Psychology has its roots in philosophy and has developed over a hundred years. As a scientific discipline that investigates human and animal behaviour psychology uses a wide range of methods to investigate numerous psychological topics. However, as psychology developed out of philosophy, a number of debates remain of central importance to this day such as the free will versus determinism debate and idiographic versus nomethetic debate.
The controversy between free will and determinism has been argued for many years. Free will is defined as having the freedom to make choices and that as individuals we are not set on a pre-determined path. People have a voluntary choice on their actions, which are not coerced by external and internal factors, therefore, giving full control to the individual. In a sense, the person determines through free choice, his or her thoughts and behaviour (Pennington et al 2003).
An advocate of free will was philosopher Renes Descartes (1649) who made the distinction between mind and body the former being non-physical, the latter being physical and is essentially a machine. According to Descartes, the behaviour is governed by no other laws than that which the person creates: He said “But the will is so free in its nature, that it can never be constrained” (Gross 2009, p209).
Determinism is the opposite of freewill and is defined as a philosophy that states that our behaviour and experiences are pre-determined by internal and external factors. There is two sides to determinism, hard and soft determinism and there are three types of determinism, biological, psychic and environmental (Pennington et al 2003).
For psychology to develop as a science it must assume a deterministic approach. Most psychologists do not accept the freewill side of the debate as it is subjective and is un-testable. The behaviourist approach is in favour of hard determinism arguing that human behaviour is determined by learning from the environment and its causes can be explained in terms of environmental stimuli. For example, well known experiments of Zimbardo’s (1969) prison study and Asch (1955) study on conformity, all demonstrate how social forces have a strong determining influence on our behaviour (Pennington et al 2003).
Behaviourist B.F Skinner says that in actual fact free will in human behaviour was merely an illusion because in reality, we are all at the mercy of our environment. However, the Humanistic psychologists are in favour of free will as they believe that humans are not determined to behave in a certain way. The humanistic perspective deals exclusively with human behaviour (Gross 2009).
Humanistic psychologists believe that human nature includes a natural drive towards personal growth, that humans have the freedom to choose what they do regardless of environmental factors, and humans are mostly conscious beings and are not controlled by unconscious needs and conflicts. A Humanist perspective on personality was developed by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. Rogers described self-concept as a collection of beliefs about one's own nature, unique qualities and typical behaviour. Rogers also stressed the fact that our self-concept may not always be accurate. Although society and other truths have an effect on the manner in which a person does things, the directions of that path to self-fulfilment remains in one direction (Malin et al 1998).
Abraham Maslow (1950) described the hierarchy of needs as a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused. The most basic needs are physiological needs that one must have in order to survive then the need for safety and security. If these needs are not met, you don't go on to belongingness and love needs, and without belongingness and love, you won't have a very high self-esteem, which is the next level. This hierarchy goes up until you reach the need for self-actualization. This is the need to fulfil your potential. Maslow described this as 'What a man can be, he must be. Carl Rogers said happiness comes from taking part in self-actualization and subjective freedom (Gross 2009).
According to Maslow (1950) we all strive for self-actualization, which is that we move towards freewill. They also believe that a person's subjective view of the world is more important than objective reality. The methods used such as case studies and interviews, which in comparison to experiments do not produce falsifiable predictions.
Some determinists see some logic in freewill and they try and mix the two concepts into one. William James (1890) first suggested the idea of soft determinism, and that we should separate behaviour into a physical and a mental realm. Soft determinists say that there are different levels of determinism, which are influenced by the situation and have an element of freewill (Hill 2009).
Support for this view comes from the psychodynamic approach. Freud believed that we are controlled by unconscious forces such as repressed memories, over which we have no control over and are unaware of it. This is an example of psychic determinism (Pennington et al 2003). Although the psychodynamic approach is not highly scientific it still adopts a deterministic approach. Freud believes that our personality is influenced by childhood experiences such as the psychosexual stages of development. In time, this has an effect on the balance of the ID, ego and superego as well as the personality as a whole (Malin et al 1998).
Freewill and determinism debate both have their strengths and weaknesses. Determinism is un-falsifiable, as it assumes that laws of causation exist everywhere, even if one has not been found yet. Freewill emphasises on the experiences of the individual and also gives the sense of control, however, evidence for the existence of freewill is mostly subjective and is hard to define. Someone with mental illness has no freewill and their behaviour can be caused by biological factors such as hereditary genes. Having free will is more of a philosophical question, than a scientific one because we have no way of testing this (Hill 2009).
