Gordon Allport
Encyclopedia
Gordon Willard Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist
. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He contributed to the formation of Values Scales
and rejected both a psychoanalytic approach to personality, which he thought often went too deep, and a behavioral approach, which he thought often did not go deep enough. He emphasized the uniqueness of each individual, and the importance of the present context, as opposed to past history, for understanding the personality.
Allport had a profound and lasting influence on the field of psychology, even though his work is cited much less often than other well known figures. Part of his influence stemmed from his knack for attacking and broadly conceptualizing important and interesting topics (e.g. rumor, prejudice, religion, traits). Part of his influence was a result of the deep and lasting impression he made on his students during his long teaching career, many of whom went on to have important psychological careers. Among his many students were Jerome S. Bruner, Anthony Greenwald
, Stanley Milgram
, Leo Postman, Thomas Pettigrew, and M. Brewster Smith. His brother Floyd Henry Allport
, was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (in Syracuse, New York, USA) from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley
, Indiana
, the youngest of four sons of John Edwards and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport. His early education was in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio, where his family moved when he was six years old. His father was a country doctor with his clinic and hospital in the family home. Because of inadequate hospital facilities at the time, Allport's father actually turned their home into a make-shift hospital, with patients as well as nurses residing there. Gordon Allport and his brothers grew up surrounded by their father's patients, nurses, and medical equipment, and he and his brothers often assisted their father in the clinic. Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training" (p. 172).
Allport's mother was a former school teacher, who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion. One of Allport's biographers states, "he grew up not only with the Protestant religion, but also the Protestant work ethic
, which dominated his home life." Gordon Allport's father, who was Scottish, shared this outlook, and operated by his own philosophy that "If every person worked as hard as he could and took only the minimum financial return required by his families needs, then there would be just enough wealth to go around."
Biographers describe Allport as a shy and studious boy who lived a fairly isolated childhood; the young Allport was the subject of high school mockery due to a birth defect that left him with only eight toes. As a teenager, Allport developed and ran his own printing business while serving as editor of his high school newspaper. In 1915, he graduated second in his class at Glenville High School
at the age of eighteen. He earned a scholarship that allowed him to attend Harvard University, where one of his older brothers, Floyd Henry Allport
, was working on his Ph.D. in Psychology.
Moving to Harvard was a difficult transition for Allport because the moral values and climate were so different from those of his home. However he earned his A.B. degree in 1919 in Philosophy and Economics (not psychology). His interest in the convergence of social psychology
and personality psychology
was evident in his use of his spare time at Harvard in social service: conducting a boy's club in Boston, visiting for the Family Society, serving as a volunteer probation officer, registering homes for war workers, and aiding foreign students.
Next he traveled to Robert College
in Istanbul, Turkey, where he taught economics and philosophy for a year, before returning to Harvard to pursue his Ph.D. in psychology on fellowship in 1920 (in addition to German, Allport remained partially fluent in modern Greek throughout his life). His first publication, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport
, who became an important social psychologist. Allport earned his Master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert S. Langfeld, and then his Ph.D. in 1922, along the way taking a class with Hugo Münsterberg
before his death in 1916.
Harvard then awarded Allport a coveted Sheldon Traveling Fellowship--"a second intellectual dawn," as he later described it. He spent the first Sheldon year studying with the new Gestalt
School—which fascinated him—in Berlin
and Hamburg, Germany; and then the second year at Cambridge University.
Then Allport returned to Harvard as an instructor in psychology from 1924 to 1926. He began teaching his course "Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects" in 1924; it was probably the first course in personality psychology ever taught in the U.S. During this time, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, who was a clinical psychologist, and they had one child, a boy, who later became a pediatrician. After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years, Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career.
Gordon W. Allport was a long-time and influential member of the faculty at Harvard University
from 1930-1967. In 1931, he served on the faculty committee that established Harvard's Sociology Department. In the late 1940s, he fashioned an introductory course for the new Social Relations Department into a rigorous and popular undergraduate class. At that time, he was also editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Allport was also a Director of the Commission for the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1933.
