DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Allport: Psychology of the Individual
● Allport wrote a letter to Freud requesting an appointment, and when they did had an
appointment, Allport began to wonder if there might be room for a third approach
to personality, one that borrowed from traditional psychoanalysis and animal-
driven learning theories, but also one that adopted a more humanistic stance.
● Allport told Freud about a little boy he saw on his way to see Freud, and Freud, with
a typical Freudian technique, asked if in reality that boy was him. (that little boy
wasn’t him)
● Allport emphasized the uniqueness of the individual.
● Called the study of the individual morphogenic science (gathers data on a single
individual) and contrasted it with the nomothetic methods (gathers data on groups
of people) used by most other psychologists.
● Allport also advocated an eclectic approach to theory building. To him, a broad,
comprehensive theory is preferable to a narrow, specific theory even if it does not
generate as many testable hypotheses.
● Allport argued against particularism--theories that emphasize a single aspect of
personality.
○ “Do not forget what you have decided to neglect.”
● No theory is completely comprehensive, and psychologists should always realize
that much of human nature is not included in any single theory.
● Full name: Gordon Willard Allport
BIOGRAPHY
● November 11, 1987 - October 9, 1967
● Fourth and youngest son.
● Cleanliness of action was extended to cleanliness of thought.
● Allport wrote that his early life was marked by plain Protestant piety.
○ Their mother was a very pious woman who placed heavy emphasis on
religion.
○ His mother taught him the virtues of clean language and proper conduct, as
well as the importance of searching for ultimate religious answers.
● Young Allport developed an early interest in philosophical and religious questions
and had more facility for words than for games.
● He described himself as a social “isolate”.
● Spent 2 years in Europe studying under the great German psychologists Max
Wetheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, William Stern, Heinz Wermer, and etc.
● 1924 - Allport taught a new course in Harvard called Psychology of Personality.
○ This course was the first personality course offered in an American college.
○ The course combined social ethics and the pursuit of goodness and
morality with the scientific discipline of psychology.
○ It also reflected Allport’s strong personal dispositions of cleanliness and
morality.
● 1925 - married Ada Lufkin Gould.
○ Ada Allport had the clinical training that her husband lacked.
 ○ She was a valuable contributor to some of Gordon’s work, especially his two
extensive case studies--the case of Jenny Gove Masterson and the case of
Marion Taylor (never published).
○ They had one child, Robert, who became a pediatrician.
● 1939 - elected president of the APA.
● 1963 - received the Gold Medal Award of the APA.
● 1964 - awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of APA.
● 1966 - honored as the first Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at
Harvard.
● Allport, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Biography Psychology of the Individual on next
page
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALLPORT’S APPROACH TO PERSONALITY THEORY

I. WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
● Allport traced the etymology of the word persona back to early Greek roots,
including the Old Latin and Etruscan meanings.
● Allport spelled out 49 definitions of personality as used in theology, philosophy, law,
sociology, and psychology.
● He then offered a 50th definition, which in 1973 was “the dynamic organization
within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique
adjustments to his environment.”
○ In 1961, he had changed the last phrase to read “that determine his
characteristic behavior and thought.”
○ This change was significant and reflected Allport’s penchant for accuracy.
● Allport conveyed the idea that behavior is expressive as well as adaptive. People
not only adjust to their environment, but also reflect on it and interact with it in
such a way as to cause their environment to adjust to them.
● The term dynamic organization implies an integration or interrelatedness of the
various aspects of personality.
○ Personality is organized and patterned. However, the organization is always
subject to change: hence, the qualifier “dynamic”.
○ Personality is not a static organization; it is constantly growing or changing.
● The term psychophysical emphasizes the importance of both the psychological and
the physical aspects of personality.
○ It includes overt behaviors and covert behaviors.
● Determine suggests that “personality is something and does something.”
○ Personality is not merely the mask we wear, nor is it simply behavior.
○ It refers to the individual behind the facade, the person behind the action.
● By characteristic, Allport wished to imply “individual” or “unique”.
○ The word “character” originally meant a marking or engraving, terms that
give flavor to what Allport meant by “characteristic”.
○ All persons stamp their unique mark or engraving on their personality, and
their characteristic behavior and thought set them apart from all other
people; it cannot be duplicated.
 ● The words behavior and thought simply refer to anything the person does.
○ They are omnibus terms meant to include internal behaviors (thoughts) as
well as external behaviors such as words and actions.
● Allport’s comprehensive definition of personality suggests that human beings are
both product and process; people have some organized structure while, at the
same time, they possess the capability of change.
○ Pattern coexists with growth, order with diversification.
○ It is both substance and change, both structure and growth.
II. WHAT IS THE ROLE OF CONSCIOUS MOTIVATION?
● Allport was inclined to accept self-reports at face value.
● His experience with Freud taught him that depth psychology, for all its merits, may
plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do well to give full recognition to
manifest motives before probing the unconscious.
● Allport believed that most compulsive behaviors are automatic repetitions, usually
self-defeating, and motivated by unconscious tendencies; often originating in
childhood and retaining a childish flavor into adult years.
III. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A HEALTHY PERSON?
● Allport hypothesized in depth about the attributes of the mature personality.
● He was forced to find his own way in the humanistic pastures of psychology.
● A few general assumptions are required to understand Allport’s conception of
the mature personality:
○ PROACTIVE BEHAVIOR
■ They not only react to external stimuli, but they are capable of
consciously acting on their environment in new and innovative ways
and causing their environment to react to them.
■ It is not merely directed at reducing tensions but also at establishing
new ones.
○ MOTIVATED BY CONSCIOUS PROCESSES
■ Allows them to be more flexible and autonomous than unhealthy
people.
○ AGE IS NOT A REQUISITE FOR MATURITY
○ RELATIVELY TRAUMA-FREE CHILDHOOD
○ NOT WITHOUT FOIBLES AND IDIOSYNCRASIES
● Maturity--expression of the propriate functions to a high degree and freedom from
one’s past.
● Allport indicated that human beings are always in the process of becoming--the
urge to grow and fulfill oneself is present from birth.
○ We have the ability to develop and follow a creative life-style.

SIX CRITERIA FOR THE MATURE PERSONALITY

1. EXTENSION OF THE SENSE OF SELF
● Mature people continually seek to identify with and participate in events outside
themselves.
● Not self-centered, but are able to become involved in problems and activities that
are not centered on themselves.
● Have an unselfish interest in work, play, and recreation.
 ● Social interest, family, and spiritual life are important; considers the welfare of
others as important as their own.
● “Everyone has self-love, but only self-extension is the earmark of maturity.”
2. WARM RELATING OF SELF TO OTHERS
● They have the capacity to love others in an intimate and compassionate manner.
● Warm relating is dependent on people’s ability to extend their sense of self. Only by
looking beyond themselves can mature people love others nonpossessively and
unselfishly.
● Do not exploit others for personal gratification.
● Treats other people with respect and they realize that the needs, desires, and
hopes of others are not completely foreign to their own.
3. EMOTIONAL SECURITY OR SELF-ACCEPTANCE
● They accept themselves for who they are.
● Possesses emotional poise.
○ E.g. not overly upset when things do not go as planned.
4. REALISTIC PERCEPTION OF THEIR ENVIRONMENT
● They do not live in a fantasy world or bend reality to fit their own wishes.
● Problem-oriented; they are in touch with the world as most others see it.
● Problem solvers, developed appropriate skills to complete their assigned tasks and
works. (work is seen as a responsibility and not a burden)
5. INSIGHT AND HUMOR
● They have no need to attribute their own mistakes and weaknesses to others.
● Nonhostile sense of humor--giving them the capacity to laugh at themselves rather
than relying on sexual or aggressive themes to elicit laughter from others.
● Insight and humor are closely related and may be aspects of self-objectification.
○ Self-insight--knows what they can and can’t do; what they need to do.
○ Sense of humor--to laugh at own weaknesses.
● They see themselves objectively. They have no need to pretend or to put on airs.
6. UNIFYING PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
● They have a clear view of the purpose of life.
● May or may not be religious, but Allport on a personal level seemed to have felt that
a mature religious orientation is a crucial ingredient in the lives of most mature
individuals.
○ The person with a mature religious attitude and a unifying philosophy of life
has a well-developed conscience and a strong desire to serve others.
● Governed by generic conscience. (must → ought)

KINDS OF THEORY
I. DISCONTINUITY THEORY
● Suggests that in the course of development, an organism experiences genuine
transformations or changes and consequently reaches successively higher levels of
organization. Growth is qualitatively different.
● Views people as open and active in consolidating and integrating experiences.
● There is a milestone in each stage.
● Development is an abrupt or a succession of changes.

