Ideographic and nomothetic

Question 1

Ideographic approach

Answer 1

Focuses on the individual and uniqueness (qualitive)

Question 2

Nomothetic approach

Answer 2

Seeks to formulate general laws on behaviour based on studies of groups and generalisations (quantitive)

Question 3

Examples of ideographic

Answer 3

Freud little hans case study

-involved 150 pages of quotes and descriptions from the father. Alongside freuds own interpretations of events.

Question 4

Humanistic approach (ideographic)

Answer 4

seeks this approach as they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing life from their POV.

Question 5

Examples of nomothetic

Answer 5

Biological approach- seeks to portray basic priciples on how the body and brain works, leading gendered alpha bias (stress response study.

Behaviourists- seeking one set of rules for all animals- humans and non-humans (skinner)

Question 6

Strength, ideographic (re-focus psychology to the individual)

Answer 6

• Humanists and qualitivists argue psychology had lost sight of what it was to be human
• Allport: first to use this debate used the ideographic approach to reorioentate what was needed in psychology in the latter half of the last century.
• He argued it is only be knowing the person can we predict what that person will do in any situation.

Question 7

Weakness, ideographic (Not scientific)

Answer 7

• Leaded to recent increase in positive psychology as humanistic approach was not sufficiently science based and therefor findings were essentially ‘meaningless’
• However this cannot be said for other ideograph approaches (case studies and qualitative research.
• E.g qualitative research uses reflexivity to identify any bias influences.

Question 8

Strength nomothetic (Very practical)

Answer 8

Ideographic is very time consuming, collecting large amounts of data for one person.

• Whereas nomothetic collects a large number of people
• It is much quicker for a much larger sample size due to the ability to use methods such as questioairres as the data can be processed and generated quickly.

Question 9

Weakness 2 ,ideographic (no general predictions)

Answer 9

• Such general predictions can be useful. e.g producing drugs to treat mental illness.
• It would be far too time consuming to produce personal therapies for unique individuals therefor predictions are needed.
• However Allport argued it dies enable predictions: once a few dealtailed observations are done on the individual it can be used for predictions.