idiographic and nomothetic approach

Question 1

The ideographic approach

Answer 1

The study of individuals and the unique insights they provide. It is a qualitative approach as it focuses on data from unique individuals rather then creating numerical data through the average characteristics of many people. It also uses qualitative methods such as the unstructured interview and case studies.

Question 2

psychodynamic

Answer 2

Psychodynamic approach- It is ideographic., Freud used case studies from patients to try an understand human behavior. An example is the little Hans study which was over 150 pages long, while he did make generalizations of behavior he still used information from unique individuals.

Question 3

humanistic

Answer 3

It is ideographic, they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from their perspective. Their subjectivity matters not the objective information about them.

Question 4

The nomothetic approach

Answer 4

Involves the study of a large representative sample, ideally using random sampling. They collect a large amount of data to create support a testable hypothesis.
The approach seeks to apply a general laws of behavior to everyone and is more scientific while also favoring quantitative data. Uses large group samples to create data sets that can be analyzed as quantitative data.

Question 5

biological approach

Answer 5

seeks to portray the basic principles of how the body and brain works, it is a nomothetic approach that often generalizes their results to everyone. Example is only testing the fight or flight response for men ben generalizing it to everyone.

Question 6

cognitive approach

Answer 6

It is nomothetic and aims to create general laws for behavior that apply to everyone such as memory processes. While they do use case studies but this only occurs to see what factors cause an abnormal mind and generalize these factors to everyone, so for KF’s case similar brain damages would have a similar effect.

Question 7

behaviorist approach

Answer 7

Produces general laws about human behavior so is nomothetic, they do do not use lots of human participants but create on et of rules for both humans and animals.