'What Are the Principle Strengths and Weaknesses of Nomothetic and Idiographic Approaches to Personality? Illustrate You Answer with at Least One Theory Associated with Each Approach.\r'

'This essay discusses the major strengths and weaknesses of nomothetic and idiographic come ones to disposition with the help of associated theories. spirit is defined as the psycho-physcial traces and mechanisms within an undivided, influencing their interactions and adaptability to the ‘environment’. nomothetic and idiographic approaches argon two different modes utilise to provide an insight into and determine the personalities of pack.\r\n temporary hookup two approaches are meant to further ones cause of personality in different situations, there are significant differences as well as returnss and disfavors for, in adjunct to, separately method as this essay forget highlight. Falk (1956) defines the nomothetic approach as a method to exculpate the laws and principles that define ways of a populace by reading everyday patterns which emerge, and the idiographic approach as an in-depth exploration of a subject where the understanding achieved is uniq ue and separateised to the individual.\r\nThe nomothetic approach takes on the ‘history repeats itself’ attitude as expressed by Skinner’s radical behaviorism theory divulged by his experiments on rats, pigeons etc. (Smith and Woodward, 1996). The nomothetic approach’s passingior strength lies in its ability to distinguish plastered trait behaviors of a population or community. This is efficent in determining an effective solution for individuals with identical behavior patterns based on the trait theory of personality.\r\nCattell’s (1946) 16PF trait theories, large scale studies recorded as a score on a symmetry is an example of nomothetic investigating of human personality by which an individual’s personality is cap sufficient to be described and widely distributedised, as well as group behavior of same scoring individuals predicted. search such as Milgram’s experiment and the I. Q. raise suggest nomothetic nonions tick true for genuine behavioural principals and can be used to a certain extent to generalize groups of the great unwashed. The ‘Big 5’ theory in collaboration with nomothetic information is considered satisfactory to illustrate the features of personality.\r\nThis method relies heavily on trait theories of personality to predict and establish behavioral personalities for a populace. On the other hand salmagundi of a fact populace may not hold true for a particular individual due to special(prenominal) individual traits and experiences suggests Gordon Allport (Nicholson, 2000). He utter that standardized testing would not be able to examine a greater part of an individual’s personality traits thus it required focussed and customized study and observation.\r\nWhile the nomothetic approach is relatively entire to determine personality of general communities, it is shown to unless propose surface principle behavior, not an blameless personality detail of a pe rson. Moreover a bulky sample has to be chosen accurately to determine emerging patterns of behavior; classification world power not be precise for all the people in that particular generalization. Another evident disadvantage is the classification of a person or people based on their result such as I. Q. which is show in certain situations to create separatrix among the society they are in.\r\nThe idiographic approach is highly focused on an individual under investigation and is mostly qualitative based as fence to the quantitative nomothetic way. It is largely based on Freud’s theories of consciousness, that each person has an I,D. , ego and super ego and that it is unique to that particular individual. The study is plenary and long term, highlighting a complete understanding of the subject such as Freud’s lucid and long term clinical studies of his patients, catering to their specific needs and issues rather than a general self-reliance of their base persona ( Gay, 1988).\r\nIt is shown to be a to a greater extent flexible and detailed study to gain effectual knowledge about the subjects being studied; Piaget was too able to unambiguously determine his children’s behavioral patterns and psyches (Auger and Rich, 2007). Idiographic approaches focus on the understanding of the grammatical construction of the mental i. e. the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious such as George Kelly’s repertory grid technique in addition to Carl Rogers’ Q-sort procedure (Mcleod, 2007). Data gathered from idiographic look into allows the creation of unique and effective treatments.\r\nThe key advantage of this method is the treatment offered after look for will be efficient as it has been tailored to check the particular individuals problem. On the other hand the results derived from idiographic approaches are highly specific and cannot be generalized; they’re based on a particular(a) sample of the population along with unreliable experimentation which makes the data gathered useless to define general characteristics of a group. The information analyzed is unique to the particular individual being studied and does not hold true globally in which case it is considered unscientific by psychologists.\r\nIn conclusion, while nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality each have their advantages and disadvantages, it is evident that the flake of method used would be based on what the researcher is trying to record. To distinguish a general law of similar characteristic personalities a large, accurate sample from a populace would need to be nomotheticly studied with correlation factors as well as psychometric testing and other forms of quantitative research to drawn upon a fairly conclusive theory.\r\nWhile precise study of an individual, would use the informal, idiographic method to derive an acute understanding of their personality. The nomothetic approach to personality is mainly supp orted by the trait theories of personality and idiographic approaches to personality are approve up by psychodynamic theories of personality. The main advantages these methods have is they are predominant in their own introspective field of research while their main downfall poses as long as they remain standalone theories.\r\n'