Idiographic And Nomothetic

Question 1

Idiographic

Answer 1

Focuses on uniqueness of individual, everyone is different, no one should be compared, subjective emotions

Question 2

Examples of idiographic approach

Answer 2

Maslows heriachy of needs - humanistic approach focuses on individuals conscious experience of self
Freud’s psychodynamic approach

Question 3

Nomothetic

Answer 3

Aims to make general laws about behaviours allowing comparisons to be made from statistical neons - quantitative data is easier for statistical analysis

Question 4

Examples of nomothetic

Answer 4

Classifying people into groups using DSM - using general laws about mental disorders to classify people according to their symptoms shown
Biological approach - biological explanations and treatment of OCD looking at neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine

Question 5

What is the compromise

Answer 5

Idiographic and nomothetic approach can be used to give fuller explanations and understanding of the behaviour

Question 6

Example of compromise

Answer 6

Psychodynamic approach - idiographic case studies are used to make general nomothetic laws about certain behaviours. The psychosexual stages of development are general laws about development but a person may have different individual experiences and develop differently

Question 7

Strength of idiographic approach

Answer 7

Rich detail collected, qualitative methods eg case studies and in depth interviews, subjective info giving detailed insight allows researchers to explore issues in greater depth useful for new research

Question 8

Strength of type of data collected for nomothetic

Answer 8

Quantitative methods - larger samples are easier to statistically analyse, researchers can formulate trends and pattterns to explain common behaviours in large groups of people’s

Question 9

Strength of nomothetic in terms of application

Answer 9

Employees general laws that can have a range of beneficial uses in everyday life eg medical treatments for mental health conditions. Helped us understand how neurotransmitters affect OCD leading to successful treatments such as SSRIS

Question 10

Strength of ‘compliment each other’

Answer 10

Greater understanding comes from using approaches together, psychologists use general laws about how we all use memory in decision making and processing tasks ie multi-storey model is momoethitc and applied to everyone. Idiographic approach studying KF who’s MSM was less detailed