Allport was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1939. In 1943, he was elected President of the Eastern Psychological Association. In 1944, he served as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In 1950, Allport published his third book titled The Individual and His Religion. His fourth book, The Nature of Prejudice, was published in 1954, and benefited from his insights from working with refugees during World War II. His fifth book, published in 1955, was titled Becoming: Basic Considerations for Psychology of Personality. This book became one of his most widely known publications. In 1963, Allport was awarded the Gold Medal Award from the American Psychological Foundation. In the following year, he received the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Gordon Allport died on October 9, 1967 in Cambridge, Massachusetts of lung cancer. He was seventy years old.http://shrike.depaul.edu/~kmerz/later_life.htm
in Vienna
. To break the ice upon meeting Freud, Allport recounted how he had met a boy on the train on the way to Vienna who was afraid of getting dirty. He refused to sit down near anyone dirty, despite his mother's reassurances. Allport suggested that perhaps the boy had learned this dirt phobia from his mother, a very neat and apparently rather domineering type. After studying Allport for a minute, Freud asked, "And was that little boy you?"
Allport experienced Freud's attempt to reduce this small bit of observed interaction to some unconscious episode from his own remote childhood as dismissive of his current motivations, intentions, and experience. It served as a reminder that psychoanalysis
tends to dig too deeply into both the past and the unconscious, overlooking in the process the reputedly more important conscious and immediate aspects of experience. While Allport never denied that unconscious and historical variables have a role to play in human psychology (particularly in the immature and disordered) his own work would always emphasize conscious motivations and current context.
Allport's three trait levels are:
1. Cardinal trait - This is the trait that dominates and shapes a person's behavior. These are the ruling passions/obsessions, such as a need for money, fame etc.
2. Central trait - This is a general characteristic found in some degree in every person. These are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior although they are not as overwhelming as cardinal traits. An example of a central trait would be honesty.
3. Secondary trait - These are characteristics seen only in certain circumstances (such as particular likes or dislikes that a very close friend may know). They must be included to provide a complete picture of human complexity.
Genotypes are internal forces relates to how a person retains information and uses it to interact with the external world. Phenotypes are external forces, these relate to the way an individual accepts his surroundings and how others influence their behavior. These forces generate the ways in which we behave and are the groundwork for the creation of individual traits.
and Drive.
He suggested that a drive formed as a reaction to a motive may outgrow the motive as a reason. The drive then is autonomous and distinct from the motive, whether it is instinct or any other. Allport gives the example of a man who seeks to perfect his task or craft. His reasons may be a sense of inferiority engrained in his childhood but his diligence in his work and the motive it acquires later on is a need to excel in his chosen profession. In the words of Allport, the theory "avoids the absurdity of regarding the energy of life now, in the present, as somehow consisting of early archaic forms (instincts, prepotent reflexes, or the never-changing Id). Learning brings new systems of interests into existence just as it does new abilities and skills. At each stage of development these interests are always contemporary; whatever drives, drives now."
We also can see functional autonomy (the notion that motives can become independent of their origins) in the drive associated with making money to buy goods and services when it becomes an end in itself. Many obsessive and compulsive acts and thoughts might be manifestations of functional autonomy.
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He contributed to the formation of Values Scales
Values scales
Values scales are psychological inventories used to determine the values that people endorse in their lives. They facilitate the understanding of both work and general values that individuals uphold. In addition, they assess the importance of each value in people’s lives and how the individual...
and rejected both a psychoanalytic approach to personality, which he thought often went too deep, and a behavioral approach, which he thought often did not go deep enough. He emphasized the uniqueness of each individual, and the importance of the present context, as opposed to past history, for understanding the personality.
Allport had a profound and lasting influence on the field of psychology, even though his work is cited much less often than other well known figures. Part of his influence stemmed from his knack for attacking and broadly conceptualizing important and interesting topics (e.g. rumor, prejudice, religion, traits). Part of his influence was a result of the deep and lasting impression he made on his students during his long teaching career, many of whom went on to have important psychological careers. Among his many students were Jerome S. Bruner, Anthony Greenwald
Anthony Greenwald
Anthony Greenwald is a Social Psychologist and, since 1986, Professor of Psychology at University of Washington.According to Greenwald’s biographical page from the University of Washington, in 1959 he received a B.A. from Yale University. In 1961, he received a M.A. from Harvard University, and in...
, Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
, Leo Postman, Thomas Pettigrew, and M. Brewster Smith. His brother Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley...
, was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (in Syracuse, New York, USA) from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley
Biography
Allport was born in MontezumaMontezuma, Indiana
Montezuma is a town in Reserve and Wabash townships, Parke County, Indiana, United States. The population was 1,022 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Montezuma is located at ....
