Idiographic approach

• Humanistic psychology


  • Concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from their perspective
  • What is important is the individual's subjective experience and not what someone else may observe of their behaviour
• Methodologies used in humanistic psychology

  1. Self-report methods

  2. Q-sort adopted by Rogers to investigate congruence within his person centred therapy
• Idiographic approach


  • Sigmund Freud's case study of Little Hans
  • 150 pages of quotes recorded by Hans' father and descriptions of events in Hans' life, plus Freud's own interpretations of the events
• Idiographic methods


  Such as a case study, is often the seed that prompts future research as it provides an in depth perspective that leads to research ideas
• Idiographic research


  Can then be used to make generalisations and formulate theories
• Famous case studies

  • HM
  • Clive Wearing
• Case studies of HM and Clive Wearing


  Had types of amnesia that questioned established models of memory and prompted further research that has led to a more thorough and complex understanding of memory
• Strength of idiographic approaches


  • Can make major contributions to psychology
• Case studies

  • Can be carried out in situations where it would not be possible to do nomothetic research such as case of extreme and rare child abuse, like Genie
• Allport's view

  It is only through the understanding of single individuals that psychologists can hope to predict how such individuals will behave in a given situation
• Understanding single individuals

  • Strength when trying to understand and help individuals
• Freud's Oedipus complex


  • Developed from a single case study, Little Hans
  • Difficult to make any predictions about his future phobic behaviour as he was a unique case
• A criticism is that it is not scientific
• Researchers cannot make general predictions about behaviour
• Any findings were essentially meaningless
• Often the data is an attempt to capture subjective experience which may be unreliable
• e.g,

  • It is possible that this is due to it being retrospective or is subject to demand characteristics
• The P's may misremember things or want to create a certain impression with the researcher
• This is a weakness because it is open to bias and therefore scientific conclusions cannot be made
• The data will need a degree of interpretation by the researcher and there is room here for subjectivity in that interpretation
• The data can be highly emotive (for example, interviews concerning child abuse)