Idiographic An Nomothetic Approches To Psychological Investigation

Question 1

Ideographic

Answer 1

• Assumption that humans are unique an should be studied in an individual way
• argues generalising from person to person is difficult because of their uniqueness
• qualitative data and only uses non experimental methods eg case studies

Question 2

Nomothetic

Answer 2

• Idea we draw conclusions about populations of people and generalise to a wider group
• establish general laws about behaviour that can be applied across any given population
• quantitive data uses scientific methods eg experiments

Question 3

Example of idiographic approach

Answer 3

Freud: case study of little Hans
- HORSES
- collected 150 pages of quotes recored by Hans father
- descriptions of events in Hans life

Question 4

Example of nomothetic approach

Answer 4

Behaviourist approach - with animals is order to establish principles of learning ( classical and operant conditioning) generalised results to humans

Question 5

Evaluations of idiographic approach

Answer 5

• unable to make generalisations to the wider population and make prediction about behaviour = libations for diagnosis an treatments of psychological disorders as it would be time consuming to produce personalised therapies
• unscientific - rejections of making generalisations contradicts the principles of science making the results meaningless
• can help generate further research into a psychological phenomenon = help develop new theories

Question 6

Evaluation of nomothetic theories

Answer 6

• scientific as it uses quantitive methods and makes predictions about behaviour = useful in devoting treatments for psychological disorders such as depression and OCD treatments based of assumption has e the same effect on mos sufferers of the disorders
• allow replication of results in order to assess their reliability = contributed to the emergence of psychology as a science
• superficial understanding of behaviour focus on statistical analysis and quantitive data rather than providing explanations for the context of individuals behaviour eg 2 people same diagnosis is but different behaviour

Question 7

Elation of combined approach

Answer 7

Holt - idiographic vs nomothetic distinction is false
- many psychological approach make use of both
- eg cognitive psychologists = use nomothetic approaches to study cognitive processes but use case study eg HM to find evidence
- 2 approaches should treated as complimentary no exclusive

Further evidence
Millions and Davis = research start with nomothetic and once generalisations made researcher can focus of individual cases taking an ideographic approach