II. CONTINUITY THEORY

 ● Suggests that the development of personality is essentially the accumulation of
skills, habits, and discriminations, without anything really new appearing in the
person’s makeup, merely, it's just quantitative and a closed system.

STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
● Refers to its basic units or building blocks.
● To Freud, basic units were instinct; To Eysenck, they were biologically determined
factors. To Allport, the most important structures are those that permit the
description of the person in terms of individual characteristics--personal
dispositions.

PERSONAL DISPOSITIONS
● Traits--predisposition to act in a same or similar manner to different stimuli.
● Allport was careful to distinguish between common traits and individual traits.
○ Common traits--general characteristics held in common by many people.
■ Provide the means by which people within a given culture can be
compared to one another.
■ E.g. Eysenck’s theory and the authors of the Five-Factor Trait
theory.
○ Individual traits--unique to a person; it defines their character.
■ E.g. personal dispositions.
● Personal dispositions--a generalized neuropsychic structure (peculiar to the
individual) with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to
initiate and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior.
● To identify personal dispositions, Allport and Henry Odbert counted nearly 18,000
(17,953 exactly) personally descriptive words in the 1925 edition of Webster's New
International Dictionary, about a fourth of which describes personality
characteristics.
● Some terms are referred to as:
○ TRAITS (sociable or introverted)
○ STATES (happy or angry)
○ EVALUATIVE CHARACTERISTICS (unpleasant or wonderful)
○ PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS (tall or obese)
● Each person may have hundreds of personal dispositions.

CHARACTERISTICS OF TRAITS
● Personality traits are real and exist within each of us. They are not theoretical
constructs or labels made up to account for behavior.
● Traits determine or cause behavior. They do not arise only in response to certain
stimuli. They motivate us to seek appropriate stimuli, and they interact with the
environment to produce behavior.
● Traits can be demonstrated empirically. By observing behavior over time, we can
infer the existence of traits in the consistency of a person’s responses to the same
or similar stimuli.
 ● Traits are interrelated. They may overlap, even though they represent different
characteristics. For example, aggressiveness and hostility are distinct but related
traits and are frequently observed to occur together in a person’s behavior.
● Traits vary with the situation. For example, a person may display the trait of
neatness in one situation and the trait of disorderliness in another situation.

LEVELS OF PERSONAL DISPOSITIONS

● Allport placed personal dispositions on a continuum form most central to those
that are of only peripheral importance to a person.
● Interperson comparisons are inappropriate to personal dispositions, and any
attempt to make such comparison transforms the personal dispositions into
common traits.

1. CARDINAL DISPOSITIONS
● Traits that dominate an individual’s personality to the point that the individual
becomes known for them.
● An eminent characteristic or ruling passion so outstanding that it dominates their
lives.
● They are so obvious that they cannot be hidden; nearly every action in a person’s
life revolves around this one cardinal disposition.
● Most people do not have a cardinal disposition, but those few people who do are
often known by that single characteristic.
○ E.g. quixotic, chauvinistic, narcissistic, sadistic, a Don Juan, etc.
● When these names are used to describe characteristics in others, they become
common traits.
2. CENTRAL DISPOSITIONS
● Serves as the basic building blocks of most people’s personality.
● Everyone has them; includes the 5-10 most outstanding characteristics around
which a person’s life focuses.
● Those that would be listed in an accurate letter of recommendation written by
someone who knew the person quite well.
○ E.g. Jenny’s letters.
3. SECONDARY DISPOSITIONS
● Less conspicuous but far greater in number than central dispositions.
● Everyone has many secondary dispositions that are not central to the personality
yet occur with some regularity and are responsible for much of one’s specific
behaviors.
○ E.g. preference in music or food.

