Gordon Allport:

Motivation and Personality

Presented by:
Belmonte, Crisneil Nieka Zeun D.
Outline
 Biography
 Biography
 Nature of Personality
 Motivation
 Personality Development
in Childhood
 Healthy Adult Personality
 Questions about Human Nature
 Assessment in Allport’s Theory
 Research on Allport’s Theory
 Reflections on Allport’s Theory
Biography
Biography
👉 Born in Montezuma, Indiana
👉 Youngest of the four sons
👉 His mother was a teacher and his father was a
salesman who become a doctor
👉 Cleanliness is a big deal in their family
👉 Describe himself as skillful with words but not
good at sports or games
👉 Somewhat isolated as a result
👉 Attempted to be center of attention of the few
friends he had
Biography
👉 Developed feeling of inferiority
👉 Attempted to emulate accomplishments of his
brother Floyd
👉 Ranked second in his high school graduating
class of 100
👉 Went to Harvard and got his PhD in psychology
there
👉 Worked in Turkey for year
👉 Stopped in Vienna on way home and met Freud
👉Describe his single encounter with Freud
as “traumatic”
Biography
👉 Completed his PhD in 1922
👉 Conducted first research on personality traits in
US
👉 Taught and did research at Harvard for almost
40 years
👉 Received many awards
👉 Died of lung cancer in 1967
 Nature of
Personality
Personality

“ the dynamic organization within the individual of

those psychophysical systems that determine his
unique adjustments to his environment” (later
changed to “his characteristics behavior and
thought”)
Personality
👉 “Dynamic organization”
👉 Personality is always an organized whole
that is constantly changing and growing.

👉 “Psychophysical system”
👉 Composed of mind and body functioning
together as unit
👉 It is influenced by both heredity and
environment
Personality
👉 “Determine”
👉 All facets of personality activate or direct
specific behaviors and thoughts

👉 “ Characteristic behavior and thoughts”

👉 Everything we think and do is characteristic
👉 Each person is unique
 Two Stages of Life

Childhood Adulthood
Personality
Traits

👉 Primary units to study the personality.

👉 Predispositions to respond in the same or
similar to different stimuli.
👉 Traits are real and exist within each of us
👉 Traits determine or cause behavior
👉 Traits can be demonstrated empirically
👉 It vary with the situation
👉 There are individual and common traits
 Two types of traits
1. Common traits
👉 Possessed by many people to a varying extent
👉Explains unique variations among people

2. Personal Dispositions (individual traits)

👉 Unique to or possessed by only one person.
“peculiar to the individual”.
 3 kinds of Personal Dispositions

Cardinal Central Secondary

Traits Traits Traits

👉The most 👉Typically our 👉 Least influential

significant and normal functions individual trait
dominant feature of
an individuals 👉 Usually involves 👉 Somewhat
personality 5 to 10 adjectives consistent but less
to describe influence as
someone central traits
Motivation
Motivation
👉 The central problem for any personality theory
is how it treats the concept of motivation.

👉 Cognitive processes are a vital aspect of our

personality

👉 What we want and what we strive for are the

keys to understanding our behavior.
 Functional Autonomy
👉 The motives of mature, emotionally healthy
adults are not functionally connected to the prior
experiences in which they initially appeared.

👉 Adult motives cannot be understood by

exploring the person’s childhood

👉 Allport proposed two levels of functional

autonomy: preservative functional autonomy and
propriate functional autonomy
Two levels of Functional Autonomy

Preservative Propriate
Functional Functional
Autonomy Autonomy

👉 It is concerned with such 👉 Propriate derives from

behaviors as addictions and
repetitive physical actions such
as habitual ways of performing
some routine, everyday task.
👉 The behaviors continue or
preserve on their own without
any external reward.
“proprium”, Allport’s term for
ego or self.
👉 The ego determines
which motives will be
maintained and which will
be discarded.
 Organizing of Our
Propriate Functioning
👉 It is an organizing process that maintains our
sense of self.
👉 These perceptual and cognitive processes are
selective.
👉 Governed by the three principles:
👉 Organizing the energy level
👉 Mastery and competence
👉 Propriate patterning
 Personality
Development
In Childhood
 The Unique Self
👉 Allport chose the term “proprium” for the self or ego, but
sooner he rejected it.

