idiographic and nomothetic approaches

• Idiographic

  -          Focus on the uniqueness of an individual and thus uses qualitative data since the focus is on gaining insight into human behaviour and an individual’s unique insight rather than gaining large quantity of numerical data and gaining an average from it
• Idiographic

  -          An idiographic view point does not aim to generalise to others from research and the individuals is not compared to a larger group or the norm because they are seen as unique
• Idiographic

  -          In an idiographic approach the methods used are – cases studies , unstructured interviews and thematic analysis because they aim to gather detailed data .
• Idiographic

  -          An example of an idiographic approach would be the case of HM and his memory – Milner carried out a longitudinal study on an in depth case of HM – he was a unique individual who had his hippocampus removed and Milner focused on the impact this had on his memory and assess his performance on a wide range of tasks – like procedural mem and digit span for sort term memory to be assessed

  Study didn’t aim to generalise findings to others but only to see how this specific brain damage had influenced the individual HM 
• Idiographic

  -          Little Hans could be another examples.

  -          Humanistic psychologists favour idiographic approach as they are concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of an individual – the persons subjective experience is what matters
• Nomothetic

  -          Nomothetic approach involves study of a large number of people and then seeks to make generalisations or develop theories or laws about behaviours that can be applied to any given population
• Nomothetic

  -          Nomothetic approach fits in with a scientific approach and so gathers quantitative data – carrying out statistical analysis

  -          This quantitative data used in the nomothetic approach provides a bench mark to which people can be compared and future behaviour can be predicted using this data also .
• Nomothetic

  -          A nomothetic approach uses experiments  as they allow larger more representative samples sizes and hypotheses testing and are more objective allowing for manipulation of variables
• Nomothetic

  -          Example of a nomothetic approach = Milgram’s obedience test – when he carried out his research of obedience using controlled methodology . in his work he adapted the situation a number of times using different variations to allow him to draw the conclusion that obedience is due to situational factors – his findings led him to the development of agency they which was said to apply to everyone
• -          The idiographic approach is one that focuses on the individual case as a means of understanding behaviour
• -          The nomothetic approach tries to create a general lase of behaviour.