MOTIVATIONAL AND STYLISTIC DISPOSITIONS

● Motivational dispositions--intensely experienced dispositions.
○ Initiate actions.
○ Receive their motivation from basic needs and drives.
● Stylistic dispositions--less intensely experienced dispositions.
○ Guides actions.
○ E.g. neat and impeccable personal appearance.
 ● People are motivated to dress because of a basic need to stay warm, but the
manner in which they attire themselves is determined by their stylistic personal
dispositions.
● Motivational dispositions: Maslow’s coping behavior.
● Stylistic dispositions: Maslow’s expressive behavior.
● Allport saw no distinct division between motivational and stylistic personal
dispositions.
● Politeness is a stylistic disposition, whereas eating is more motivational. How
people eat depends on how hungry they are.

PROPRIUM
● Those that are at the center of personality are experienced by the person as being
an important part of self.
● All characteristics that are “peculiarly mine” belong to the proprium.
● The proprium refers to those behaviors and characteristics that people regard as
warm, central, and important in their lives.
● They exist on the periphery of personality.
● These nonpropriate behaviors include:
○ Basic drives and needs that are ordinarily met and satisfied without much
difficulty.
○ Tribal customs such as wearing clothes, saying “hello” to people, and driving
on the right side of the road.
○ Habitual behaviors, such as smoking or brushing one’s teeth, that are
performed automatically and that are not crucial to the person’s sense of
self.
● The pro in proprium means forward movement.
○ Refers to the central experiences of self-awareness that people have as
they grow and move forward.
○ Defined in terms of its functions or the things that it does.
● There are 7 propriate functions. They develop gradually as an individual grows from
infancy to adulthood and constitute an evolving sense of self as known and felt.
● The proprium includes those aspects of life that a person regards as important to a
sense of self-identity and self-enhancement.
● Also includes a person’s values as well as that part of the conscience that is
personal and consistent with one’s adult beliefs.

MOTIVATION
● Most people are motivated by present drives rather than by past events and are
aware of what they are doing and have some understanding of why they are doing it.
○ “It is the individual’s state that is important, not what happened in the past.”
○ Whatever happened in the past is exactly that--the past--it is no longer
active and does not explain adult behavior unless it exists as a current
motivating force.
○ For Allport, our cognitive processes or our conscious intentions and plans
are vital aspects of our personality.
○ Allport attempted to explain the present in terms of the future.
 ● Allport contended that theories of motivation must consider the differences
between peripheral motives and propriate strivings.
○ Peripheral motives--those that reduce a need.
○ Propriate strivings--seek to maintain tension and disequilibrium.
● Adult behavior is both reactive and proactive.

A THEORY OF MOTIVATION
● Homeostatic or reactive theories (i.e. psychoanalysis and various learning theories)
do not allow for possibilities of growth, and sees people as being motivated
primarily by needs to reduce tension and to return to a state of equilibrium.
● An adequate theory must allow for proactive behavior.
○ It must view people as consciously acting on their environment in a manner
that permits growth toward psychological health.
● Allport argued for a psychology that studies behavioral patterns, general laws,
growth, and individuality.