👉 We can understand the word “proprium” by considering

it is the sense of the adjective “appropriate”.

Stages of Development
👉 Allport described the nature and development of the
proprium over seven stages from infancy through
adolescence.

👉 Before the proprium begins to emerge, the infant

experiences no self-consciousness, no awareness of self.
The development of the proprium
The importance of the Infant-Mother Bond
👉 The infant-mother bond as a source of affection and
security

👉 If the mother or primary caregiver provides sufficient

affection and security, the proprium will develop gradually
and steadily.

👉 If the childhood needs are frustrated, the self will not

mature properly.
👉 Adult motives do not become functionally
autonomous but remain tied to their original conditions.
👉 Traits and personal dispositions do not develop and
personality remains undifferentiated.
The Healthy Adult
Personality
 Healthy Adult Personality
👉 The healthy personality changes and grows
from being a biologically dominated organism in
infancy to a mature psychological organism in
adulthood.

👉 The motivations become separated from

childhood and are oriented toward the future.

👉The adult personality grows out of childhood and

is no longer dominated or determine by childhood
drives.
Six criteria for healthy adult personality
1. Extend their sense 4. Hold a realistic
of self to people and perception of life, develop
activities beyond self. personal skills, and make
a commitment to some
type of work.
2. Relate warmly to
other people,
exhibiting intimacy, 5. Have a sense of humor
compassion, and and self-objectification.
tolerance.

3. High degree of self- 6. Subscribe to a unifying

acceptance helps philosophy of life, which is
them to achieve responsible for directing
emotional security the personality toward
future goals.
Questions about
Human Nature
👉 Allport’s view of functional autonomy and personality
development holds that emotionally healthy adults are
not tied to or driven by childhood conflicts.

👉 He believed that both heredity and environment

influence personality.

👉 To Allport, the ultimate and necessary goal of life is

not to reduce tension, as Freud proposed, but rather
increase tension, impelling us to continually seek new
sensations and challenges.

👉 The reward is the process of achieving rather than the

specific achievement, striving for the goal rather than
reaching it.
Assessment
in Allport’s
Theory
 11 Major methods of
assessment in Allport’s theory
1. Constitutional and physiological diagnosis
2. Cultural setting, membership, role
3. Personal documents and case studies
4. Self-appraisal
5. Conduct analysis
6. Ratings
7. Tests and scales
8. Projective techniques
9. Depth analysis
10. Expressive behavior
11. Synoptic procedures
 Personal-Document Techniques
👉 These involves examine diaries, autobiographies,
letters, literary compositions, and other samples of a
person’s written or spoken records to determine the
number and kinds of personality traits.

👉 Allport’s most famous case is an analysis of a collection

of more than 300 letters written over a 12-year period by a
middle-aged woman identified as Jenny.

👉 The computer analysis yielded eight prominent traits in

Jenny’s personality that were similar to his categories.

👉He concluded that his subjective approah to personality

provided information on traits that was valid and
comparable to the more subjective computer analysis.
 The Study of Values
👉 They proposed that our personal values are the
basis of our unifying philosophy of life.

👉 Allport believed that everyone possess some

degree of each type of value, but one or two of
these will be more dominant in the personality.
 Categories of Values
Theoretical Economic Aesthetic
Values Values Values

Concerned with the Concerned Relate to artistic

discovery of truth and with the experiences and
are characterized by useful and to form, harmony,
an empirical, practical. and grace.
intellectual, and
rational approach to
life.
 Categories of Values
Social Political Religious
Values Values Values

Reflect on human Deal with Concerned with the

relationships, altruism, personal power, mystical and with
and philanthropy. influence, and understanding the
prestige in all universe as a
endeavors, not whole.
just in political
activities.
 Research on
Allport’s Theory
👉 Allport criticized psychologists who insisted that
experimental and correlational methods were the
only legitimate ways to study personality.

👉 He also opposed applying methods used with

the emotionally disturbed, such as case studies
and projective techniques, to the study of
emotionally healthy people.

