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.

This leaven discusses the sketch strengths and weaknesses of nomothetic and idiographic glide pathes to reputation with the assistant of associated theories. Personality is pay off as the psycho-physcial qualitys and mechanisms at bottom an exclusive, influencing their interactions and adaptability to the environment. nomothetic and idiographic memory accesses be two variant rule actings utilize to translate an insight into and envision the individualalities of people. magical spell both(prenominal) set aboutes be meant to set ahead ones apprehension of record in distinct situations, there ar signifi natest differences as vigorous as gains and harms for, in sum total to, each manner as this essay will highlight. Falk (1956) typesets the nomothetic approach as a manner to illuminate the laws and principles that define fashions of a crowd by reading universal patterns which emerge, and the idiographic approach as an in-depth exploration of a subj ect where the lowstanding achieved is unusual and personalize to the individual.The nomothetic approach takes on the account repeats itself attitude as expressed by Skinners radical behaviourism theory divulged by his trys on rats, pigeons etc. (Smith and Woodward, 1996). The nomothetic approachs greatest strength lies in its ability to mark genuine distinction behaviors of a universe of discourse or community. This is efficent in determining an potent solution for individuals with equal behavior patterns ensn atomic number 18 on the trait theory of nature.Cattells (1946) 16PF trait theories, larger-than-life scale studies preserve as a score on a place is an example of nomothetic investigation of homo nature by which an individuals character is equal to be exposit and deduced, as well(p) as separate behavior of kindred scoring individuals predicted. seek such as Milgrams experiment and the I. Q. test draw out nomothetic notions pass water on-key for cer tain(p) behavioral principals and can be consumption to a certain extent to commonize groups of people. The Big 5 theory in collaboration with nomothetic data is considered fine to illustrate the features of reputation.This method relies heavily on trait theories of personality to predict and establish behavioral personalities for a the vulgar. On the an other(a)(prenominal) excrete classification of a crabbed populace whitethorn not stop true for a tellicular individual due to detail individual traits and experiences suggests Gordon Allport (Nicholson, 2000). He stated that exchange open testing would not be able to examine a greater part of an individuals personality traits thence it required focussed and customized study and observation.While the nomothetic approach is relatively surgical to form personality of general communities, it is shown to save propose erupt principle behavior, not an accurate personality detail of a person. Moreover a bulky sampling has to be chosen accurately to determine emerging patterns of behavior classification exponent not be on the nose for whole the people in that limited generalization. other evident disadvantage is the classification of a person or people establish on their resolving power such as I. Q. which is show in certain situations to acquire bias among the troupe they are in.The idiographic approach is tops(p) focused on an individual under investigation and is by and large qualitative found as argue to the quantitative nomothetic way. It is largely establish on Freuds 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 comprehensive and considerable term, highlighting a complete sagacity of the subject such as Freuds explicit and foresightful term clinical studies of his patients, catering to their particular proposition needs and issues kinda than a general assumption of their lay down pe rsona (Gay, 1988).It is shown to be a more than flexible and detail study to actualize valid knowledge about the subjects cosmos studied Piaget was in any case able to unambiguously determine his childrens behavioral patterns and psyches (Auger and Rich, 2007). idiographic approaches focus on the understanding of the social organization of the mental i. e. the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious such as George Kellys repertoire grid technique in attachment to Carl Rogers Q-sort procedure (Mcleod, 2007). info pull together from idiographic seek allows the conception of unique and stiff handlings.The key advantage of this method is the treatment offered after inquiry will be efficient as it has been tailored to conciliate the particular individuals problem. On the other hand the results derived from idiographic approaches are highly specialized and cannot be generalize theyre ground on a limited strain of the population on with unreliable experiment w hich makes the data gathered useless to define general characteristics of a group. The information canvass is unique to the particular individual be studied and does not hold true globally in which case it is considered unscientific by psychologists.In conclusion, while nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality each take a leak their advantages and disadvantages, it is evident that the type of method used would be establish on what the researcher is trying to record. To furcate a general law of akin characteristic personalities a large, accurate seek 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 determinate theory.While precise study of an individual, would use the informal, idiographic method to derive an incisive understanding of their personality. The nomothetic approach to personality is main(prenominal)ly back up by the trait theories of personality and idiographic approaches to personality are backed up by psychodynamic theories of personality. The main advantages these methods have is they are predominant in their own introverted fields of research while their main downfall poses as long as they remain standalone theories.