An idiographic perspective in mission-oriented research.

The distinction between idiographic and nomothetic approaches in research, particularly as used in personality theory, has relevance to program research. Four investigations were conducted, in which attempts to develop a theoretical framework of a nomothetic-conceptual-universal nature were either unsuccessful or, at best, of only incidental importance. At the same time, all four studies yielded results in which the particular-speciflc-idiographic framework had important program implications. These four studies were: (1) A comparison between Indian and non-Indian school children, in an effort to delineate differences in psychological characteristics of importance in education; (2) A comparison between French-speaking and English-speaking communities with respect to community attitudes toward mental illness; (3) A study of placement procedures for disabled employees in a large factory; (4) A study of the relationship between FIRO scale scores and sociometric choice in human relations training groups. These four investigations are described briefly, and in each instance, the implications of the idiographic approaches are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting human behavior: Comparing idiographic, nomothetic, and agentic methodologies.

Several longstanding issues in psychological research (e.g., self-determination vs. nonagentic determination in human action and nomothetic vs. idiographic research approaches) are explored. Reasons are presented that suggest why agentic and idiographic approaches (in combination with the more typical nomothetic, nonagentic studies) may enhance the predictive accuracy of psychological experiments. A study on the daily exercise behavior of 42 subjects over a 60-day period is presented and analyzed from 3 perspectives: nonagentic–nomothetic, nonagentic–idiographic, and agentic–nomothetic. The results suggest that substantial dividends in predictive accuracy accrue when nontraditional research perspectives are entertained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Piecemeal and category-based evaluation: An idiographic analysis.

Provides the clearest evidence to date for 2 distinct person evaluation processes: 1 based on liking for person attributes and 1 based on social categorization. The processes were induced by stimulus design and experimenter suggestion. An idiographic technique was developed to empirically distinguish between the processes, whereby Ss categorized stimuli as they saw fit and indicated their liking for person attributes (personality traits) and social categories (academic majors). Both idiographic and nomothetic evidence for 2 evaluation processes was obtained. Also, individual differences and stable normative patterns were observed in how stimulus persons were categorized. Contrary to expectation, the degree of fit of stimulus to schema did not relate to the degree to which evaluations were category based. Implications for models of evaluation processing and directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intraindividual stability in the organization and patterning of behavior: Incorporating psychological situations into the idiographic analysis of personality.

In nomothetic analyses, the cross-situational consistency of individual differences in social behavior, assessed in vivo in a camp setting, depended on the similarity in the psychological features of situations. As predicted by the social-cognitive theory of personality, idiographic analyses revealed that individuals were characterized by stable profiles of if… then…, situation–behavior relationships that formed "behavioral signatures" of personality (e.g., he aggresses when warned by adults but complies when threatened by peers). Thus, the intraindividual organization of behavior variation across situations was enduring but discriminatively patterned, visible as distinctive profiles of situation–behavior relationships. Implications were examined for an idiographic reconceptualization of personality coherence and its behavioral expressions in relation to the psychological ingredients of situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality: Nomothetic or idiographic? A response to Kenrick and Stringfield.

Suggests that substantial consistency can be observed in personality, as reflected in both behavior and judges' ratings, when the principle of aggregration is applied to traditional nomothetic assessment procedures and the results are interpreted in terms of classical reliability theory. It is demonstrated that conclusions by D. T. Kenrick and D. O. Stringfield (see record 1980-07621-001) about the improvement in predictive power stemming from an idiographic analysis do not follow from their data, as they confound trait consistency and trait extremity and fail to take account of restriction and inflation of range effects. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ambivalence over emotional expression and well-being: Nomothetic and idiographic tests of the stress-buffering hypothesis.

Examined nomothetic and idiographic relations between ambivalence over emotional expression (as expressed by the Ambivalence Over Emotional Expression Questionnaire; AEQ) and well-being in a 4-mo study with an interim 2-wk diary component. Ss were 66 undergraduates. Nomothetic and idiographic analyses both revealed that AEQ was related to psychological health but not to physical well-being. The nomothetic test of stress-buffering showed that AEQ was more predictive of depression among Ss who had experienced higher levels of positive life-event stress. In contrast, the idiographic test of stress-buffering revealed that Ss higher in AEQ exhibited less covariation between daily stress and negative affect over time. It is proposed that AEQ may reflect 2 types of emotional vulnerability: emotional reactivity and emotional perseveration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Approach-avoidance motivation in personality: Approach and avoidance temperaments and goals.