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
● Allport’s explanation for the myriad human motives that seemingly are not
accounted for by hedonistic or drive-reduction principles.
● It represents a theory of changing rather thanunchanging motives and is the
capstone of Allport’s ideas on motivation.
● Functional autonomy--holds that some, but not all, human motives are functionally
independent from the original motive responsible for the behavior.
● It is the idea that motives in the normal, mature adult are independent of the
childhood experiences in which they originally appeared.
○ E.g. People as trees.
■ It is obvious that the tree’s development can be traced to its seed,
yet when the tree is fully grown, the seed is no longer required as a
source of nourishment. The tree is now self-determining, no longer
functionally related to its seed.
○ E.g. A money hoarder just likes money and not because of childhood
experiences.
● Human behavior is based on present interests and on conscious preferences is in
harmony with the common sense belief of many people who hold that they do
things simply because they like to do them.
● Allport believed that adult motives are built primarily on conscious, self-sustaining,
contemporary systems.
○ Psychoanalysis and behaviorism are concerned with historical facts rather
than functional facts.
○ The only way to understand people is to investigate why people behave as
they do today.
● Allport defined functional autonomy as “any acquired system of motivation in which
the tensions involved are not of the same kind as the antecedent tensions from
which the acquired system developed.”
○ E.g. A person plants a garden to satisfy hunger drive but became interested
in gardening instead for its own sake.
FOUR REQUIREMENTS OF AN ADEQUATE THEORY OF
MOTIVATION
1. WILL ACKNOWLEDGE THE CONTEMPORANEITY OF MOTIVES.
● The individual’s history is significant only when it has a present effect on
motivation.
● “Whatever moves us must move now.”
2. IT WILL BE A PLURALISTIC THEORY--ALLOWING FOR MOTIVES OF MANY TYPES.
● Adult’s motives are basically different from those of children and that the
motivations of neurotic individuals are not the same as those of normal people.
● Some motivations are conscious, others unconscious; some are transient, others
recurring; some are peripheral, others propriate; some are tension reducing, others
tension maintaining.
3. IT WILL ASCRIBE DYNAMIC FORCE TO COGNITIVE PROCESSES--e.g., to planning and
intention.
● The lives of healthy adults are future oriented, involving preferences, purposes,
plans, and intentions.
● These processes are not always completely rational, as when people allow their
anger to dominate their plans and intentions.
● Most people are busy living their lives into the future.
○ E.g. A young woman declines to see a movie because she prefers to study in
order to get good grades in college.
● This refers to long-range intention.
4. WILL ALLOW FOR THE CONCRETE UNIQUENESS OF MOTIVES.
● E.g. Derrick wants to improve his bowling game because he wants to improve his
bowling game. This is Derrick’s unique, concrete, and functionally autonomous
motive.

TWO LEVELS OF FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

I. PERSEVERATIVE FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
● The more elementary of the two levels.
● Borrowed this term from the word perseveration--tendency of an impression to
leave an influence on subsequent experience.
● This is found in animals as well as humans and is based on simple neurological
principles.
○ E.g. rat that has learned to run a maze in order to be fed but continues to
run the maze just for the fun of it.
● Relates to low-level and routine behaviors.
● Concerned with such behaviors as addictions and repetitive physical actions such
as habitual ways of performing some everyday tasks.
○ E.g. addiction to alcohol when there is no physiological hunger for them;
uncompleted tasks.
● The behaviors continue or persevere on their own without any external reward. The
actions once served a purpose but no longer do so and are at too low a level to be
considered an integral part of personality.
II. PROPRIATE FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
● More important and essential to understanding adult motivation.
 ● Relates to our values, self-image, and lifestyle.
● Propriate functional autonomy--master system of motivation that confers unity on
personality.
● Occupations, hobbies, and interests are closer to the core or personality and many
of our motivations concerning them become functionally autonomous.
○ E.g. a woman may originally take a job for monetary needs, but as years
pass, she develops a consuming passion for the job itself.
● It is unique to the individual. The ego determines which motives will be maintained
and which will be discarded. We retain motives that enhance our self-esteem or
self-image. Thus, a direct relationship exists between our interests and our
abilities: we enjoy doing what we do well.
● Also considered as an organizing process that maintains our sense of self.
● It determines how we perceive the world, what we remember from our experiences,
and how our thoughts are directed. These perceptual and cognitive processes are
selective. They choose from the mass of stimuli in our environment only those that
are relevant to our interests and values.

CRITERION FOR FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

● A present motive is functionally autonomous to the extent that it seeks new goals ,
meaning that the behavior will continue even as the motivation for it changes.

THREE PRINCIPLES THAT GOVERN PROPRIATE FUNCTIONAL

AUTONOMY
I. ORGANIZING THE ENERGY LEVEL
● We acquire new motives based on necessity.
● When we aren’t able to do what we were motivated to do, we gain new motives
that force us to compensate with other actions.
● E.g. when someone loses a job or when they retire, they are motivated to find a new
interest, find a new job, find something that will still support their financial needs.
II. MASTERY AND COMPETENCE
● Refers to the level at which we choose to satisfy motives.
● It is not enough for us to achieve at an adequate level. Healthy mature adults are
motivated to perform better and more efficiently, to master new skills, and to
increase their degree of competence.
III. PROPRIATE PATTERNING
● Describes a striving for consistency and integration of the personality.
● We organize our perceptual and cognitive processes around the self, keeping what
enhances our self-image and rejecting the rest. Thus, our propriate motives are
dependent on the structure or pattern of the self.

