idiographic, nomothetic

• idiographic approach definition?

  focuses on individuals and emphasises uniqueness, favouring qualitive methods in research
• nomothetic approach defention?

  seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour based on study of groups and use of statistical techniques, attempts to summarise the differences between people through generalisation
• idiographic focus on qualitative methods

  • studying key individuals in depth rather than numerical data from many individuals
  • focus on the quality of the information
  • using methods like case studies and unstructured interviews
• examples of the idiographic approach

  • Freud and little hans
  • memory kf hm
• nomothetic and quantitive

  nomothetic tends to be based off numbers, these meausres (central tendency, dispersion) require data from a large number of people
• examples

  • eyesneck- large groups of people tested and distribution of all scores shows us what characteristics are normal and abnormal
  • Social Psychologists, such as Milgram and Asch, used a nomothetic approach to create general conclusions about human behaviour: that situational factors are responsible for both obedience and conformity.
  • Biological Psychologists nomothetic approach explaining psychological disorders, OCD and depression. pinpoint biological factors, s that are responsible for such disorders and use biological therapies (e.g. drugs) to treat all patients.