The approach of investigating large groups of people in order to find general laws of behaviour that apply to everyone Nomos= laws in ancient Greek; this approach assumes that an individual is a complex combination of many universal laws; it is best to study people on a large scale. Quantitative Experimental methods are best to identify the universal laws governing behaviour.
The individual will be classified with others and measured as a score upon a dimension, or be a statistic supporting a general principle (‘averaging’).
The nomothetic approach is the main approach within scientifically oriented psychology. • Behaviourism: experiments with animals (rats, cats and pigeons) _establish laws of learning (B.F. Skinner e.g.).
• Social psychology: Milgram e.g. used the nomothetic approach and made general conclusions on the basis of his research.
