Question

Ideographic vs. Nomothetic; Systems Approach to Psychology

What are merits and weaknesses of qualitative (ideographic) and quantitative (nomothetic) approaches to study the person?

Answer 1

Normative approach in psychology is an approach of understanding human behavior in more of a generalized approach. It focuses on the generalized law that governs human behavior. It includes focusing on gaining objective knowledge through scientific methods. It is more objective in nature. Strength of this approach is that it gives a quick overview of the matter, it is comparatively less time taking, it can give a general approach. While the weakness of this approach would be that it misses out on the uniqueness of the matter of study, it can not explain exceptions, which can be caused due to uniqueness of matter in most cases.

On the other hand, Ideographic approach in psychology focus on individual instead of focusing on generalized laws. Ideographic approach focuses on the uniqueness of different humans and human behaviors. This approach is more subjective in nature. Strength of this approach is that it focuses on the uniqueness and hence gives a precise more accurate result. It can give a better approach to the diversity of data as it focuses on uniqueness and us elaborated. Weakness would be it is more time taking. It can be a lengthy process.