idiographic and nomothetic Flashcards
what is idiographic
describes the study of the individual, who is seen as a unique agent with a unique life history, with properties setting them apart from other individuals
what is nomothetic
concerned with studying what we share with others, involves establishing laws or generalizations that apply to all people
what is this debate about
how we go about conducting research in psychology
what is an idiographic approach
study of an individual and the individuals experience
so you use the research methods that allow us to explore that individual experience. these methods tend to favor research methods that produce qualitative data because you want detail
examples of idiographic research methods
unstructured interviews, case studies
what are the consequences with idiographic approach
because you are going to get a lot of detail about a particular individual what you wont get is a general law and principle so you cant get on a case study for one individual person be able to establish general laws and principles because you have only studied one individual in detail
what is the nomothetic approach
to study large groups of people but in order to do this what I am not going to be able to do is the detail you had in an idiographic approach
examples with nomothetic approach
favors the methods that produce quantitative data so you are more likely to use experimental methods in order to carry out research
consequences of nomothetic approach
because you have studied a large group of people you can establish a general law and principle but what you cant do is tell you too much about an individual/ individuals experience
evaluation: there are individual differences within us so it is not as beneficial
idiographic - describes the study of the individual, who is seen as a unique agent
with a unique life history, with properties
setting them apart from other individuals
nomothetic - concerned with studying what we
share with others, involves establishing laws
or generalizations that
apply to all people
Idiographic approaches use qualitative techniques to study the individual in depth. Focus is on describing
the uniqueness of the subject’s personal experience, not providing general laws or theories of human behaviour that apply to all. Research methods include case studies, unstructured interviews and
observation
Humanistic and psychodynamic psychology both use ideographic techniques. Humanists see each individual as fundamentally unique, suggesting it is meaningless to produce general laws of behaviour. Freud did produce laws of behaviour but created these from ideographic case studies such as little Hans.
Other approaches use unusual case studies for theory generation (Clive Wearing, Phineas gage
Nomothetic approaches
use quantitative techniques to study populations, then using this data construct
general testable theories/laws/classifications that apply to all. Scientific experimentation that is objective
and controlled is the primary research method. Data produced is assessed with inferential statistics before
it is accepted.
