Idiographic v. nomothetic approaches

• What is the idiographic-nomothetic debate?

  • Centred on two opposing approaches - idiographic which suggests psychology should compose of the study of individuals, and nomothetic which suggests psychology should study large and varied groups to make generalisations about typical behaviour
  • Has implications for the research methods psychologists use
• What is the idiographic approach to psychological investigation?

  • Idiographic research uses small participant samples and sometime even a single case, may include information from family and friends but focus remains on detail and understanding the individual
  • Uses qualitative research involving interviews and thematic analysis, from which conclusions are made that may help others going through similar experiences
  • Most associated with humanistic and psychodynamic approaches such as Freud's case studies
• What is the nomothetic approach to psychological investigation?

  • Main aim is generalisation to create general principles of human behaviour that can then be applied to individual situations
  • Uses quantitative research involving scientific methods, hypothesis testing, questionnaires - seeks to quantify human behaviour
  • Most associated with behaviourist and biological approaches that establish general laws like conditioning and hemispheric lateralisation
• What is a key difference between idiographic and nomothetic approaches?

  • Nomothetic approach is objective, meaning laws of behaviour are only possible if methods of assessment are standardised and free from bias, ensuring true replication across samples of behaviour
  • Idiographic researchers tend to believe objectivity within psychological research is not possible, and that it is people's individual experience of their unique context that is important
• What is one strength of the idiographic approach?

  • Complete account: uses in-depth qualitative methods that provide a global description of one individual, which may compliment the nomothetic by shedding further light on general laws or by challenging them
  • HM's case generated hypotheses for further studies that revealed important insights about memory functioning
  • Suggests that although focus is on fewer individuals the idiographic approach still may help form 'scientific' laws of behaviour
• What is one limitation of the idiographic approach?

  • Narrow and strict nature: idiographic researchers should still acknowledge that meaningful generalisations cannot be made without further examples and empiricism as this means there is no adequate baseline with which to compare behaviour
  • This suggests that it is difficult to build effective general theories of human behaviour in the complete absence of nomothetic research, meaning idiographic research is insufficient alone
• What is one strength of the nomothetic approach?

  • Scientific credibility: the processes involved in nomothetic research are similar to those used in the natural sciences like establishing objectivity through standardisation, control and statistical testing
  • However, researchers using the idiographic approach also seek to objectify their methods, e.g. triangulation is used whereby findings from a range of studies using different qualitative methods are compared as a way of increasing their validity
  • This suggests that both the nomothetic and idiographic approaches raise psychology's status as a science, although nomothetic is considered the more scientifically sound approach
• What is one limitation of the nomothetic approach?

  • Loss of understanding of the individual: approach is preoccupied with general laws, prediction and control and so it has been accused of 'losing the whole person'
  • Knowing there is a 1% lifetime risk of developing schizophrenia tells us little about what life is like for these people, and so understanding the subjective experience of schizophrenia may prove useful when it comes to devising appropriate treatments
  • Means that the nomothetic approach may fail to relate to experience in its' search for generalities