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, the youngest of four sons of John Edwards and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport. His early education was in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio, where his family moved when he was six years old. His father was a country doctor with his clinic and hospital in the family home. Because of inadequate hospital facilities at the time, Allport's father actually turned their home into a make-shift hospital, with patients as well as nurses residing there. Gordon Allport and his brothers grew up surrounded by their father's patients, nurses, and medical equipment, and he and his brothers often assisted their father in the clinic. Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training" (p. 172).
Allport's mother was a former school teacher, who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion. One of Allport's biographers states, "he grew up not only with the Protestant religion, but also the Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic
The Protestant work ethic is a concept in sociology, economics and history, attributable to the work of Max Weber...
, which dominated his home life." Gordon Allport's father, who was Scottish, shared this outlook, and operated by his own philosophy that "If every person worked as hard as he could and took only the minimum financial return required by his families needs, then there would be just enough wealth to go around."
Biographers describe Allport as a shy and studious boy who lived a fairly isolated childhood; the young Allport was the subject of high school mockery due to a birth defect that left him with only eight toes. As a teenager, Allport developed and ran his own printing business while serving as editor of his high school newspaper. In 1915, he graduated second in his class at Glenville High School
Glenville High School
Glenville Academic Campus is a public high school in the Glenville neighborhood on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. The school is part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Founded in 1905, the school's original campus was located at Everton and Parkwood. The current campus was built in...
at the age of eighteen. He earned a scholarship that allowed him to attend Harvard University, where one of his older brothers, Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley...
, was working on his Ph.D. in Psychology.
Moving to Harvard was a difficult transition for Allport because the moral values and climate were so different from those of his home. However he earned his A.B. degree in 1919 in Philosophy and Economics (not psychology). His interest in the convergence of social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
and personality psychology
Personality psychology
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...
was evident in his use of his spare time at Harvard in social service: conducting a boy's club in Boston, visiting for the Family Society, serving as a volunteer probation officer, registering homes for war workers, and aiding foreign students.
Next he traveled to Robert College
Robert College
Robert College of Istanbul , is one of the most selective independent private high schools in Turkey. Robert College is a co-educational, boarding school with a wooded campus on the European side of Istanbul between the two bridges on the Bosphorus, with the Arnavutköy district to the east, and...
in Istanbul, Turkey, where he taught economics and philosophy for a year, before returning to Harvard to pursue his Ph.D. in psychology on fellowship in 1920 (in addition to German, Allport remained partially fluent in modern Greek throughout his life). His first publication, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport
Floyd Henry Allport was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley...
, who became an important social psychologist. Allport earned his Master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert S. Langfeld, and then his Ph.D. in 1922, along the way taking a class with Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg
Hugo Münsterberg was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational , legal, medical, clinical, educational and business settings. Münsterberg encountered immense turmoil with the outbreak of the...
before his death in 1916.
Harvard then awarded Allport a coveted Sheldon Traveling Fellowship--"a second intellectual dawn," as he later described it. He spent the first Sheldon year studying with the new Gestalt
Gestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
School—which fascinated him—in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Hamburg, Germany; and then the second year at Cambridge University.
Then Allport returned to Harvard as an instructor in psychology from 1924 to 1926. He began teaching his course "Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects" in 1924; it was probably the first course in personality psychology ever taught in the U.S. During this time, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, who was a clinical psychologist, and they had one child, a boy, who later became a pediatrician. After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years, Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career.
Gordon W. Allport was a long-time and influential member of the faculty at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
from 1930-1967. In 1931, he served on the faculty committee that established Harvard's Sociology Department. In the late 1940s, he fashioned an introductory course for the new Social Relations Department into a rigorous and popular undergraduate class. At that time, he was also editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Allport was also a Director of the Commission for the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1933.