PROCESSES THAT ARE NOT FUNCTIONALLY AUTONOMOUS

● Allport listed 8 processes that are not functionally autonomous:
○ Biological drives, such as eating, breathing, and sleeping.
○ Motives directly linked to the reduction of basic drives.
○ Reflex actions such as an eye blink.
○ Constitutional equipment, like physique, intelligence, and temperament.
 ○ Habits in the process of being formed.
○ Patterns of behavior that require primary reinforcement.
○ Sublimations that can be tied to childhood sexual desires.
○ Some neurotic or pathological symptoms.
● Allport suggested a criterion for differentiating between a functionally
autonomous compulsion and one that is not:
○ Compulsions that can be eliminated through therapy or behavior
modification are not functionally autonomous, whereas those that are
extremely resistant to therapy are self-sustaining and thus functionally
autonomous.

THE STUDY OF THE INDIVIDUAL

● Allport advocated the development and use of research methods that study the
individual.

MORPHOGENIC SCIENCE
● Allport distinguished between two scientific approaches: the nomothetic, which
seeks general laws, and the idiographic, which refers to that which is peculiar to
the single case.
○ Allport abandoned the term idiographic in his writings, and spoke of
morphogenic procedures--refers to patterned properties of the whole
organism and allows for intraperson comparisons.
○ E.g. Tyrone may be intelligent, introverted, and strongly motivated by his
achievement needs, but the unique manner in which his intelligence is
related to introversion forms a structured pattern.
● Individual patterns are the subject matter of morphogenic science.
● What are the methods of morphogenic psychology?
○ SEMIMORPHOGENIC APPROACHES
■ Self-rating scales (adjective checklist)
■ Standardized tests in which people are compared to themselves
rather than a norm group.
■ Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values
■ Q sort technique of Stephenson
○ WHOLLY MORPHOGENIC FIRST PERSON METHODS
■ Verbatim recordings ■ Art form
■ Interviews ■ Automatic writings
■ Dreams ■ Doodles
■ Confessions ■ Handshakes
■ Diaries ■ Voice patterns
■ Letters ■ Body gestures
■ Some questionnaires ■ Handwriting
■ Expressive ■ Gait
documents ■ Autobiographies
■ Projective documents
■ Literary works
● Morphogenic methods such as one’s description of one’s own life and work can
have validity.
 ● Answers to direct questions should be accepted as valid unless the person is a
young child, psychotic, or extremely defensive.
● “Too often we fail to consult the riches of all sources of data, namely, the subject’s
own self-knowledge.”
● A similar analysis can be performed with third person material.
○ In Allport’s technique, a group of judges would read the autobiographical or
biographical material and record the traits they found in it. Given a
reasonable degree of agreement among the judges, the assessments can
be grouped into a relatively small number of categories.
● There is also a Personal Document Technique--samples of a person’s
written/spoken records to determine the number and kinds of personality traits.
● Allport wrote a book entitled Pattern and Growth in Personality.
○ Despite the existence of many approaches to assessment, there was no
single best technique.
○ He wrote more about personality assessment techniques, but he relied
heavily on the personal document technique and study of values.
● The study of values--objective self-report assessment test. Proposes that our
personal values are the basis of our unifying philosophy of life, which is one of the
six criteria for a mature, healthy personality.

CATEGORIES OF VALUES
1. THEORETICAL VALUES
● Concerned with the discovery of truth and are characterized by an empirical,
intellectual, and rational approach to life.
2. ECONOMIC VALUES
● Concerned with the useful and practical.
3. AESTHETIC VALUES
● Relate to artistic experience and to form harmony and grace.
4. SOCIAL VALUES
● Reflect human relationships, altruism, and philanthropy.
5. POLITICAL VALUES
● Deal with personal power, influence, and prestige in all endeavors, not just in
political activities.
6. RELIGIOUS VALUES
● Concerned with the mystical and with understanding the universe as a whole.