The Idiographic and nomethetic debate in psychology is often regarded as representing opposing and conflicting positions on how to study people. As a psychologist, you can only operate from one these positions. That is a psychologist can either be highly scientific using experimental methods to gain empirical evidence on the theories of people or a psychologist is not scientific and employs subjective methods to understand the uniqueness of the individual.
An idiographic approach is one that focuses on the individual and recognises the uniqueness of the person in terms of their experiences, feelings, developmental history, aspirations and motivations in life. The word ideograph is derived from the Greek word idios which means own or private, hence the idiographic approach in psychology is concerned with private, subjective and unique aspects of an individual (Pennington et al 2003).
The idiographic approach uses qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews, case studies and also some psychoanalytic techniques such as free association and dream analysis. Humanistic psychology can be said to use the idiographic approach.
The nomethetic approach focuses on similarities of groups and large populations. Nomothetic derived from the Greek word nomos which means law. This approach is more scientific than the idiographic and uses quantitative methods of investigation and experiments to test the hypothesis on human behaviour and thought. Objectivity and replication are key to nomothetic research due to its reductionist viewpoint (Pennington et al 2003).
In the personality theory, both idiographic and nomothetic are used by different psychologists. Psychologists looking at personality traits which are unique to each individual would adopt a nomothetic approach as do behaviourist psychologists. In contrast humanistic and certain psychoanalytic psychologists would use the idiographic approach (Pennington et al 2003).
It is possible that both theories can interact and complement one another. G W Allport (1937) was of the idiographic approach but he did not exclude the nomothetic approach entirely. His personality trait theory was divided into two basic kinds of traits, common traits which are basic modes of adjustment that apply to all members of a particular culture, ethnic or linguistic background and subject to the nometetic approach and secondly, individual traits which can only be discovered by the study of the individual, and is the subject of idiographic approach. The Individual traits take one of three forms: Cardinal, the trait that dominates and shapes a person's behaviour. These are the ruling passions and obsessions, such as a need for money, fame or greed. Central, a general characteristic found in some degree in every person. These are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behaviour although they are not as overwhelming as cardinal traits. An example of a central trait would be honesty. Secondary, are characteristics seen only in certain circumstances such as reactions to a situation and are less influential than central traits (Gross 2009).
G .A Kelly’s personal construct theory (PCT) is another idiographic approach which looks at the uniqueness of each individual. The person is capable of applying alternative constructions (meanings) to any events in the past, present or future. It is the rules of life that the individual personally make up for themselves based on their personal experiences in life. The person is not a prisoner of one's life or past and could free oneself from the misery of unhappy events if one desires by reinterpreting and redefining them. Kelly’s repertory grid is used to measure the individuals construct system and is used to monitor the therapeutic process (Malin et al 1998).
In contrast to Allport and Kelly, Eysenck's personality theory ENP is nomothetic and by using scales to measure extroverts to introverts and neuroticism to psychoticism. The ENP is a set of questions which are answered by large groups or populations for example prisons would use Eysenck's personality questionnaires to gain quantitative data on criminal behaviour. However, Eysenck system does not explain how certain personality traits lead people to commit specific crimes. For instance, Eysenck does not explain how neuroticism inclines a subject to steal as opposed to murder.
Studying groups is essential to understand personality however groups cannot justify individual behaviours so studying individuals is also necessary for a balanced view. Also studying individuals is also necessary to justify group behaviours. The nomothetic and idiographic debate gives valid reasons to why each approach studies human behaviour, however, it is important that both approaches can be flexible with each other so that the most can be gained when investigating all types of behaviour.
By Kevin Milne
References
Gross, R (2009). Psychology, The Science of Mind and Behaviour. London: Hodder Arnold.
Gross, R (2009). Themes, Issues and Debates in Psychology. London: Hodder Arnold.
Hill, G (2009). AS & A Level Psychology Through Diagrams. Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Malim T and Birch A (1998). Introductory Psychology. London: Macmillan.
Pennington, D, McLoughlin, J, Smithson, R, Robinson, D, Boswell, K (2003). Advanced Psychology Child Development, Perspectives and Methods. London: Hodder & Stoughton.