, unstructured interviews

eg. humanistic, psychodynamic

what is a nomothetic approach

studies human behaviour through the development of general principles

often reductionist and determinist and highly scientific as they study llarge groups of people in a controlled environment

e.g. behaviourist, cognitive, biological - study behaviour through creating a hypotheses, analysing behaviour, stats test, creating laws

what are the evaluation points

case studies as complement idiographic approach

issues with idiographic when its only approach validating a theory

nomothetic is more scientific

individual differences

evaluation- case studies as complement nomothetic approach

P: case studies, paticulart in area of memory, show how the idiographic approach can be used to complement nomothetic approach rather than contradict

E: e.g. Clive Wearing is an example of idiographic research as he was unique and studied in depth and findings from his case allowed further understanding of the structure or long term memory and its features.

E: nomothetic research such as Bahrick’s led to the development of the idea that for most people LTM has an infinite duration but aging may impact recall

L: this combination approach to research allows a deeper level of understanding and real life cases can help to validate or challenge a theory.

evaluation - issues with idiographic when its only approach validating a theory

P: however, problems arise when the idiographic approach is the only approach adopted in the validation of the theory

E: a prime example of this is Freud’s work on “little hans”. From this case study Freud developed a number of concepts integral to his psychodynamic theory

E: e.g. he deduced that “Little Hans’ fear of his father was due to the sexual attraction and love he felt for his mother - i.e. the oedipus complex

L: this isolates nature of this case and the subjective interpretations made by Freud means there is a much greater scope for bias when using the idiographic approach

evaluation- nomothetic is more scientific

P: conversely the nomothetic approach allows for more scientific rigour in its methods increasing credibility of theories that adopt it

E: research tends to be carried out using standardised conditions, statistical testing and group averages in well controlled environments

E: e.g IQ testing adopts a nomothetic approach and the research has lead to well established norms such as the average IQ is 100

L: research based on the empirical method tends to be more accepted both amongst scientific community and general public, improving reputation of psychology

evaluation - individual differences

P: however, there is a lot to be said for understanding the individual’s thoughts, motives and behaviours when studying the discipline of psychology

E: e.g. the understanding that Sz affects 1% of the population is not that useful when truing to gain an understanding into life with the illness

E: this is particularly true in research conducted on memory where the pps is rarely treated as an individual with their own set of experiences but simply a score from a test

L: meaning fundamentally important experiences and environmental differences are ignored in the quest to find statistical average