Idiographic VS Nomothetic in Psychology (Issues and Debates)

IDIOGRAPHIC AND NOMOTHETIC APPROACHES

THE IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH in Psychology attempts to describe the nature of the individual. People are studied as unique entities, each with their own subjective experiences, motivations and values. There may be no attempt made to compare these to a larger group, standard or norm.
The idiographic approach is generally associated with those methods in Psychology that produce qualitative data, such as case studies, unstructured interviews and other self-report methods. This reflects one of the central aims of idiographic research: to describe the richness of human experience ad gain insight into the person’s unique way of viewing the world.

EXAMPLES:
Schizophrenia: The CBT approach to treating SZ is idiographic and requires a therapist to listen to the patient’s individual viewpoint – not attempting to make ‘general laws’ between the experiences of patients.
Forensic Psychology: Anger Management looks at the individual circumstances of the offender and his/her thought processes, which is an idiographic stance.

THE NOMOTHETIC APPROACH’s main aim is to produce general laws of human behaviour, These provide a ‘benchmark’ against which people can be compared, classified and measured, and on the basis of which likely future behaviour can be predicted and/or controlled.
The nomothetic approach is most closely aligned with those methods in Psychology that would be regarded as ‘scientific’, such as experiments and gathering quantitative data. These involve the study of larger numbers of people in order to establish ways in which people are similar.

EXAMPLES:
Cognition and Development: C&D is comprised on nomothetic research. The primary aim of developmental psychologists such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Selman was to look for stages that could be generalised across all children.
Schizophrenia: Drug therapies are developed from nomothetic research, which sees the cause of SZ as rooted in the biology of those suffering with it (the biological cause is thought to be the same in all Schizophrenics.)

FOR AND AGAINST THE IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH…

FOR: A case study method is a powerful tool for evaluating psychological theories: for example, the study of patient KF highlighted a limitation of the Multi-Store Model of Memory, by providing evidence that our STM comprises of at least two different components. Consequently, a single case study can generate further research into a particular phenomenon (eg. memory) which contributes to the development of new theories that further our understanding of human behaviour.

AGAINST: Methods associated with the idiographic approach, such as case studies, tend to be the least scientific in that conclusions rely on subjective interpretation by the researcher, which makes them more open to bias.

FOR AND AGAINST THE NOMOTHETIC APPROACH…

FOR: Tends to be more scientific – testing occurs under standardised conditions which allows for predictions to be made, and enables precise control over the variables – this means that the studies can be replicated to examine for reliability of the findings, and such processes have enabled psychologists to establish norms of ‘typical’ behaviour, arguably giving the discipline of psychology greater scientific credibility.

AGAINST: Some psychologists argue that this approach loses sight of the ‘whole person’, due to its fixation on quantitative data and statistical analysis. It is further argued that it only provides a superficial understanding of human behaviour: for example, Milgram (1966) found that 65% of participants fully-obeyed an authority figure, but the results fail to provide an explanation of why each person obeyed (there may have been very different circumstances that led to the obedience found in each participant).