Nomothetic and Idiographic Approaches

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about nomothetic and idiographic approaches to research, focusing in particular on: (i) nomothetic being based on the Greek word for law and which is concerned with building generalisable models for behaviour; (ii) idiographic being based on the Greek word for private and which tries to describe personal experiences in rich detail; (iii) Tajfel and Turner’s study, wherein children were divided into groups based on a fake personality test, which still led them to identify with their ingroup and discriminate against the outgroup; (iv) a criticism of social identity theory being its lack of consideration for individual differences and social context; (v) cultural differences in identity, including the more typical omission of national pride expression by British people, when compared with other countries.

About the lecturer

Dr Metodi Siromahov is a lecturer in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London. Dr Siromahov’s research interests are in historical controversies and debates within social psychology, and the application of these to understanding political ideologies. Dr Siromahov’s recent publications include 'Beliefs in national continuity are related to essentialist thinking and to perceptions of the nation as a family' (2020) and 'Mapping visual spatial prototypes: Multiple reference frames shape visual memory' (2020).