Idiographic and Nomothetic - AO1

Question 1

What is the idiographic approach?

Answer 1

It is an approach to research that focuses more on the individual case as a way of understanding behaviour, rather than trying to formulate general laws of behaviour

Question 2

What is the idiographic approach associated with?

Answer 2

Methods in psychology that produce qualitative data e.g. case studies and unstructured interviews.

Question 3

What approaches are idiographic?

Answer 3

Humanistic:

• Rogers and Maslow adopted a phenomenological approach to the study of humans and were only interested in documenting the conscious experience of the individual or ‘self’.
• They wanted to investigate unique experiences than producing general laws of behaviour

Psychodynamic:

• Freud’s use of the case study method when studying the lives of his patients.

Question 4

What is the nomethetic approach?

Answer 4

The main aim of the nomothetic approach is to produce general laws of human behaviour

Question 5

What is the nomethetic approach associated with?

Answer 5

Methods that are quantitative, e.g. experiment

Question 6

What approaches are nomothetic?

Answer 6

Reductionist and determinist:

• Hypotheses are formulated, tested under laboratory conditions and generated from large numbers of people are analysed for statistical significance.

Cognitive, behaviourist and biological:

• Given their focus on empirical, quantitative data