Idiographic and Nomothetic Flashcards
Define idiographic
Understanding behaviour through studying individual cases
Give some examples of an idiographic study/ technique
Case studies interviews, content/thematic analysis
Define nomothetic.
Understanding behaviour through developing general laws that apply to all people.
Give some examples of nomothetic techniques.
Mata analysis, Questionnaires, observations.
What did Millon and Davis suggest research should start with?
Should start with nomosthetic approach then produce laws and then focus on idiographic understanding
What does the ideographic approach reject?
The scientific approach
What does the idiographic approach say about the understanding of behaviour?
Should be understood in terms of subjective experience
What are the main features of the nomothetic approach?
Main feature is to identify similarities between people and laws governing behaviour
What are the three general laws?
1) Classification (DSM IV)
2) Establishing principles (conformity + obedience)
3) Establishing dimensions (IQ)
Arguments for the idiographic approach
1) Gain detailed and informative descriptions of behaviour
2) Can provide hypotheses for future scientific study
3) Develop holistic understanding of individual
4) can uncover causes for behaviour not identified using the nomothetic approach
Arguments against the idiographic approach
1) Demand characteristics/ experimenter bias more likely to occur during data collection
2) Methods are subjective, flexible and unstandardised so replication, prediction of behaviour is difficult.
3) Unscientific - not evidence base, most research is qualitative which is open to interpretation
4) Cannot generalise to wider population
Arguments for the nomothetic approach
1) Laws and theories can be empirically tested, hypotheses are rigorously tested
2) Can generalise to wider population
3) Methods are objective, measurable and can be verified so replication, predicition and control of behaviour is easy
Arguments against the nomothethic approach
1) Understanding is often superficial e.g. same score on personality test but different answers
2) Lacking ecological validity particularly when theories are developed in a lab
3) generalised law and principles may not apply to an individual/ individuals within a group
A03 A strength of the idiographic approach is that it focuses on psychological understanding on a individual level
- Humanistic and qualitative psychologists in the later half of the century felt that there was too much emphasis on the measurement and lost sight of what is human
- Allport was the first to use the term idiographic and nomothetic
- Argued that only knowing the individual we can predict what they would do in any situation
- This suggests that the focus on individuals can provide us with a more complete understanding
A03 Is positive psychology more scientific than humanistic psychology?
- Limitation of the idiographic approach is that it lacks objective evidence
- Reason for positive psychology
- View is that humanistic psychology is not evidence based = meaningless findings
- Positive psychology aims to be more evidence based
- Other idiographic studies (case, qualitative research) do use evidence based
- Qualitative research uses reflexivity to identify the influence of any bias. (researches reflects or thinks critically during research process)
- Thus the idiographic approach do embrace many aims of the scientific approach