👉 Allport suggested that more reliable information

could be obtained by simply asking people to
describe themselves.
👉 Allport used the Idiographic and Nomothetic
approach in studying personality
👉 Idiographic approach – the study of the
individual case,
as indicated by his use of personal
documents.
👉 Nomothetic method – Study a group of
individuals and analyze them.
 Expressive Behavior
👉Behavior that expresses our personality traits.

👉 He identified the coping behavior

👉 Oriented toward a specific purpose and is
consciously planned and carried out.
👉 Determined by needs inspired by the
situation.
Nature of Expressive Behavior
👉It is spontaneous and reflects basic aspects of
the personality.

👉 Expressive behavior is difficult to change.

 Nature of Expressive Behavior
👉 Formal, planned level (Coping behavior) and
informal, unplanned level (Expressive behavior)

👉 This research has shown that personality can

be assessed from voice recordings, films, and
videotapes.

👉 Some people can form reliable impressions of a

stranger’s personality based solely on facial
appearance and expression.
 Effects of Gender and Age
👉 Women and younger people are better at
correctly recognizing emotions in facial
expressions than men and older people.

👉 The ability of children to read facial expressions

accurately can occur as early as the age of 5 and
improves rapidly thereafter.
 Interpreting Facial Expressions
👉 Our personal experiences influence our ability to
recognize emotions in the facial expressions of others.

👉 Emotional state may influence the ability to read the

facial expressions of other people.

👉 People who diagnosed with major depression needed to

see facial expressions of greater intensity in order to
identify correctly happiness on the faces of the pictures
they were shown.

👉 Children who scored high on a scale of social anxiety

were better at correctly interpreting facial expressions.
👉 Adults high in depression were better in recognizing
sad facial expressions than those who are not.

👉 A study in Japanese children shows that these who

spent more time playing video games were better at
recognizing facial expressions correctly than those who
did not play video games.

👉 Close friends are far more accurate in decoding

emotions than the casual acquaintances.

Coding Facial Expressions

👉 Facial expressions of seven emotions that can be
objectively and consistently distinguished from another.
👉 The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is used to
detect lying by criminal suspects and by terrorist.

👉According to FACS, tiny movements of their facial

muscles will betray them.

👉 Some basic aspects of personality are revealed by

facial expressions.

Emotional States and Facial

Expressions
👉 Facial expressions distinguished those who later
attempted suicide from those who did not.
 Cultural Differences in Facial
Expressions
👉Studies of American and Chinese infants and adults
found that some basic emotions were revealed by identical
facial expressions in both cultures and both age groups.

👉 Chinese infants showed consistently less variety in facial

expressive behavior than American and Japanese infants.

👉 Perceptions of emotions are not universal.

👉 The degree of maternal strictness and the number of
other children and adults in the home also influenced the
intensity of facial expressions in those cultures.

👉 It is a function of both cultural and family characteristics.

👉 White faces were judged to have angry expressions

more often than black faces.

👉 Even ways in which faces changed to represent

emotions differed.
 Computer Recognition of Facial
Expressions
👉Emoticons were used to study the online transmission of
personal feelings.

👉 Teenagers were found to use more emoticons in their

communication in a social context than in a task or job-
oriented context.

👉 People express emotions in computer-mediated

communication in a similar was as in face-to-face
situations.
Reflections on
Allport’s
Theory
 Questions and Criticism
👉 They found Allport’s concept difficult to translate
into specific and propositions suitable for study by
the experimental method.

👉 Criticism have been leveled against the concept

of functional autonomy.

👉 Many psychologists find it difficult to accept

Allport’s proposed discontinuity between child and
adult, animal and human, normal and abnormal.
 Recognition and Influence
👉 His approach were reflected in the work of the
humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl
Rogers.
👉 Allport is often considered to be one of the first
psychologists to bring humanistic values and concerns to
the field.
👉His major work on expression of emotiong played a
vital importance in developing the field of cognitive
neuroscience.
👉 Allport’s view that people are shaped more by future
expectations than by past events.
Thank you!
 References
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Schultz, Duane, and Schultz, Sydney Ellen. 2016.

Theories of Personality: 11th Ed. Mason, OH:
CENGAGE Learning Custom Punlishing.