idiographic vs nomothetic

• beh


  nomothetic - creates universal laws as behaviour is a result of stimulus response associations
• slt

  nomothetic - attempts to establish general laws of behaviour eg vicarious reinforcement
• cog

  nomothetic - establishes general laws of cog processing but has an idiographic approach with case studies
• bio

  nomothetic - creates universal laws using human physiological explanations
• psych

  both - establishes general laws eg. innate drives, whilst considering individual experiences
• hum

  idiographic - focuses on the subjective human experiences and makes no attempt to create general laws
• idiographic


  emphasises the uniqueness by examining emotions, behaviors, and experiences

  aims to gather in depth information by focusing on inviduual history and context
• idiographic methods

  interviews

  case studies
• nomothetic

  • seeks general laws and principals applicable to groups of individuals
  • aims to identify universal laws, traits, and characteristics that can be generalised across people
• nomothetic methods

  quantitative methods

  • experiments
  • statistics