nomothetic and idiographic

• nomothetic definition

  general laws of human behaviour

  nomos = numbers

  template against which people can be compared

  usually quantitative
• idiographic definition

  describing the natural of the individual, usually no intention to generalise to a larger group

  idio = individual

  usually produce qualitative data in case studies
• example of nomothetic approach

  anything biological, behavioural
• example of idiographic approach

  humanistic, psychodynamics?
• research methods in nomothetic

  scientific methods like hypothesis testing, objectivity, predictability, falsifiability etc
• research methods in idiographic

  not experimental techniques like case studies
• integrative approach

  combining nomothetic and idiographic

  for example, developing a general law and using case studies to test it or vice versa
• nomothetic - evaluation. for

  scientific compared to idiographic

  experiments follow the scientific method

  making general laws is objective, predicting behaviour allows treatment to develop

  upholds the scientific rigour in psychology
• nomothetic - evaluation. against

  ignores critical detail in the unique human experience

  superficial outlook on humans

  e.g biological psychology sees humans as fixable numbers wherea humanistic takes into account the whole scope of the individual and their unique characteristic
• idiographic - evaluation. for

  detail discovered can add to or challenge established laws and theories

  for example, the KF case study caused the paradigm to shift from the MSM to the WMM, as their verbal deficit despite normal visual information staying intact showed that the short term memory is more complex than one box

  this shows the importance of the idiographic approach in research
• idiographic - evaluation. against

  unscientific practices

  uses non experimental methods and therefore cannot be used universally as it's individual

  but! integrative approach makes it very valuable

  furthermore, researcher bias, usually longitudinal causing rapport to build and then a potential subjective interpretation

  lacks validity