PSYCH 2B03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Nomothetic, Theoretical Physics, Litmus
18 Mar 2016
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Nomothetic - relating to the study or discovery of general scienti c laws. Idiographic - relating to the study or discovery of particular scienti c facts and processes, as distinct from general laws. Theories of personality are very general, everything that we think, feel etc . Long history of interest (trying to understand who we are, why we are made that way) Most research in personality is not theory driven. Little empirical support (scienti c support: most of it is based on clinical experience. Not as good as explaining predictive - saying beforehand what will happen. Clinicians will create a theory and apply a therapy based on their theory, when tested on their patients if the theory works, they will have con dence that their theory is now true. There is consistency in behavior across the population: we can predict what our friends are likely to do/think/say. Ex: energy --> it is a made up idea.
