Idiographic vs nomothetic Flashcards
What does idiographic mean?
Focuses on individuals and emphasise uniqueness. It also favours qualitative research methods. This is because they like to gain insights into human behaviour by studying in depth. Take on idea that quality is better than quantity. They prefer unstructured interviews, case studies and thematic analysis
What do Humanistic psychologists say about this?
They are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from their perspective. For them what matters is the person’s experience and not observations of their behaviour.
Humanistic Psychologists are concerned with studying the whole person & seeing the world from their POV. What matters is the person’s experience & not observations of their behaviour.
Allport’s theory of personality: Idiographic approach could tell us more about human behaviour & personality than any personality tests. Labelled his approach as the psychology of the individual.
What does nomothetic mean?
Attempts to create general laws of behaviours based on the study of groups. Summarises the differences between people
through generalisations. Use of quantitative techniques relying on statistics such as measures of central tendency, dispersion, graphs & statistical analysis. Research studies can involve 20 + participants.
Examples of the nomethetic approach?
Biological approach portrays the basic principles of how the brain & body work. Mostly studied male participants. Behaviourists produce general laws of behaviour based on CC & OC. Does not involve thousands of human participants.
Cognitive approach aims to develop general laws of behaviour applying to all people – understanding memory processes. Case studies used (HM – no STM) required to understand the workings of the normal minds & abnormal cases are looked at to see where things are different.
Eysenck’s Psychometric approach to personality &
intelligence: comparison to Allport’s research.
Strength: Focuses on the individual
Idiographic approach focuses on the individual. Humanistic and qualitative psychologists found too much emphasis on measurements and less focus on individuals. Allport was first to use terms idiographic + nomothetic. He fought to balance out nomothetic approach and argued the only way to predict on individual behaviours was by knowing person as an individual.
Criticism: Lacks scientific basis
Idiographic approach lacks scientific basis. Based on a lack of objective evidence as is one of the key reasons humanistic psychology. Positive psychology aims to be more evidence based. But other approaches that are idiographic also use evidence based approaches and seek to to be objective.
Criticism: Time consuming
Idiographic approach is time consuming. Both approaches based on large amounts of data: the idiographic = large amounts of people and the nomothetic = number of people. Collecting large amounts of data from a group of people takes time but is quicker as once you have devised a questionnaire or test = the data can be generated and processed quicker. Demonstrates that the idiographic approach is less efficient when it comes to data collection.
Criticism: debate between idio/nomo distinction is a false separation
Criticised for false separation between idio/nomo approach. Holt claimed idio approach generates principle based on individual data. Therefore it ends up being nomothetic. Millon and Davis suggested research should start with the nomothtic approach to establish laws to follow, they should then focus on a more idiographic understanding. Drug therapies have begun this to individualise recipes based on a mix of genetic and environmental insight, then cater to individual uniqueness. This shows how both approaches should be used together.
