idiographic vs nomethetic

• idiographic 


  greek 'idios' means private or personal. An approach to research that focuses on the individual in order to understand behaviour. Study individuals as unique beings, each with their own subjective experiences, view and values. No attempt to generalise to a wider group.

  aim: describe the richness of human experiences and gain insight.

  rm: case studies, self report methods e.g unstructured interviews, focused on observations.
• nomothetic 


  greek 'nomos' means law.

  attempts to study human behaviour through the development of universal laws and general principles. These laws provide a benchmark against which people can be measured, classified, compared. Means we can make predictions about how people will behave in given situations.

  aim: to discover how people are similar and to develop laws/predictions for human behaviour.

  RM; experiments/questionnaires with large numbers involved.
• examples in psych for idiographic

  memory: patient KF/HM

  biopsychology: Phineas Gage

  humanistic approach: Rogers and Maslow adopt an anti-scientific approach and highlight the importance of studying the individual
• examples in psych for nomothetic

  social influence: Asch/Milgram

  psychopathology: OCD/ depression

  attachment: strange situation

  behaviourist: Pavlov/Skinner
• Idiographic approach provides a complete and global account of the individual. May shed further light on general laws or may even challenge such laws. E.g a single case may generate hypothesis for further study, like the case of HM who helped our understanding of amnesia. Such findings, from unique cases may reveal important insights about normal functioning which may contribute to our overall understanding of behaviour.
• Idiographic approach lacks scientific rigour. Supporters of the approach must still acknowledge the narrow and subjective nature of their work. One criticism of Freud was that many of his key concepts e.g oedipus complex, were largely developed from the detailed study of a sing case (little hans). Meaningful generalisations cannot be made without further examples as there is no adequate baseline with which to compare behaviour.
• nomothetic approach values scientific research. Processes involved in the approach tend to be more scientific, mirroring those employed within the natural sciences. Processes include standard procedures, assessing reliability and validity and using statistical analysis to demonstrate significance. This arguably gives the disciple of psychology greater scientific credibility.
• nomothetic approach loses the view if the whole person. Preoccupation with the approach on general laws, predictions and control has been accused of 'losing the whole person'. Knowing that there is 1%lifetime risk of developing sz tells us little about what life is like for someone suffering with the disorder. In lab studies for memory pps are treated as a set of scores, rather than a person. This means in its search for general laws, the nomothetic approach may sometimes overlook the importance of human experience.