The present research examined the role of approach and avoidance motivation in models of personality. Specifically, it examined the hypothesis that approach and avoidance temperaments represent the foundation of several basic dimensions espoused in the trait adjective, affective disposition, and motivational system approaches to personality. Factor analytic support for the hypothesis was obtained in Studies 1, 2, and 6; measures of extraversion, positive emotionality, and behavioral activation system loaded together on 1 factor (Approach Temperament) and measures of neuroticism, negative emotionality, and behavioral inhibition system loaded on another factor (Avoidance Temperament). This 2-factor structure was shown to be independent of response biases. In Studies 3-7, approach and avoidance temperaments were shown to be systematically linked to achievement goals (both nomothetic and idiographic). The findings are discussed in terms of an integrative approach to personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Idiodynamics vis-à-vis psychology.

Questions the adequacy of the distinction between the nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality introduced by G. W. Allport (1937) and proposes 3 types of explanatory but complementary norms instead: nomothetic, demographic, and idiodynamic. Idiographic (trait-oriented) and idiodynamic (event-oriented) approaches are differentiated. It is shown that over the past century, psychology, operationally considered, has been a coordinate composite of the other major sciences. Idiodynamics, focusing on the experiential events of a particular personality (idioverse), is at the center of this coordinate gamut. It is proposed that the norms in conjunction with the coordinates be reassembled to conceptualize the parameters of the idioverse. It is suggested that the organic, cultural, and idiodynamic milieus blend through a matrix that produces experiential uniqueness. Three empirical methods for exploring this idioverse are described, including the reciprocity of experimenter–experimentee interaction, self-generated measures for evaluating cognate responses of the same idioverse, and the hermeneutic analysis of 3 levels of communication. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The therapist's dilemma: Using nomothetic information to answer idiographic questions.

The therapist is faced with the dilemma of conducting therapy at an idiographic level while psychology research is conducted and organized at a nomothetic level. Increasingly, psychiatric diagnosis serves as the conceptual bridge from the science of psychology to its clinical applications. Yet diagnosis has a number of well-known limitations for determining treatment. An alternative conceptual bridge from nomothetic science to clinical applications draws from 3 overlapping categories: (1) general causal principles derived from all areas of scientific psychology; (2) probabilities and base rate data associated with the covariation of psychological problems; and (3) clinical outcome research. Suggestions as to how therapists can use these nomothetic categories to form treatment strategies are given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resources, personal strivings, and subjective well-being: A nomothetic and idiographic approach.

The covariation of resources such as money, family support, social skills, and intelligence with subjective well-being (SWB) was assessed in 195 college students. Informant ratings provided an index of resources. Self-reports, daily experience sampling, and informant reports were used to measure SWB. The authors concluded that resources taken together are moderately strong predictors of SWB. This conclusion, however, was qualified by the fact that life satisfaction was more closely related to resources than was affective well-being and that social and personal resources were in general more strongly related to SWB than were material resources. The findings also supported the hypothesis that resources correlate more strongly with SWB when they are relevant to an individual's idiographic personal strivings. A tendency was found for people to choose personal strivings for which they have relevant resources, and the degree of congruence of individuals' goals with resources was predictive of SWB. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The helplessness–hopelessness theory and daily mood experience: An idiographic and cross-situational perspective.

The experience sampling method was used to examine the helplessness–hopelessness theory as a model of normal mood fluctuations. Ninety-one participants were signaled 5 times daily for a 1-week period to provide reports of negative events, specific cognitions, and anxiety and depression. Attributional and perception of control styles did not explain anxious or depressed moods, but they were predictive of the causal attributions and perceptions of control made across diverse environmental contexts. Furthermore, idiographic analyses demonstrated that specific causal attributions about negative events explained fluctuations in depressed mood within the flow of daily life. In contrast to the theory, perceptions of event controllability were not related to fluctuations in anxious mood or to the later formulation of causal attributions. Implications for understanding normal mood experience and the helplessness–hopelessness theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is nomothetic about “nomothetic” personality research?

Were it one's purpose to set rolling in scornful impatience the eyes of those who currently animate the discipline of personality psychology, one could scarcely do better than to initiate some discussion of the so-called "nomothetic vs. idiographic" controversy, a dispute that has nagged the field for at least the past 50 years. The author has been persuaded that the need for such an analysis will prevail for just so long as it takes the legion but, alas, ersatz "nomotheticists' of personality psychology to finally get it right: The knowledge yielded by conventional' 'nomothetic' personality research has never been, is not now, and will never be nomothetic in any sense of the term to which a personality theorist would be compelled to bow. When all is said and done, it is only this dogma, as fallacious as it is resilient, that has nourished some six decades of "nomothetic" hegemony and, in the process, served repeatedly as the grounds for summarily banishing to their collective corner dispirited critics such as Allport (cf. Allport, 1966). But while the intimidating hubris of psychometric sophisticates may heretofore have muted many who, in their alleged "romanticism" (Holt, 1962) dared to challenge conventional "nomothetic" wisdom, such browbeating does not dispel ghosts—Teutonic or otherwise. There are certain essentially epistemological problems with which apologists for traditional "nomotheticism" simply must come to grips, and if prior critics of the dominant paradigm failed to articulate those problems adequately (and I believe that this is the case, cf. Lamiell, 1985), then the struggle must be joined anew, because the problems are genuine and they are not just going to evaporate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reconsideration of the use of peer sociometrics for evaluating social-skills training. Implications of an idiographic assessment of temporal stability

