idiographic and nomothetic Flashcards
What is the difference between idiographic and nomothetic approaches?
Idiographic- concerned with the unique human experience
Nomothetic -concerned with developing general laws of human behaviour, that can provide a benchmark which people can be compared to
Idiographic:
How are people regarded?
Data type?
Research method?
Approach link?
Debate link?
People are studied as unique entities with their own subjective experiences
Qualitative
Interviews, case studies
Humanistic
Free will
Nomothetic:
How are people regarded?
Data type?
Research method?
Approach link?
Debate link?
People can be regarded as groups and theories>generalisability
Quantitative
Eexperiments, questionnaires
Biological, behaviourist
Deterministic
What is a psychological example of the idiographic approach?
Bowlby’s 44 thieves study used a series of detailed case studies of child interviews
Studied link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal depravation
What is a psychological example of the nomothetic approach?
Using DSM-5 (benchmark) to classify patients with certain disorders based on a set list of criteria that applies to all
What is a psychological example that adopts both idiographic and nomothetic approaches
Memory, Clive Wearing
Idiographic- case study
Nomothetic- estbalished general law of human behaviour that we all have 3 types of LTM (episodic, sematic, procedural)
A strenth of the nomothetic approach is that its more scientific, in comparison to the idiographic approach
PET
E: Experimental methods used allows high levels of control and replication
T: Enables us to make predicitions about how people will react in certiain circumstances e.g. Zimbardo’s findings about how prisoners and guards react in a prison environment
A weakness of the nomothetic approach is that its been accused of losing sight of the ‘whole person’
PET
E: E.g. 1% risk of developing schz tells us little about what life is like with schz
T: Overlooks richness of human experience
A strength of the idiographic approach is that it focusses on the individual
PET
E: Single cases may generate interest in further study e.g. HM memory, showed that some procedural memories are more resistant to amnesia
T: Focus reveals important information about functioning, helping us understand human behaviour
A weakness of the idiographic approach is that its very time consuming
PET
E: Case studies take up alot of time and money to study the individual in depth
Might put researchers off using this approach
T: Nomothetic approach allows you to study hundreds at once, producing more data
Instead of seeing idiographic and nomothetic approaches as conflicting, how should we see them?
Complementary
E.g. Memory, clive wearing
The insight from idiographuc can shed more light on the general princliples developed using the nomothetic approach
