Idiographic and nomothetic debate

• idiographic approach focuses on individual and emphasises unique personal experience (qualitative technique)
• nomothetic approach is concerned about establishing general laws based on study of large group of people (quantitative data used to analyse)
• with the nomothetic approach information is generalised from a small group of individuals to the whole population where general laws are being made
• methods to investigate idiographic research

  • qualitative methods
  • case studies
  • thematic analysis
  • unstructured interviews
• case studies are a powerful research method where they provide in depth insight into individual/ small groups which can be used to evaluate a theory
• examples of idiographic approach

  • memory
  • psychodynamic approach
  • humanistic approach
• memory being idiographic approach

  • (shallice and warrington examined case of patient KF - short term forgetting of auditory info greater than forgetting visual info suggesting STM consists of multiple components - idea of single STM is undermined by patient KF which results suggest existence of separate auditory and visual STM store)
• psychodynamic approach being idiographic but also nomothetic

  • (psychodynamic approach labelled as idiographic as sigmund freud used case studies to study patients lives - freud also assumed he had identified univrsal laws of behaviour and personality development - more like taking on nomothetic approach)
• humanistic approach being idiographic approach

  • carl rogers and maslow took phenomenological approach to study human beings - interested only in documenting conscious experience of individual
  • humanistic psychologists more concerned with investigating unique experience than producing general laws
• methods of investigating nomothetic research

  • quantitative/statistical methods
  • experiments
  • correlational research
  • psychometric testing(personality)
• nomothetic approach is concerned with establishing general laws based on study of large groups of people
• examples of nomothetic approach

  • biological approach
  • behavioural approach
  • cognitive approach
• biological approach being example of nomothetic approach

  • take nomothetic approach when explaining psychological disorders (OCD)
  • pinpoint biological factors such as neurotransmitters that are responsible for disorders and use biological therapies (drugs) to treat all patients
• behavioural approach is an example of a nomothetic approach

  • pavlov and skinner conducted experiments with animals in order to establish laws of learning (classical and operant conditioning)
  • generalised to humans and non human animals
• cognitive approach is an example of nomothetic approach

  • atkinson and shiffrin developed general laws such as multi store model of memory
  • generalised to everyone
• social influence can be argued to be both a nomothetic and idiographic approach - milgram and asch used nomothetic approach to create general conclusions about human behaviour - situational factors are responsible factors are responsible for both obedience and conformity
• psychopathology can be argued to take a nomothetic approach as classification manuals such as DSM -V as they classify people with psychological disorders on basis of specific symptoms
• cognitive approach takes on both nomothetic and idiographic approach where attempts are made to establish general laws (MSM) but they also use case study method - shallice and warrington (patient KF)
• psychodynamic approach is argued to follow both nomothetic and idiographic approach where attempts are established general laws related to innate drives while considering unique experiences during childhood - freud