Compare and contrast idiographic and nomothetic methods in personality research

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Subject: Personality Psychology Year: First Year Word Length: 1000 Title of Essay: Compare and contrast idiographic and nomothetic methods in personality research. This essay will begin by introducing personality, for which it will give a brief definition. It will go on to define idiographic (from the Greek word idios, meaning ‘personal’), and nomothetic (from the Greek word nomos, meaning ‘law’), approaches to personality, stating the main theorists for each. The essay will follow on by comparing and contrasting the two methods, noting advantages, disadvantages and criticisms, before concluding which is most effective, if any. Since I have begun my studies in Psychology, I have stumbled across many definitions for personality. Definitions range from “…refers to those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving” (Pervin, Cervone, & John, 2005, p6), to “the pattern of psychological and behavioral characteristics by which each person can be compared and contrasted with others” (Bernstein, Penner, Clarke-Stewart & Roy, 2003, pg 518), to Moore’s contribution“... psychological – it refers to the individual (actions, thoughts, feelings) and not to material things such as possessions or status” (cited in Davey, 2004, pg488). The definitions are endless, but the most pertinent I have come across, “it is the whole integrated pattern of behaviour which distinguishes one man from another as uniquely as fingerprints and as distinctly as photographs” (Lazarus & Opton Jr, 1967, pg9). The text further goes on to explain the subject matter of personality and the areas it is divided into. So now there is an understanding of personality, it will be easier to appreciate the approaches that will be compared and contrasted. Moore defines the idiographic approach as “the study of one individual without

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