Allport was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1939. In 1943, he was elected President of the Eastern Psychological Association. In 1944, he served as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In 1950, Allport published his third book titled The Individual and His Religion. His fourth book, The Nature of Prejudice, was published in 1954, and benefited from his insights from working with refugees during World War II. His fifth book, published in 1955, was titled Becoming: Basic Considerations for Psychology of Personality. This book became one of his most widely known publications. In 1963, Allport was awarded the Gold Medal Award from the American Psychological Foundation. In the following year, he received the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. Gordon Allport died on October 9, 1967 in Cambridge, Massachusetts of lung cancer. He was seventy years old.http://shrike.depaul.edu/~kmerz/later_life.htm
Visit with Freud
Allport told the story in his autobiographical essay in Pattern and Growth in Personality of his visit as a young, recent college graduate to the already famous Dr. Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. To break the ice upon meeting Freud, Allport recounted how he had met a boy on the train on the way to Vienna who was afraid of getting dirty. He refused to sit down near anyone dirty, despite his mother's reassurances. Allport suggested that perhaps the boy had learned this dirt phobia from his mother, a very neat and apparently rather domineering type. After studying Allport for a minute, Freud asked, "And was that little boy you?"
Allport experienced Freud's attempt to reduce this small bit of observed interaction to some unconscious episode from his own remote childhood as dismissive of his current motivations, intentions, and experience. It served as a reminder that psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
tends to dig too deeply into both the past and the unconscious, overlooking in the process the reputedly more important conscious and immediate aspects of experience. While Allport never denied that unconscious and historical variables have a role to play in human psychology (particularly in the immature and disordered) his own work would always emphasize conscious motivations and current context.
Allport's trait theory
Allport is known as a "trait" psychologist. One of his early projects was to go through the dictionary and locate every term that he thought could describe a person. From this, he developed a list of 4500 trait like words. He organized these into three levels of traits. This is similar to Goldberg's fundamental lexical hypothesis, or the hypothesis that over time, humans develop widely used, generic terms for individual differences in their daily interactions.Allport's three trait levels are:
1. Cardinal trait - This is the trait that dominates and shapes a person's behavior. These are the ruling passions/obsessions, such as a need for money, fame etc.
2. Central trait - This is a general characteristic found in some degree in every person. These are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior although they are not as overwhelming as cardinal traits. An example of a central trait would be honesty.
3. Secondary trait - These are characteristics seen only in certain circumstances (such as particular likes or dislikes that a very close friend may know). They must be included to provide a complete picture of human complexity.
Genotypes and phenotypes
Allport hypothesized the idea of internal and external forces that influence an individual’s behavior. He called these forces Genotypes and Phenotypes.Genotypes are internal forces relates to how a person retains information and uses it to interact with the external world. Phenotypes are external forces, these relate to the way an individual accepts his surroundings and how others influence their behavior. These forces generate the ways in which we behave and are the groundwork for the creation of individual traits.
Functional autonomy of motives
Allport was one of the first researchers to draw a distinction between MotiveMotivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
and Drive.
He suggested that a drive formed as a reaction to a motive may outgrow the motive as a reason. The drive then is autonomous and distinct from the motive, whether it is instinct or any other. Allport gives the example of a man who seeks to perfect his task or craft. His reasons may be a sense of inferiority engrained in his childhood but his diligence in his work and the motive it acquires later on is a need to excel in his chosen profession. In the words of Allport, the theory "avoids the absurdity of regarding the energy of life now, in the present, as somehow consisting of early archaic forms (instincts, prepotent reflexes, or the never-changing Id). Learning brings new systems of interests into existence just as it does new abilities and skills. At each stage of development these interests are always contemporary; whatever drives, drives now."
We also can see functional autonomy (the notion that motives can become independent of their origins) in the drive associated with making money to buy goods and services when it becomes an end in itself. Many obsessive and compulsive acts and thoughts might be manifestations of functional autonomy.
Secondary literature
- Ian Nicholson, Inventing Personality: Gordon Allport and the Science of Selfhood, American Psychological Association, 2003, ISBN 155798929X
- Hocutt, Max (2004). Review - Inventing Personality. http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=2058
- Nicholson, I. (2000). “'A coherent datum of perception': Gordon Allport, Floyd Allport and the politics of personality.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 36: 463-470.
- Nicholson, I. (1998). Gordon Allport, character, and the ‘culture of personality’, 1897-1937. History of Psychology, 1, 52-68.
- Nicholson, I. (1997). Humanistic psychology and intellectual identity: The 'open' system of Gordon Allport. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 37, 60-78.
- Nicholson, I. (1997). To "correlate psychology and social ethics": Gordon Allport and the first course in American personality psychology. Journal of Personality, 65, 733-742.
- On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years After Allport, hrg. von Peter Glick, John Dovidio, Laurie A. Rudman, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1405127503
External links
- Allports classic paper on autonomy of motives at Classics in the History of Psychology page.