Nomothetic

• Attempts to study human behaviour through the development of general laws and principles
• Studying a sample in order to formulate general laws/principles of behaviour
• Larger and more representative samples (often use random sampling)
• Involves making generalisations and comparisons of people against 'benchmarks'
• Coming up with laws: classes, principles, and dimensions (Radford and Kirby 1975)
• Trying to understand, predict and control behaviour (EG, using testable hypothesis)
• Typically quantitative (ie averages and dispersion, meta-analysis and experiments, statistical testing) - aligned with scientific method
• Examples

  • Cognitive models of memory (MSM,WMM)
  • Biological approaches (Serotonin in depression and OCD, stress response, LOF)
  • Behaviourism - classical and operant conditioning
  • Social influence studies (Milgram and Asch)
  • DSM-5
• Application of the nomothetic approach

  Produced three broad types of general law:

  • Classifying people into groups - DSM 5 classifies people experiencing psychological disorders
  • Establish principles of behaviour that can be applied to people in general (Eg findings from conformity studies)
  • Establishing dimension along which people can be placed and compared (eg, IQ scores)
• Strengths

  • Scientific, objective
  • Useful more widely because of generalisability
  • Quicker
• Weaknesses

  • Overlooks uniqueness and subjectivity of experiences
  • Quantitative work often averages groups, minimising differences
  • Artificial research methods
  • 'scientific' doesn't mean true
• Strength - Takes up less resources and time to create treatments
• Strength - Data is more likely to be quantitative as its of many more participants, so much easier to analyse and is an objective measurement
• Strength - Quicker and easier to analyse and generalise basic principles
• Strength - More scientific and objective
• Weakness - May not be appropriate treatments for everybody
• Weakness - Not in as much detail as ideographic research
• Weakness - Laws and principles may not effect every person the same - generalisability is not reliable