Idiographic v.s. nomothetic

• This debate questiosn whether psychology should aim to develop general laws about our behaviour OR if we should study the uniqueness of individuals and avoid developing laws that apply to everyone.
• Idiographic approach:

  • comes from the greek word "idios" which means own or private
  • focuses on the individual and emphasises the unique personal experiences of human nature
  • people who use this approach want to discover what makes each of us unique
  • favour qualitative methods that provide in depth analysis to behaviour
  • e.g. Carl Rogers, Q sort, involves giving people a large set of cards with self evaluating statements like "I am friendly". The person has to sort them from most like me to least like me and they can be sorted for an infinite number of ways which emphasises the uniqueness of their personality.
• Nomothetic approach:

  • comes from the greek word "nomos" which means law
  • tries to establish general laws for people based on the study of larger groups
  • studies large groups in order to make generalisations
  • it is closely aligned to methods that are considered to be scientific such as experiments
  • e.g. normal distribution for a particular dimension such as IQ which is largely compared with the general population
• Approach : Biological

  NOMOTHETIC

  • this approach creates general laws as humans share physiological structures
  • e.g. neurochemical explanations of mental illness lead to drug treatment for patients that suffer from mental illness
• Approach : Behavioural

  NOMOTHETIC

  • creates general laws and applies the same stimulus - response laws for humans and non human animals
• Approach : SLT

  NOMOTHETIC

  • attempts to establish general laws of learning through observation, e.g. learning through vicarious reinforcement
• Approach : Cognitive

  • NOMOTHETIC - it establishes general laws with models of memory to explain cognitive processes
  • IDIOGRAPHIC - it uses case studies to look at individual cases, such as Clive Wearing, HM and KF
• Approach : Psychodynamic

  • NOMOTHETIC - it attempts to establish general laws in relation to innate drives and the theory of the psyche
  • IDIOGRAPHIC- uses an idiographic approach as it shows that our use of defence mechanisms is unique and so are our childhood experiences and how they affect our adult personality
• Approach : Humanistic

  IDIOGRAPHIC

  • focuses on subjective human experience and makes no attempt to establish general laws
• A03

  • A strength of the idiographic approach is that a single case study can highlight a major flaw in a theory. They can be used to challenge laws that have been universally applied, e.g. case of Clive used to challenge the unitary idea of STM.
  • They are also good as they use in depth qualitative methods to study an individual

  BUT they tend to be the least scientific as they rely on qualitative data that tends to be subjective and open to interpretation, and therefore open to bias. A theorist often makes generalisations when they shouldn't. For example, the case study of little Hans created the theory of the Oedipus complex which was then applied to all.
• A03

  A strength of the nomothetic approach is that they tend to be more scientific in their testing methods and provide group averages, prediction and control. These have helped psychology to establish norms of typical behaviour such as the normal distribution of IQ and the average score of 100.
• A03

  The nomothetic approach has been accused of ignoring the whole person. It can tell us that there is a lifetime prevalence for a particular mental disorder such as schizophrenia but tells us little about the experiences a person has had. Likewise, in methods that is uses such as lab experiments, the richness of individual experience is ignored.
• A03

  Holt argues the idiographic and nomothetic distinction is a false separation. Holt claims that there is no such thing as a unique individual and idiographic approaches actually generate general principles. Others suggest that the research should start with the nomothetic approach and once laws have been produced, they can then focus on a more idiographic understanding.

  e.g. drug therapies should focus on individual recipes based on genetic and environmental insights rather than producing standardised treatments

  Thus both approaches should be used together depending on the naturre of the research question