Idiographic V Nomothetic

• Idiographic:

  • Understanding behaviour through studying individual cases.
• Nomothetic:

  • Understanding behaviour through developing general laws that apply to all people.
• AO1 - Idiography

  The idiographic approach rejects the scientific method.

  • Should study the individual and not groups.
  • Should not generalise to others as we are all unique.
  • Behaviour must be understood in terms of subjective experience – what it means to the individual. 
  • Only the individual can explain what a behaviour means – a detached observer’s explanation is worthless.

  Data collected should be qualitative

  • examples?
• AO1 - Examples

  Freud: Uses case studies of his patients as a way to understand human behaviour, such as the case of Little Hans.

  This case study consisted of 150 pages of quotes recorded by Han’s father, descriptions of events in Han’s life and Freud’s own interpretations.

  = Freud did produce some generalisations from this case study but these are still idiographic because they are drawn from unique individuals.
• AO1 - Examples

  Humanistic psychologists also use the idiographic approach as they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person.
• (+)Focus on the individual level

  Allport was the first psychologist to use the terms idiographic and nomothetic.

  He argued that it’s only by knowing the person as a person that we can predict what that person will do in any situation.

  The great strength of the idiographic approach has been to focus psychology back on the more individual level.
• (-)Time consuming

  The idiographic approach is more time-consuming

  Both approach are based on large amount of data.

  Collecting data from a group of people ( monothetic) takes time but is quicker because once you have devised a questionnaire or a psychological test, data can be generated and processed quickly.
• (-)Scientific basis

  Humanistic psychology is not sufficiently evidence-based and therefore any findings are essentially meaningless, according to positive Psychologists.

  The same criticisms can’t be made for other idiographic approaches (cases studies or qualitative research), these qualitative approaches use REFLEXIVITY.

  =Process when the researcher reflects or think critically during the research process about the factors that affect the behaviour of both researchers and pts.
• AO1 - Nomothetic approach

  Main feature is similarities between people and laws governing behaviour.

  Three kinds of 

  general laws:

  • Uses scientific method and quantitative data. E.g. numerical data: numbers, times, weight, length etc.
  • Group averages are statistically analysed and predictions made.
• AO1 - Nomothetic approach

  Which approaches?

  • The biological approach seeks to portray the base principles of how the brain and body work
  • Behaviourists produce general laws of behaviour (classical and operant conditioning). Their research seeks one set of rules for all animals (human and non-humans)

  Cognitive psychology also uses a nomothetic approach. Its aim is to dvp general laws which apply to all people such as understanding typical memory process.
• AO1 - Examples

  Eysenck: Psychometric approach to personality.

  Psychometrics = measuring psychological characteristics such as personality and intelligence.

  Large groups of people are tested and the distribution of their scores inform us.

  Eysenck’s personality questionnaire was used to collect large amounts of data which used factor analysis to produce the personality types.
• AO3 - Evaluations

  (+) Findings can be generalised to wider populations i.e. understanding the general law that low serotonin can = depression allows us to create and mass treat depression with medication

  (+) Methods are objective, measurable and can be verified so replication, prediction and control of behaviour is easy.

  (-) Understanding is often superficial. Two people can get the same score on personality test, but give different answers that may actually mean very different things.
• AO3 - Discussion / comparisons

  The two may in fact be complementary not contradictory.

  Millon and Davis (1996) suggested that research should start with the nomothetic approach and once laws have been produced, they can then focus on a more idiographic understanding.

  A number of approaches combine the 2 approaches.

  Freud: Used an idiographic approach to study people but also used those insights to produce general laws about human dvpt in his theory of personality.