Idiographic Vs Nomothetic

• What is the Nomothetic Approach?

  • Concerned with studying what we share with others
  • Establishing laws or generalisations
  • Quantitative methods favoured - Experiments, correlations
  • Large numbers of people are studied to find what ways people are similar
• Which of the Approaches are heavily Nomothetic?

  • Behaviourist
  • Cognitive
  • Biological
• What are some Nomothetic examples withing psychology?

  • Classifying people into groups e.g. attachment types and DSMV classifies mental disorders
  • Establishing principles of behaviour e.g. conformity findings
  • Establishing dimensions along which people can be placed e.g. personality or IQ scores
• What is the Idiographic approach?

  • Concerned with discovering what makes each of us unique
  • Qualitative methods favoured - case studies, self report, unstructured observations
  • Gains insight into unique ways of viewing the world
• What is a Idiographic example in psychology?

  • The humanistic approach - only concerned with individual experiences and the concept of the self
  • More concerned with unique experiences than general laws
• What are the advantages of the Idiographic approach?

  • It is holistic - More complex explanation, more in-depth and detailed
  • Further Study e.g. case study of HM
• What are the disadvantages of the Idiographic approach?

  • Limited generalisability - only applies to one person so can't be applied to wider population

  -e.g. Interviews and observations = Researcher bias, Subjective and time consuming
• What are the advantages of the Nomothetic approach?

  • Scientific - can operationalise variables so you can have valid and reliable experiments
• What are the disadvantages of the Nomothetic approach?

  • Quantitative data - lacks detail and depth
  • Reductionist - Focuses too much on small individual things