THE DIARIES OF MARION TAYLOR

● The core of this data was nearly a lifetime of diaries, but personal information on
Marion Taylor also included descriptions of her by her mother, her younger sister,
her favorite teacher, two of her friends, and a neighbor as well as notes in a baby
book, school records, scores on several psychological tests, autobiographical
material, and two personal meetings with Ada Allport.
● Their work with Marion Taylor probably helped them organize and publish a second
case--the story of Jenny Gove Masterson (pseudonym).
LETTERS FROM JENNY
● These letters reveal the story of an older woman and her intense love/hate feelings
toward her son, Ross.
● Between March 1936 (58 years old) and October 1937 (she died), Jenny wrote a series
of 301 letters to Ross’ former college roommate, Glenn, and his wife, Isabel, who
almost certainly were Gordon and Ada Allport.
● Jenny was the oldest in a family of seven children.
● When she was 18, her father died and Jenny was forced to quit school and go to
work to help support her family.
● Jenny, who had always been considered rebellious, scandalized her family by
marrying a divorced man--alienating her for her conservatively religious family.
● After 2 years of marriage, Jenny’s husband died. A month or so later, Ross was
born.
● Jenny told Ross that aside from art, the world was a miserable place and that it was
her duty to sacrifice for him because she was responsible for his existence.
● As Ross began to be interested in women, the idyllic mother-son relationship came
to an end. As Ross became married, they became temporarily estranged.
● Jenny began an 11 and ½ year correspondence with Gordon and Ada.
○ Early letters showed that she was deeply concerned with money, death, and
Ross.
● She felt that Ross was ungrateful and that he had abandoned her for another
woman whom she calls a prostitute.
● Three years into the correspondence, Ross suddenly died.
○ Jenny’s letter expressed a somewhat favorable attitude toward her son.
Now she did not have to share him with anyone--no more prostitutes.
● When Jenny died, Ada commented that in the end, Jenny was “the same only more
so.”
● These letters represent an unusually rich source of morphogenic material.
● Allport and his students used 3 techniques to look at Jenny’s personality.
○ ALFRED BALDWIN
■ Developed a technique called personal structure analysis to analyze
approximately one third of the letters.
■ Baldwin used 2 strictly morphogenic procedures:
● Frequency--how often did Jenny mention Ross, money, or
herself?
● Contiguity--proximity of two items in the letters; how often
did the category Ross=unfavorable occur in close
correspondence with herself=self-sacrificing.
○ Freud uses this technique to discover an association
between two items in a patient’s unconscious mind.
■ Baldwin refined contiguity by determining statistically those
correspondences that occur more frequently than could be
expected by chance alone.
■ Baldwin identified 3 clusters of categories in Jenny’s letters:
● Ross, women, the past, and herself--sacrificing.
● Search for a job.
● Attitude toward money and death.
 ○ JEFFREY PAIGE
■ Used factor analysis to extract primary personal dispositions
revealed by Jenny’s letters.
■ Paige identified 8 factors:
● Aggression ● Familial acceptance
● Possessiveness ● Sexuality
● Affiliation ● Sentience
● Autonomy ● Martyrdom
■ Corresponds well with Allpot’s hypothesis of the number of central
dispositions.
○ ALLPORT’S COMMONSENSE TECHNIQUE
■ Asked 36 judges to list what they thought were Jenny’s essential
characteristics.
■ They recorded 198 descriptive adjectives--many of which were
synonymous and overlapping.
■ Grouped them into 8 clusters:

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDHOOD: THE UNIQUE SELF

STAGE 1: BODILY SELF
● Stage 1-3 emerge during the first three years.
● In this stage, infants become aware of their own existence and distinguish their
own bodies from objects in the environment.
● Knowing one’s body and its limits.
STAGE 2: SELF-IDENTITY
● Children realize that their identity remains intact despite the many changes that are
taking place.
● Awareness of inner sameness and continuity.

