L6: Ideographic and Nomothetic Approaches

Question 1

What is the idiographic approach

Answer 1

• Study of individuals and their unique insights
• Qualitative as you study individuals in-depth
• Quality > Quantity
• Uses unstructured interviews and case studies

Question 2

Which approaches are idiographic?

Answer 2

• Psychodynamic: Case studies to understand human behaviour. e.g Little Hans had a 150 page book of his quotes from his father and descriptions of events as well as interpretation.
• Humanistic: Concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person. The persons subjective experience is what matters not what others observe

Question 3

What is the Nomothetic approach?

Answer 3

• Using a large representative sample using random rampling to collect a lot of data to support a testable hypothesis
• Seeks to formulate general laws of behaviour that apply to everyone
• Quantitative data: from karge groups of people

Question 4

What approaches are Nomothetic?

Answer 4

• Biological: portrays the basic principles of how the body and brain work. They used to study men and apply to women
• Behaviourist: produces general laws of human behaviour. Seeking one set of rules for all human and non-human animals
• Cognitive: Tries to develop laws that apply to all people like understanind memory processes. It uses case studies so it can look at abnormal minds to understand normal ones

Question 5

Evaluation of Idiographic Approach (+)

Answer 5

(+) Rich and detailed info about single cases. It is only by knowing a person as an individual that we can predict what they will do in any given situation.
(+) Case studies and Thematic ananlysis are scientific. Qualitative research methods use reflexivity to identify the influence of any bias. (Reflexivity = process where researcher thinks critically during research process about factors that affect the behaviour if bith yhe ppt and researcher)

Question 6

Evaluation of Idiographic Approach (-)

Answer 6

• Not scientific. People consider the humanistic approach to not be sufficiently evidence based and therefore to be essentially meaningless. Positive psychology aims to be more evidence based.
• It has an inability to produce general predictions about behaviour is limiting because they can be helpful. It would too time consuming.
• It is more time consuming and expensive. It collects a large amount of data from one person. The other approach is quicker and can generalise.