idiographic and nomothetic

What does the debate focus on

Whether research should be focused on studying the group or the individual

And whether general laws should be made by which people can be compared and measured OR should it be focused on what makes people unique - the specific rather than general

What does the idiographic app emphasise

Studying the individual and the uniqueness of human nature

What methods is the Idio app associated with

Qualitative data

Case studies or unstructured interviews

Reflects aim of using research to describe human experience and gain insight into their unique perspective

What’s an example of a case study idiographic

Freud

Little hans

Castration anxiety

Afraid of horses as displacement as psychosexual development he reduced his fear

He got almost 150 pages on Hans father for Freud to use and make sense of little Hans behaviour

What’s the strengths of using the case stud

Highly detailed and informative about single individuals

What do humanists believe

On idiographic side

Concerned with studying the subjective experience and whole person

Interested in how others perceive an individuals experience

They believe ingenious,ore useful than experimental work of behaviourists and cognitive labs

What is the nomothetic approach and what methods are used?

focused on producing general laws based on research of large groups

The approach uses quantitate data and methods closely aligned to scientific within psychology such as experiments

It stidyeos larger groups of people to establish ways in which people are similar

What are examples of nomothetic approach

Ehaviorusts

Conduct lab experiments to establish laws of learning that could generalised to humans and other animals

Biological

When exhaling psychological disorders like OCD. They use biologica therapies to treat all patients

Cognitive

Atkinson and sheffrin as examples when developing general laws for MSM used to exclaim how memory works in most people

What research method is the most nomoethic

Meta analysis is the most nomothetic

What is good about nomothetic approach being scientific give exmoale

The Sue of experiments and quantitative data and controlled measurements allows it to replicate research and examine reliability of findings which has helped it predict behaviour and control behaviour

Example is OCD is explained through higher levels of dopamine and lowers levels of serotonin and drug therapies were made based of this nomothetic research and work by re addressing a biological imbalance

What is a weakness of nomothetic approach

It can’t explain evrones behaviour because most research have an average

And people in the group would be similar to the average but not exactly the average , the unique count of them isn’t considered and some people will be very far from the average

But in this aloeaifh those people further from the mean are still explained by using the mean

What is a weakness of ideographic approach that differs to nomothetic in terms of scientific

It is not as scientific

In many ways it’s subjective as it doesn’t collect info that can be replicated or objective

The researcher will try to use reflexivity which is where it accounts for the potential bias and tries to remove the subjectivity by being honest about the bias at the end

It can be empirical a problem is that each case is u inquest and therefor is a lack of generalisability.

What is a weakness of idiographic in terms of generalisability

It can’t make general laws

It can have a lot of idiographic data but will struggle to turn it into a model or theory that allows for reliable predictions to be made

It’s also time consuming as it takes a long time collect data and then write it up to a report

What did allport say that was said to be wrong

Allport said that the idoiographic approach can be used to make predictions by collecting lots of detail from seevrakncase studies and then use it to create a theory that can generalise to more individuals

But it was pointed out that this was actually the nomothetic approach

What is a main strength of the idiographic approach and what’s an example

Case study method powerful tool for evaluating psychological theories that have been established

using a nomothetic approach.

KF used to criticise the MSM for having one STM when really it’s compromised of 2 the visual and auditorial this shows a single case study to generate further research to develop new theories highlighting a strength of the approach to psychological investigations

What is mainly used no a days

Now a days both approaches are used

Data is collected from group studies and used to predict what will happen across large numbers of people

Example the research that created the covid vaccine was nomothetic

What does holt suggest about us8ng both methods

Both epmethods should be used

As there is a false distinction

Many approaches take advantage of both approaches

E.g cognitive uses nomothetic research to create general laws but uses case studies to provide evidence for or against a particular theory , suggesting the psychologists should employ both methods when conducting research.