Social-skills training studies using sociometric procedures as dependent measures have often yielded mixed results as to the improvement of the subjects. Failure to document improvement in peer acceptance subsequent to behavior change has led some to question the validity of social-skills interventions, whereas others have questioned the psychometric properties of the measures themselves. This study examined the temporal stability of the two major types of peer measures used in social-skills interventions studies; peer-nomination measures of liking and peer-rating measures of liking. Subjects were 87 children in three fourth-grade and two fifth-grade classrooms. Temporal stability was assessed across time intervals of 2,6, and 8 weeks. Temporal stability was examined as it traditionally has been at the group level (using Pearson product-moment correlations), and at the level at which data are normally examined for change in social-skills interventions, at the level of the individual child (using phi and Cramer's V coefficients). Assessed at the group level, the three types of peer measures were generally moderately to highly stable. Stability coefficients for individual children's scores on the peer measures, however, indicated instability at the level of the individual child. These problems regarding stability at the individual, idiographic level may be especially relevant when sociometric procedures are used as dependent measures in individual subject design studies. Conceptual and practical implications of the findings for the assessment of social-skills interventions are discussed.     

Idiographic measurement strategies for personality and prediction: Some unredeemed promissory notes.

Examines proposed idiographic measurement methods for predicting behavior, focusing on research purporting to demonstrate associations between individual differences in predictability and the variable of cross-situational behavior consistency. Theoretical analyses and empirical evaluations of new data yielded the following observations: (a) Certain personality consistency research strategies thought to be idiographic are properly regarded as nomothetic. (b) Proposed measures of individual cross-situational variability show poor levels of convergence and of construct validity. (c) Measures of consistency are substantially and expectedly related to measures of trait extremity, a relation that if not controlled poses notable problems for studies of behavioral predictability. (d) The hypothesis of individual differences in predictability as a function of consistency is appropriately evaluated using the analytic method of moderated multiple regression. Applying this approach, an extensive set of analyses of new data failed to confirm the popular belief that consistency moderates predictability. It is argued that evidence amply supports the utility of applying classical nomothetic principles in prediction research. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using a knowledge-and-appraisal model of personality architecture to understand consistency and variability in smokers' self-efficacy appraisals in high-risk situations.

The present research used idiographic methods for identifying intraindividual, cross-contextual patterns of consistency and variability in self-efficacy appraisal among smokers. Building on a knowledge-andappraisal model of personality architecture, the authors assessed (a) schematic self-knowledge, (b) beliefs about the relevance of high-risk smoking-related situations to those schematic attributes, and (c) appraisals of self-efficacy for smoking avoidance in specific contexts. The idiographic assessments of situational and self-knowledge robustly predicted patterns of intraindividual consistency and variability in self-efficacy appraisal. A response-time measure revealed that speed in making positive self-appraisals varied systematically across schema-relevant contexts. Results speak to the field's need for assessment strategies to detect, and theoretical models to explain, within-person, across-context variations in self-efficacy for avoiding addictive behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The paramorphic representation of clinical judgment.

"This paper has been concerned with the manner in which information is utilized in decision making or in judgment situations. It is shown that mathematical models provide a way of describing mental processes which would otherwise be accessible only through introspection or electro-physiological techniques. A linear model and a configurational model are described, and illustrations furnished for each. Such models make possible the testing of hypotheses concerning method of combination, individual differences in judgment ability, effects of training, personality correlates, idiographic interpretation of case materials, etc." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of an idiographic measure of self-schemas: An illustration of the construction and use of self-scenarios.

Self-scenarios were used as a repeated measures outcome measurement with a 41-yr-old unemployed White male patient with a history of anxiety and depression. Self-scenarios represent an idiographic measure of dysfunctional schemas, defined as cognitive-affective-motoric structures. Two psychologists acted as assessment interviewer and 3rd-party observer. After the 2nd session, S rated 5 self-scenarios (appended) corresponding to his own problems for frequency, preoccupation, accessibility, alternatives, self-efficacy, self-view, interpersonal view, and chronicity. From the 3rd to 20th session, S received only the 2 clinically relevant scenarios and completed corresponding ratings. General psychiatric symptomatology was measured at treatment outcome. Not all indices displayed the same magnitude of change or the same time frame for change; change was not maintained in a linear fashion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)