Hamaker - reading assignment Flashcards
(8 cards)
What is nomothetic research?
Nomothetic research aims at finding “general laws”.
A general law means that the result found holds
for each member of the population
What is ideographic research?
Idiographic research focuses on the individual (or the particular).
Who connected nomothetic research to large sample approach? Why Hamaker considers it a misconception?
Allport connected the two!
This is a misconception because Hamaker will argue that cross-sections of the population (cross-sectional research on large samples) is not informative on general laws. You might even find
the opposite relation in a cross section, compared to what the general law is. (e.g., the typing example is an example where there is a general law but cross-sectionally you find the opposite relation due to large individual differences in means). The large sample approach gives information
on the aggregate, but not necessarily on what is true in general
What are traits?
traits are assumed relatively stable over time (e.g. personality traits)
What are states?
fluctuate over time (e.g. mood)
What ergodicity implies for means, variances, covariances and lagged covariances of variables ?
It actually implies two things: I) stationarity: these means, variances and (lagged) covariances cannot structurally change over time. And II) these means, variances, and (lagged) covariances have to be the same across individuals.
Why ergodicity does not hold for the typing example?
In the typing example, the variances are the same across people, and the covariation as well.
However, the means differ! Therefore the variation found in a cross-section is a mixture of variation
within individuals and variation between individuals (differences in their means). Ergodicity does not hold because the means of the people differ.
What are examples of relations identified in large sample approach, which might have not been identified in ideographic research?
relation between smoking and lung cancer
