idiographic Vs nomothetic approaches

Question 1

what is the idiographic approach

Answer 1

• focuses more on the individual case
• attempts to understand specific/unique behaviour and gain detailed insights
• doesn’t aim to formulate general behavioural laws

Question 2

what methods does the idiographic approach use

Answer 2

• qualitative methods, studying individuals in depth
• focuses more on the quality of information rather than quantity
• unstructured interviews, observations and case studies

Question 3

what’re idiographic examples in psychology

Answer 3

• Humanistic approach
• case studies eg Phineas Gage and HM

Question 4

what is the nomothetic approach

Answer 4

• studies human behaviour via development of general principles
• studies a large number of people
• seeks to make generalisations or develop laws/theories about human behaviour

Question 5

what methods do nomothetic approaches use

Answer 5

• quantitative
• measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode) and dispersion graphs and statistical analysis
• nomothetic is more scientific than ideographic

Question 6

what’re nomothetic examples in psychology

Answer 6

• behaviourist approach (skinners rats)
• biological (brain scans in countless individuals)
• attachment (44 thieves, strange situation)

Question 7

what’re the main assumptions of the idiographic approach

Answer 7

• people are unique identities
• people have their own subjective experiences and motivationd
• you cannot compare unique individuals to larger groups, standards or norms

Question 8

what’re the main assumptions of the nomothetic approach

Answer 8

• psychologists should produce general laws of human behaviour
• provides a ‘benchmark’ against which people can be compared, classified and measured
• large numbers of people should be studied to establish ways that people are similar to each other

Question 9

what is the support for idiographic approaches

Answer 9

• uses in depth qualitative methods to provide a detailed account of the individual
• a single case study can lead to further nomothetic studies (eg HM)

Question 10

what is the limitation of the idiographic approach

Answer 10

• can be very time consuming to collect and analyse such detailed information (often interviews)
• the reliance on case studies makes the approach less scientific as conclusions often rely on subjective interpretations of the researcher and so are open to bias

Question 11

what is the support for the nomothetic approach

Answer 11

• the process tends to be very scientific, testing often with standardised procedures and statistical data analysis
• this has allowed psychologists to establish behavioural norms of behaviour (eg IQ norm of 100) which gives greater scientific credibility

Question 12

what is the limitation of the nomothetic approach

Answer 12

the nomothetic approach often loses ‘the whole person’, eg we may know the %risk of developing OCD but we don’t know how it feels to live with OCD. this means that it loses some external validity