**L6 - Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches to Psychological Investigation Flashcards
what does the IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH INVOLVE?
The idiographic approach involves the STUDY OF INDIVIDUALS and the UNIQUE INSIGHTS each individual provides. The idiographic approach is QUALITATIVE becuase the focus is on studying unique individuals IN DEPTH rather than gaining numerical data from many individuals and determining average characteristics.
The focus is on QUALITY OF INFORMATION rather than quantity. Its also QUALITATIVE because it employs qualitative methods such as UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEWS and CASE STUDIES
is the psychodynamic approach IDIOGRAPHIC?
the PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH IS SEEN AS IDIOGRAPHIC. FREUD used CASE STUDIES as a way to understand human behaviour, such as the case study of LITTLE HANS. The case consists of amost 150 PAGES OF VERBATIM QUOTES RECORED BY LITTLE HANS’ FATHER and descriptions of EVENTS IN LITTLE HANS’ LIFE, as well as Freud’s interpretation of these quotes and events.
Freud made generalisations based on his case studies but these are STILL IDIOGRAPHIC because they are drawn FROM INFORMATION gathered from unique individuals.
is the humanistic approach IDIOGRAPHIC?
The HUMANISTIC approach is also IDIOGRAPHIC. Humanistic psychologists favour the idiographic approach because they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person. What matters is the person’s subjective experience and not what someone else might observe of their behaviour.
what does the NOMOTHETIC APPROACH involve?
the nomothetic approach involves the study of a LARGE REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE, ideally selected using RANDOM SAMPLING, in order to collect a LARGE AMOUNT OF DATA to support a TESTABLE HYPOTHESIS. The approach seeks to formulate GENERAL LAWS OF BEHAVIOUR that apply to everyone, this is also the goal of the scientific approach in psychology.
The nomothetic approach favours QUANTITATIVE research methods that are based on numbers (measures of dispersion, measures of central tendency, graphs and statistical analysis). Such calculations require data from a large group of people rather than individuals. Studies may involve as few as 20 people but normative research tends to involve thousands of people.
is the BIOLOGICAL APPROACH NOMOTHETIC?
the biological approach seeks to portray the basic principles of how the body and brain work. In the past they have made the mistake of only studying men and assuming that their findings can be generalised to women e.g the fight or flight response and this turned out to be wrong.
is the BEHAVIOURIST APPROACH NOMOTHETIC?
the behaviourist approach produces GENERAL LAWS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR. Behaviourist research may not have involved thousands of human pps but they were seeking one set of rules for all human and non human animals.
is the COGNITIVE APPROACH NOMOTHETIC?
The cognitive approach is also nomothetic in its aim to develop GENERAL LAWS of behaviour which apply to all people, such as understanding memory processes.
The cognitive approach uses CASE STUDIES such as HM and KF but these are REQUIRED in order to understand the working of a NORMAL MIND as it is often necessary to look at ABNORMAL cases.
+ ALLPORT
The great strength of the IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH is that it provides RICH AND IN DEPTH information about single cases, which the nomothetic approach is not able to do. ALLPORT maintained that it is only by knowing a person as an individual that we can predict what they will do in any given situation.
- IDIOGRAPHIC IS NOT VERY SCIENTIFIC
the main criticism of the IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH is that its NOT VERY SCIENTIFIC, this is the main reason for growth of positive psychology, because many people cosidered the humanistic approach to not be sufficiently evidence based and therefore to be essentially meaningless. Positive psychology aims to be more evidence based.
+ IDIOGRAPHIC REFLEXIVITY
some elements of the IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH, such as CASE STUDIES and THEMATIC ANALYSIS, are scientific and evidence based as well as seeking to be objective.
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS use REFLEXIVITY to identify the influence of any bias. Reflexivity refers to the process where the researcher reflects or thinks critically during the research process about the factors that affect the behaviour of both the pps and the researcher.
- IDIOGRAPHIC is limited (ALLPORT V2)
The idiographic approach may be scientific but its inability to produce GENERAL PREDICTIONS ABOUT BEHAVIOUR is LIMITING because general predictions can be useful. E.g it would be far too time consuming to produce personal therapies for every person with a mental illness. However, ALLPORT argues that the IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH DOES ALLOW GENERAL PREDICTIONS TO BE MADE once enough data has been gathered from detailed observations of several individuals.
- IDIOGRAPHIC MORE TIME CONSUMING
the idiographic approach is MORE TIME CONSUMING and EXPENSIVE than the nomothetic approach. Both approaches collect large amounts of data but the IDIOGRAPHIC approach collects a LARGE amount o data from a SMALL amount of people and the NOMOTHETIC approach collects a SMALL amount of data from a LARGE amount of people.
The latter is quicker because once a test or questionnaire has been designed it can be generated and processed quickly.
