Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches

Idiographic approach
- Study of unique experience
  - Aims to describe nature of the individual
  - People studied as unique entities with their own subjective experiences/motivators/values
  - No attempt to compare to a larger group/standard/norm
- Qualitative research methods
  - Case studies/unstructured interviews/self-report techniques
  - Reflects aim to describe richness of human experience/gain insight into individual’s unique way of thinking
- g. humanistic psychology
  - Interested in documenting conscious experience of the individual rather than producing general laws of behaviour
- g. the psychodynamic approach
  - Freud’s use of the case study method
  - However, also assumed he had universal laws of behaviour/personality development

Nomothetic approach
- Production of general laws
  - Benchmark against which people can be compared/classified/measured
  - Future behaviour can be predicted/controlled
- Associated with reliable/scientific tests
  - g. questionnaires/psychological tests
  - Studies of larger numbers of people
    - How they are similar/how they differ
  - g. behaviourism
    - Studied responses of hundreds of animals to develop laws of learning
  - g. cognitive approach
    - Infer structure/processes of human memory
      - Measuring performance of large samples of people in lab tests
    - g. biological approach
      - Conducted countless brain scans to make generalisations about localisation of function

Idiographic approach provides rich data
- Complete/global account of the individual
  - g. case study of HM
- Single case may generate hypotheses for further study
  - g. HM: helped understanding that some procedural memories are more resistant to amnesia
- Reveals important insights about normal functioning which may contribute to our overall understanding of behaviour

Idiographic approach: lack of scientific rigour
- Supporters may have to acknowledge subjective/restrictive nature of their work
- Freud: many key concepts were largely developed from detailed study of a single case
  - g. Little Hans and the Oedipus complex
- Meaningful generalisations cannot be made without further examples
  - Conclusions tend to rely on subjective interpretation of the researcher
  - Open to bias

Nomothetic approach: scientific value of research
- More scientific processes
  - Mirror those employed within natural sciences
- Include standardised procedures, assessing reliability/validity, using statistical analysis to demonstrate significance
- Gives psychology greater credibility