A Balance Between Nomothetic and Idiographic Approaches Essay

The idiographic and nomothetic tone-beginninges in psychology are frequently regarded as representing opposing and conflicting positions about how best to study people, specially intelligence and personality. However, the two whitethorn be seen as complementary, with both undeniable to gain a fuller understanding of homosexual beings. The idiographic turn up focuses on the individual and recognises the uniqueness of the person in terms of their gravels, mental pictures, readingal history, aspirations and motivations in life, and the values and moral codes by which they live. The expression idiograph comes from the classic word idios, meaning own or private.Hence the idiographic come up in psychology is concerned with the private, immanent and unique aspects of a person and employs methods of inquiry which provide information about subjective begins. The idiographic appeal is characterised by qualitative methods of investigation. Qualitative methods include unstructured interviews, crusade studies, self report measures, introspection, and the psychoanalytic techniques of free association and dream analysis. The idiographic turn upes is holistic and places great value on the individuals cognizant experiences.The humanistic perspective in psychology perhaps best exemplifies the idiographic near. Freudian psychoanalysis rat also be said to take in an idiographic approach as he did not use each scientific method to test or find evidence for his suppositional claims. Approach The nomothetic approach in psychology focuses on similarities mingled with people and attempts to establish general laws of behavior and thought that cigarette be applied to large populations of people, or indeed to all people The word nomothetic comes from Greek words nomos, meaning law.Hence, the nomothetic approach is most closely aligned with the scientific approaches in psychology. This means that it uses scientific methods of investigation, particularly experiment ations, to test hypotheses that are derived from theories about human behaviour and thought. The nomothetic approach adopts a reductionist viewpoint, placing great value on objectivity and replication. The behaviourist, cognitive ad biological perspectives best exemplify the nomothetic approach. Freudian theory also attempts to establish laws or rules about human beings, for casing the psychosexual stages and the Oedipus complex.Freud believed these were applicable to all and the theory is nomothetic in this respect. stress Humanistic psychology adopt a more idiographic approach, pursuit the more unique aspects of individuals, sort of than producing generalised laws of behaviour that check to everyone. It highlighted the value of more individualistic and idiographic methods of study, particularly in areas of personality and abnormalities. smorgasbord manuals like the DSM-IV, which lists the essential behavioural criteria of diagnosing autism, adopts a nomothetic approach and cl assify people according to particular type of disorders.Traditionally, the idiographic and nomothetic approaches are seen as conflicting, with the implication that as a psychologist you can alone operate from one of these positions. Cronbach (1957) identified this potential source of conflict surrounded by psychologists about how best to study the nature of what it is to be human. If the psychologist seeks to develop theories that apply to large populations then the nomothetic approach is preferable. If, however, the psychologist is interested in the uniqueness of a person, then the idiographic approach is the one to adopt.Subjective experience The idiographic approach is often regarded as non-scientific, as subjective experience cannot be empirically tested and it is difficult to generalise from detailed subjective knowledge about a person. some psychologists argue that scientific principles can be applied to study the uniqueness of individuals and the norms and rules by which a specialized person operates can be identified. The idiographic approach can be apply to study topics such as beggary which are relatively rare and dep quits upon the circumstances surrounding the individual.Most evidence for effects of privation has come from case studies of children who have been raised in conditions of neglect. The case of jinni (Curtiss, 1977) raises that severe privation has permanent effects. At the age of 13 eld she was ineffective to speak, physically underdeveloped and showed inappropriate emotional responses. Despite education and intellectual stimulation, Genie apparently never recovered from her years of privation, although in that location was a suggestion that other factors may have contri notwithstandinged to her problems.Koluchovas longitudinal study followed the long-term development of twin boys who had suffered severe privation in early childhood showed that children who have experienced severe privation count able to overcome the effects of their early suffering with appropriate interposition and care. As such the nomothetic approach would be unsuitable and unable to gather any information which would contribute towards our understanding of the topic. The two approaches can be complementary as the idiographic approach can sink further light on a general law of behaviour established through a nomothetic approach.Idiographic research may disprove a general law of behaviour. For example nomothetic research supported the idea of a multi-store model of memory with information silken through the STM to LTM. However case studies of patients with brain abuse suggest that the multi-store model is over-simplified. A patient known as KF suffered brain damage following a motorcycle accident, and underwent brain surgery. Some years after he was found to have normal LTM storage but an STM capacity of only two items.If STM was necessary for the convert of information to LTM, then KFs LTM should also be affected. As a conseq uence, further models of memory have been proposed and tested. On the other hand, idiographic findings can lead to large scale research. Piaget used the idiographic approach gaining rich and detailed information about the development of his own childrens thinking. These finding inspired further nomothetic research and theories into cognitive development were developed. Scientific approachBoth approaches can contribute to the scientific approach the aim of science are to understand and describe which corresponds to the idiographic approach and to predict and control which corresponds to the nomothetic approach. The nomothetic approach generalise findings e. g. in terms of the primacy and recency effects, more words are recalled from the beginning and the end of the list, irrespective of the length of the list. However an idiographic approach could be used to find the different techniques that people have used to recall the itemsIn contemporary psychology, the idiographic-nomothetic debate is still an important distinction. Attempts have been made to cultivate the two approaches together in an interactionist model (Bandura, 1986), but no influential solution has been found. It could be argued that the strengths of one approach compensate for the limitations of the other and so both approaches are needed for a complete study of psychology. The nomothetic approach has helped psychology to become scientific by developing laws and theories of human behaviour that can be empirically tested.This approach attempts to determine laws and unwashed characteristics for all people or large groups of people in a culture. It also helps to combine biological and social aspects of a person. However, the focus on general laws and theories neglects the subjective and unique experiences of the person. The extensive use of controlled laboratory experiment means that there is a problem of generalisation to everyday life. Some psychologists also argued that this approach overemphas ises the similarities between people and gives little attention to differences.Alternatively, the idiographic approach focuses on the subjective experiences of the person making the individual feeling valued and unique. Each person is valued as an individual rather than seen as one amongst legion(predicate). Conclusion This approach provides detailed psychohistories and attempts to understand the many influences on how they come to be as they are. Humanistic psychology uses an idiographic approach to enable people to develop their full potential. However, this approach for the most part neglects biological, especially genetic influences.