ideographic v nomothetic

• ideographic - research that focuses on individual cases to understand behaviour rather than seeking to develop general laws of behaviour
• the ideographic approach

  attempts to describe the nature of individuals rather than whole groups

  • often no attempt to compare individuals to a larger group or standard
  • associated with qualiatative research methods like case studies and unstructured interviews
• examples of the ideographic approach

  the humanistic approach is a good example of ideographic study in psychology as rogers and maslow were both interested in individual experiences

  • the bottom-up approach to criminal profiling also has an ideographic focus as it creates individual case studies for each crime
• nomothetic - research that attempts to establish universal rules and laws about groups of people
• the nomothetic approach

  aims to produce general laws of human behaviour and provide a benchmark that people can be compared to

  • favours research methods that produce quantitative data like lab experiments using large sample sizes
• examples of the nomothetic approach

  approaches criticised for reductionism and determinism like behaviourism and the biological approach often favour a nomothetic approach

  • localisation research also aims to determine universal laws surrounding the functioning of brains
• arguement for ideographic approach

  the approach provides a complete and in-depth account of the individual, which can compliment the nomothetic approach by proving or challenging laws

  • also important in practice of psychology like the in-depth understanding of an individual to aid in the choice of treatment
• arguement against the ideographic approach

  • the results gained are narrow and restricted, and often useless as they can't be used to aid the study of others
  • eg. oedipus complex based entirely on the case study of one individual
  • meaningful generalisations from findings can't be made without further examples
  • the methods favoured are the least scientific
• arguement for the nomothetic approach

  the process of nomothetic research is more scientific so results are more reliable

  • allows norms to be established that give psychology greater credibility
• arguement against the nomothetic approach

  • has been accused of 'losing the whole person' eg. knowing the risk of developing schizophrenia fails to tell us anything about living with the condition
  • in experiments participants are treated as their scores rather than individual people
  • the approach may overlook the human experience in the pursuit of generalities
• a compromise?


  ideographic and nomothetic approaches may be useful when used in tandem, and the goal of modern psychology is now to provide both rich understanding of individuals and establish a framework of general laws