STAGE 3: SELF ESTEEM

 ● Children learn to take pride in their accomplishments--the ability to do things.
STAGE 4: EXTENSION OF SELF
● Stage 4-5 emerge during the fourth through sixth year.
● In this stage, children come to recognize the objects and people that are part of
their own world.
● Sense of possession and valuing of others.
STAGE 5: SELF-IMAGE
● Children develop actual and idealized images of themselves and their behavior and
become aware of satisfying (or failing to satisfy) parental expectations.
● Sense of measuring up to expectations of others.
STAGE 6: SELF AS A RATIONAL COPER
● Stage 6 develops during ages 6-12.
● Children begin to apply reason and logic to the solution of everyday problems.
● Sense of self as an active problem-solving agent.
STAGE 7: PROPRIATE STRIVING
● Stage 7 develops during adolescence.
● Young people begin to formulate long-range goals and plans.
ADULTHOOD
● Normal, mature adults are functionally autonomous, independent of childhood
motives. They function rationally in the present and consciously create their own
lifestyles.
● Allport believed that there is a marked difference between the infant and adult.
○ The infant has the potentialities for personality but “can scarcely be said to
have personality”.
● Given the appropriate security and affection, the child will grow in the direction of
developing a proprium. The child will be transformed from a biologically dominated
organism to a psychologically mature adult.
● The adult person is discontinuous from the child. The adult emerges from the child
but is no longer governed by the child’s needs.

RELATED RESEARCH
● Allport maintained an active interest in the scientific study of religion and published
6 lectures on the subject under the title The Individual and His Religion.
● UNDERSTANDING AND REDUCING PREJUDICE
○ Allport proposed that one of the most important components to reducing
prejudice was contact: If members of majority and minority groups
interacted more under optimal conditions, there would be less prejudice--
contact hypothesis.
■ Conditions should be (1) equal status between the two groups, (2)
common goals, (3) cooperation between groups, and (4) support of
an authority figure, law, or custom.
○ Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp found through research that intergroup
contact reduces prejudice, and that Allport’s four conditions for optimal
contact between groups facilitate this effect.
■ Aside from racial prejudice, it also works to reduce prejudiced
attitudes toward other stigmatized groups such as the elderly,
disabled, mentally ill, and gay and lesbian individuals.
 ■ Minimal group paradigm--people are more motivated by ingroup
favoritism than by the desire to punish or disfavor an outgroup.
● Conformity is another empirically validated contributor to
this ingroup favoritism finding.
● Unprejudiced people typically follow their ingroup’s norms. If
these norms are characterized by preferential treatment of
the ingroup, most members will conform, even in the
absence of any bad feelings toward the outgroup.
■ Greenwald and Pettigrew argues that for discrimination to be
accomplished, a decidedly unremarkable process that involves little
if any outright hostility.
● INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC RELIGIOUS ORIENTATION
○ Allport believed that a deep religious commitment was a mark of a mature
individual, but he also believed that not all churchgoers have a mature
religious orientation--some are highly prejudiced.
○ Allport suggested that church and prejudice offer the same safety, security,
and status, at least for some people.
○ Allport and Ross developed the Religious Orientation Scale--applicable only
to churchgoers.
■ It consists of 20 items: 11 Extrinsic and 9 Intrinsic.
● E: The primary purpose of prayer is to gain relief and
protection.
● I: I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings
in life.
■ Allport assumed that people with an extrinsic orientation have a
utilitarian view of religion; they see it as a means to an end.
● It is a self-serving religion of comfort and social convention.
● Easily reshaped when convenient.
■ People with an intrinsic orientation live their religion and find their
master motive in their religious faith.
● RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION AND MENTAL HEALTH
○ Seedall and Butler found that intrinsically religious people would be more
likely than the extrinsically religious to accept forgiveness as a therapeutic
treatment, and less likely to endorse misconceptions about the nature of
forgiveness.
● RELIGIOUS MOTIVATION AND PHYSICAL HEALTH
○ Kevin Masters and his colleagues demonstrated in their research that
intrinsic religious orientation serves as a buffer against stressors likely to
be experienced in everyday life.

CRITIQUE OF ALLPORT
● More on philosophical speculation and common sense than on scientific
investigations.
● THEORY RATING:
○ ABILITY TO GENERATE RESEARCH: moderate.
○ FALSIFIABILITY: low.
○ ORGANIZED KNOWLEDGE: not much.
 ○ CAN BE SERVED AS A GUIDE FOR ACTION: moderate usefulness.
○ INTERNALLY CONSISTENT: high.
○ PARSIMONIOUS: high.
● CONCEPT OF HUMANITY:
○ Limited-freedom (middle of determinism and free choice)
○ Optimistic
○ Teleological
○ Conscious
○ Moderate emphasis on social factors
○ Uniqueness and individual differences