idiographic vs nomethic Flashcards
idiographic approach
-approach that focuses more on the individual and empathises that unique personal experience of human nature
-behaviour must be understood in terms of subjective experience-what it means to the individual
methods of investigation
-case studies
-unstructured interviews
-thermotic analysis
-self-reports
-autobiographies
-personal documents
examples in psychology
-humanistic psychology
-rogers and maslow were only concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person
-psychodynamic approach
-Freud used case studies of his patients as a way to understand human behaviour e.g. little Hans
nomothetic approach
-approach that attempts to study human behaviour through the development of general laws that apply to large groups of people
methods of investigation
-lab experiments
-correlations
-psychometric testing
examples in psychology
-biological approach
-seeks to portray the basic principles of how the body and mind work
-biological psychologists have conducted brain scans on countless human brains in order to make generalisations about localisation of function
strength-focus on the individual
humanistic psychologists and qualitative psychologists in the later half of the last century felt that there was too much emphasis on measurement and that psychologists had last sight of what it was to be human. this is strength because results that focus on the individual can provide us with more complete understanding of human behaviour
weakness-research lacks scientific rigour
supporters of the idiographic approach may have to acknowledge the subjective and restrictive nature of their work. for example, the criticism of Freuds theory is that many of his key concepts (e.g. the Oedipus complex) were largely developed from a detailed case study(little Hans). this is a weakness because meaningful generalisations cannot be made without further examples which means conclusions tend to rely on the subjective interpretations of the researcher and are therefore open to bias
strength-highly scientific methods
the processes involved in nomothetic reseT h including standardised procedures, tend to be more scientific mirroring those employed within the natural sciences. the nomothetic approach utilises quantitive methods which is based on numbers i.e. measures of central tendency and dispersion, assessing reliability and validity and using statistical analyses to demonstrate significance. this is a strength because this arguably gives the discipline of psychology greater credibility then critics of the discipline may suggest
limitation-combined methods of idiographic and nomothetic approaches
holt argues that the idiographic and no thematic distinction is a false desperation as many approaches take advantage of both approaches. holt claimed that there is no such thing as a unique individual and what idiographic approaches actually do is generate general principles. the idiographic approach actually ends up being nomothetic. an example in the psychodynamic approach is frued. he used the case stylist method when detailing the lives of his patients e.g. little hans. however, freud assumed he had identified laws of behaviour and personality development which could be applied universally. therefore, it could be argued that the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic is meaning less and psychologists should use both methods in their research
