Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches Flashcards
What is the Idiographic Approach
An approach which focuses on individuals and emphasises uniqueness and thus favours qualitative methods in research
Why is the qualitative method favoured in the Idiographic Approach
Because the focus is on gaining insights into human behaviour by studying unique individuals in depth rather than gaining numerical data from many individuals and determing average characteristics. Quality over Quantity. Methods like unstructured interviews, case studies and thematic analysis are all favoured
What are some examples of the Idiographic Approach
Freud used case studies of his patients to understand behaviour, such as in the case of Little Hans, where Freud had almost 150 pages of verbatim quotes from Hans Father.
Humanistic psychologists are interested in studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person.
What is a Nomothetic Approach
An approach which seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on the study of groups and the use of statistical techniques (quantitative). It attempts to summarise the differences between people through generalisations
Why does the Nomothetic Approach use quantitative reseach
Quantitative research is based on numbers, and such calculations require data from groups of people rather than individuals. Establishing norms can require thousands of participants
What are some examples of Nomothetic Research
-The biological approach seeks to portray the basic principles of how the body and brain work
-The behaviourist approach produced general laws of behaviour, classical and operant conditioning, but these didn’t involve human participants
-The cognitive approach aims to develop general laws of behaviour which apply to all people, such as understanding typical memory processes. The approach uses case studies but this is in order to understand abnormal cases and learn using them
What is a strength of the idiographic approach
The idiographic approach focuses on the individual. Humanistic psychologists have felt that there was too much emphasis on measurement and that psychologists had lost sight of what it was to be human. Allport, who coined the phrases idiographic and nomothetic, argued that a drastic reorientation was needed and that only by knowing a person as an individual can we predict what a person will do in a situation. This suggests that the idiographic approach can provide us with better understanding
Who coined the phrase ‘idiographic and nomothetic’ and what did they feel needed to happen
Allport, who thought we were too nomothetic
What is a weakness of the idiographic approach
The idiographic approach has an inability to produce general predications about behaviour. Such general predictions can be useful, for example in producing drugs to treat mental illness. It would be far too time consuming to produce personal therapies for unique individuals and therefore we need ot make predictions about the most likely therapeutic solutions.
How did Allport argue that the idiographic approach could be used to make theories
Allport argued that the idiographic approach allows for predictions, as once a researcher has built up extemely detailed observations about a few individuals this can be used to make generalisations and theories. Lindzey argued that this approach makes Allports approach basically nomothetic rather than idiographic
Who argued that Allport’s approach to generalisation made him nomothetic
Lindzey
Who argues that the idiographic approach can be used to make generalisations
Allport
Why is the idiographic approach more time consuming than nomothetic
Both approaches are based on large amounts of data, but one is in terms of collecting large amounts of data about one person and the other is in terms of a large number of people. Collecting large amounts of data from a group is quicker as, once you have devised a questionaire or psychological test, data can be generated and processed quickly. This makes the idiographic approach less efficient
Why might the idiographic/nomothetic approach be a false seperation
Holt argued that the seperation is false as there is no such thing as a unique individual and what the idiographic approaches do is generate general principles, and thus actually ends up being nomothetic. Millon and Davis suggested that research should start with a nomothetic approach and once ‘laws’ have been produced, they can then focus on a more idiographic understanding. This suggests that both approaches should be used together.
Who argued that there was no such thing as a unique individual
Holt
Who argued that both approaches should be used (nomothetic and idiographic)
Millon and Davis
