A01 Idiographic And Nomothetic

• The ideographic approach


  Attempts to describe the nature of the individual. People are studied in unique entities, each with their own subjective experiences, motivations and values. There may be no attempts made to compare these to a larger, standard or norm.
• General associations with ideographic

  Generally associated with qualitative data, like case studies, unstructured interviews and other self-report measures. This describes the richness of human experience and gain insight into a peron's unique way of viewing the world.
• The nomothetic approach


  Produces given laws of human behaviour. Provides a 'benchmark' where people can be compared, classified and measured.
• General associations with nomothetic

  Nomothetic approach mostly alligned with those methods that would regarded as 'scientific' with psychology like experiments. Involve study of large numbers of people to establish ways in which people are similar/different from each other.
• Examples of the ideographic approach in psychology (HP)

  Humanistic psychology is probably the best e.g of the ideographic perspective. Rogers and Maslow took a phenomenological approach tp study human beings and were interested in documenting the concious experience of the 'self'. Humanists more interested investigating unique experiences, than general laws of behaviour.
• Examples of the ideographic approach in psychology (PA)

  Psychodynamic approach often lavelled as idiographic as Freud's use of case studies when detailing lives of his patients. However Freud assumed he had identified the universal laws of behaviour and personality development.
• Features of the nomothetic approach in psychology

  Opposite of ideographic approaches as there is more objectivity. Tends to be reductionist, determinist and employ highly scientific methods of investigation. Hypotheses are formulated , tested under controlled conditions and findings generalised from large numbers of people are analysed for their statistical significance.
• Examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology

  Behaviourist, cognitive and biological psychologists are nomothetic. In all of these cases hypotheses are rigorously tested, statistically analysed and general laws are formed.
• Examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology (Behaviourists)

  Skinner studied responses of hundreds of rats, cats, pigeons etc. to develop the laws of learning.
• Examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology (Cognitive)

  Cognitive psychologists inferred the structure and processes of human memory by measuring performance of large samples of people in lab conditions e.g. Atkinson and Shiffrin developed MSM .
• Examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology (Biological)

  Biological psychologists have conducted brain scans on countless human brains to make generalisations about localisation of function.