I&D - Idiographic and nomothetic approaches to psychological investigation Flashcards
Idiographic approach
Focuses on individuals and emphasises uniqueness; favours qualitative methods in research.
Nomothetic approach
Seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on the study of groups and the use of statistical (quantitative) techniques. It attempts to summarise the differences between people through generalisations.
Why/how is the idiographic approach qualitative?
Because the focus is on gaining insights into human behaviour by studying unique individuals in depth rather than gaining numerical data from many individuals and determining average statistics. The focus is on the quality of information rather than quantity.
It is also qualitative as it employs qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews, case studies and thematic analysis.
Is the idiographic approach about quality of data or quantity?
The focus is on the quality of information rather than quantity.
What are the keys points of the idiographic approach?
- Focuses in individual and recognises uniqueness.
- Private, subjective and conscious experiences.
- Qualitative methods of investigation.
What are strengths of the idiographic approach?
- Provides a more complete or global understanding of the individual.
- Satisfies key aim of science - description and understanding of behaviour.
- Findings can serve as a source of ideas or hypotheses for later study.
- The focuses mean the individual feels valued and unique.
What are limitations of the idiographic approach?
- Hard to generalise from detailed, subjective knowledge about one person (e.g. HM).
- Often regarded as non-scientific as subjective experience cannot be empirically tested.
- Largely neglects biological, especially genetic, influences.
What are some examples of the idiographic approach?
Freud used case studies of his patients as a way to understand behaviour, such as the case of Little Hans - this consisted of almost 150 pages of verbatim quotes recorded by Hans’ father and descriptions of events in Hans’ life, plus Freud’s own interpretations of the events (Freud, 1909). Freud did produce generalisations from his case studies, but these are still idiographic because they are drawn from unique individuals.
Humanistic psychologists - as they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person. What matters is the person’s subjective experience and not something that someone else might observe of their behaviour.
The study of Jenny by Gordon Allport was used by him as a way to support his theory of personality (Allport, 1961). Allport believed that this idiographic perspective could tell us more about human behaviour and personality than could the use of personality tests, which only provide statistical information. In fact he called his approach the ‘psychology of the individual’.
What are the nomothetic requirements?
- Large samples.
- Numerical data.
- Comparing mean, variance, SD, etc.
What does the nomothetic approach state?
That accuracy improves as you test more people. Differences become averaged out in large samples, giving results closer and closer to the population average.
What are the key points of the nomothetic approach?
- Attempts to establish laws and generalisations.
- Objective knowledge through scientific methods.
- Quantitative methods of investigation.
What are the strengths of the nomothetic approach?
- Regarded as scientific: precise measurement; predictions and control of behaviour; large sample; objective methods, replicable and generalisable.
- Has helped psychology as a whole become scientific by developing laws and theories which can be empirically tested.
- Combines biological and social aspects.
What are the limitations of the nomothetic approach?
- Predictions can be made about groups but these may not apply to individuals.
- Approach has been accused of losing sight of the ‘whole person’.
- Gives a superficial understanding - people may act the same but for different reasons.
- Extensive use of controlled lab experiments creates a lack of generalisation to everyday life.
What are some examples of the nomothetic approach?
The biological seeks to portray the basic principles of how the body and the brain work. This approach has sometimes mistakenly just studied men and assumed that the same processes would occur in women, e.g. the stress response.
Behaviourists produced general laws of behaviour - classical and operant conditioning. Their research may not have involved thousands of human ppts, which is the more typical nomothetic approach, but they were seeking one set of rules for all animals - humans and non-humans.
Cognitive psychology - aim to develop general laws of behaviour which apply to all people, such as understanding typical memory processes. The cognitive approach does use case studies (such as HM), but these are required because, in order to understand the working of the normal mind, it is often necessary to look at rare abnormal cases.
As a comparison with Allport’s research on personality, we can consider Hans Eysenck’s (1947) psychometric approach to personality. Psychometrics literally means measuring psychological characteristics such as personality and intelligence. Large groups of people are tested, and the distribution of their scores informs us about what is normal and abnormal. In the case of personality, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) was used to collect large amounts of data which used factor analysis (a statistical technique that reduces data to a smaller set of component variables) to produce personality types.
