Idiographic and nomothetic approach

• Definition of idiographic approach?

  Idiographic approach - focuses on individuals on understanding behaviour and uses qualitative uses of research 
• Nomothetic approach definition?

  Focuses on mass groups for quantitative methods of research
• What is the idiographic approach?

  • This approach investigates unique individuals rather than gaining quantitative data.
  • People are unique entities with their own subjective experience.
  • People have their own subjective experience, motivation and values.
  • Therefore, no attempt is made to compare them to a larger group, standard or norm of behaviour.
  • The focus is on the quality of information, studies like this include case studies, unstructured interviews and thematic content analysis. 
• Psychodynamic approach example? (idiographic approach)

  • Freud used case studies of his patients like Little Hans, this case consisted of 150 pages of quotes and descriptions of events in Han’s life plus interpretation of them by Freud.
  • Freud did also generalise his case studies claiming he had identified universal laws. 
• Humanistic approach example? (idiographic approach)

  • They are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person.
  • They claim that person’s subjective experience is important and not what can be observed from their external behaviour. 
  • Maslow made his hierarchy of needs from 18 biographies of people he identified as self-actualised.
  • He developed a list of qualities which seemed characteristic of this specific group of people.
  • The theory has been generalised to other groups of people but not because of Maslow himself.
• Positive evaluation for the idiographic approach?

  • It provides a complete and global account of an individual. It uses detailed qualitative methods of investigation.
  • Humanistic psychologists felt that psychologists had lost sight of what it was to be human.
  • Therefore, a strength of the approach is that it focused psychology onto the individual again
• negative evaluation for idiographic approach?

  • However, case study use has been criticised. For example, Freud’s key concepts such as the Oedipus complex were developed from Little Hans only.
  • This means generalisations cannot be made.
  • The case study method used in the idiographic approach is unscientific and relies on subjective interpretation of the researcher.
  • The idiographic approach is open to researcher bias.
• What is the nomothetic approach?

  • The main aim is to produce general laws of behaviour by studying a large number of people to generalise more.
  • These provide a benchmark in which people can be compared, classified and measured.
  • This means that future behaviour can be predicted. 
  • The approach uses scientific methods and produces quantitative data like experiments, correlations and questionnaires.
  • It requires data from groups of people.
• Biological approach example ? (nomothetic approach)

  Biological psychologists make generalisations about bodily processes such as localisation of function. 
• Behaviourist approach example (nomothetic approach)

  • They developed general laws of behaviour (ORCA).
  • Skinner produced the theory of operant conditioning from responses of 100’s of rats, cats and pigeons. 
• Cognitive approach example (nomothetic approach)

  • Cognitive psychologists use to infer the structure and process of the human memory through the multi store model by measuring large numbers of p’s in laboratory tests. 
  • However, the cognitive approach uses case studies like HM, which argues that case studies are needed for development as these cases help understanding of normal memory.
  • Findings of HM helped show that everyone has an episodic memory in the hippocampus.
• Positive evaluation for nomothetic approach??

  •  A strength is the methods used to gather data are scientific.
  • For example, experiments are conducted under controlled and standardised conditions.
  • We can infer cause and effect.
  • Quantitative data is generated and is used to develop group averages and complete statistical analysis.
  • These have enabled psychologists to establish typical behaviour like average IQ being 100. This gives psychology greater credibility. 
• Negative evaluation for nomothetic approach?

  • A criticism is that the preoccupation within finding general laws of behaviour has been accused of losing the individual within psychology.
  • For example, knowing that 1% of the population from Gottesman’s study has schizophrenia does not tell us anything about the schizophrenic’s personal experience.
  • Lab studies on memory treat people as a series of scores rather than individuals and subjective perspective is ignored.
  • Therefore, the approach may sometimes overlook the richness of human experience. 
• Overall negative evaluation for both approaches?

  • It has been argued that the idiographic/nomothetic distinction is a false separation.
  • They should not be seen as mutually exclusive but considering the same issue from both perspectives.
  • Holt argued that idiographic becomes nomothetic as generalisation is made from all research.
  • The goal of psychology is to provide a detailed description of human behaviour as well as a general law to explain the behaviour so it is best to use both to investigate.