Idiographic and Nomothetic Approaches

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What is the idiographic approach?
focuses on individuals as a means of understanding behaviour; often uses qualitative methods of research
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What does the idiographic approach aim to do?
Attempts to describe the individual by studying unique individuals in-depth rather than gaining numerical data from many individuals and determining averages
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How is the psychodynamic approach an example of the idiographic approach?
Freud used case studies of his patients, however did try to generalise to universal laws
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How is humanism an example of the idiographic approach?
Concerned with studying the whole person and seeing the world from the perspective of that person, however theory has been generalied but not by Maslow
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What is the nomothetic approach?
develops laws of behaviour based on the study of groups; often uses quantitative data
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What does the nomothetic approach aim to do?
To produce general laws of behaviour by studying a large number of people, means generalisations can be made, provide a benchmark against which people can be compared, means future behaviour can be predicted
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How is the biological approach nomothetic?
Biological psychologists seek to make generalisations about bodily processes,
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How is the behaviourist approach nomothetic?
Behaviourist psychologists produced general laws of behaviour e.g. Skinner
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How is the cognitive approach nomothetic?
Cognitive psychologists have been able to infer the structure and processes of human memory, however has used case studies
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What is a strength of the qualitative case study method used by the idiographic approach?
Provides a complete and global account of the individual as it uses in-depth qualitative methods of investigation
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What is a weakness of the qualitative case study method used by the idiographic approach
Should not be possible to make meaningful generalisations as this is a case study of only one person e.g. Freud generalising with Little Hans
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What is a strength of the scientific quantitative methods used by the Nomothetic approach?
Methods used to gather data are scientific, experiments are conducted under controlled, standardised conditions which means that cause and effect can be inferred
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What is a weakness of the scientific quantitative methods used by the Nomothetic approach?
Preoccupation with finding general laws of behaviour has been accused of losing the individual e.g. knowing that a lifetime risk of developing schizophrenia is 1% doesn't tell what life is like
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Why might there be a benefit to using both approaches for a topic?
Rather than seeing the two as mutually exclusive alternatives its best to consider the same issue from both perspectives
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What does the idiographic approach aim to do?

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Attempts to describe the individual by studying unique individuals in-depth rather than gaining numerical data from many individuals and determining averages

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How is the psychodynamic approach an example of the idiographic approach?

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How is humanism an example of the idiographic approach?

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What is the nomothetic approach?

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