BIOGRAPHY OF GORDON ALLPORT

● Gordon Allport was a 20th century psychologist who studied personality and personality
traits.

EARLY LIFE
● Born in Indiana in 1897 (died 1967), Gordon Allport was one of four children. His
family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when Allport was six years old, and he was raised in
the same home out of which his father practiced medicine. The less than adequate
hospital facilities in Cleveland required that Allport’s father allow doctors, nurses, and
patients to reside in the home with the family. During his childhood, Allport and his
siblings were immersed in the medical profession and often acted as clinical
assistants to their father.
● Allport later acknowledged that this experience became an integral part of his early
education.
● Allport’s mother was an educator, and she instilled in all of her children the
importance of education and strong work ethics.
● Allport was a shy child and was often ridiculed for his physical impairment of having
been born with only eight toes.
● During his high school years, Allport founded a printing business and held the position of
editor for his high school paper.
● He graduated from Glenville High School and secured a full scholarship to Harvard,
following in his brother’s footsteps.
● Allport diverged from his brother’s pursuit of psychology, earning a bachelor's degree
in economics and philosophy instead. While at Harvard, Allport exhibited his social
interests by volunteering in various capacities, including as a probation officer, assisting
foreign students, helping war veterans, and participating in a Boston boy’s club. As
Allport continued his education at Harvard, he eventually turned to psychology and went
on to earn his PhD.
● After his graduation from college, he spent some time in Europe and had the
opportunity to meet Sigmund Freud while in Vienna. In an autobiographical
piece, Pattern and Growth in Personality, he relays the story of the meeting, explaining
that he told Freud of a boy he met on the train. The boy appeared afraid of dirt, even
when his mother tried to reassure him. Allport speculated that perhaps the boy had
learned this phobia from his mother, who seemed to be highly domineering. According to
Allport, Freud responded to the story by stating, “And was that little boy you?” Allport
felt that Freud’s response was highly dismissive of his current feelings and motivations.
He also believed that the tendency of psychodynamic psychology to examine
people’s unconscious motives and their past could lead to overlooking present issues.

PROFESSIONAL LIFE
 ● Allport began his instruction in psychology at Harvard. He taught “Personality: It’s
Psychological and Social Aspects,” which was a study derived from the research he had
previously conducted with his brother.
● Allport also spent a brief period of time teaching at Dartmouth College, though he soon
returned to Harvard where he taught until his death in 1967.
● During his tenure at Harvard, Allport sat on many committees and facilitated
groundbreaking courses. He acted as editor, faculty member, and fellow, and in 1939, he
was chosen to be president of the American Psychological Association
● During the next several years, Allport was an active member of several societies and
published several books.
● In 1955, his fifth publication was released, Becoming: Basic Considerations for
Psychology of Personality. This book became one of his best known works.
● Allport eventually went on to achieve several awards and accolades, including the
Gold Medal Award given by the American Psychological Foundation and the American
Psychological Association’s coveted Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
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.
CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

● Unlike many other psychologists of his time, Allport placed a strong emphasis
on conscious motivations and thoughts, and this led to a strong interest in the
development of personality.
● Although Allport is noted as being influential in many areas of psychology, he is
particularly well known for his trait theory. Allport determined that every human
being possesses hundreds of traits that exist on one of three levels:
1. Cardinal Trait: This characteristic is a person’s dominant trait and serves to mold a
person’s identity, emotions, and behaviors.
2. Central Trait: These are seen as core traits. Although they are not dominant, they are
inherent in most people and lay the foundation for our personalities and actions.
3. Secondary Trait: These traits are privately held, and often only revealed in confidence
or under certain conditions.

● Allport also identified the existence of what he termed genotypes and phenotypes—
internal and external conditions that motivate a person’s behavior. He continued to
develop the field of personality psychology while examining the nature of a person’s will,
motivation, and determination.
● He distinguished between drive and motive and explored the conditions that support and
affect each. Allport attempted to draw a clear distinction between motives and drives.
● For him, a drive is more akin to an unconscious behavior. For example, a woman might
initially have a strong need to make friends because of early childhood abandonment or
feelings of inadequacy.
 ● But an independent motive can develop out of this drive, and the same woman might
nurture her friendships because of her concern for her friends, or because she enjoys
doing activities with them.
● Allport was adamant that people are autonomous beings with free will; they're not
solely driven by instincts and drives, and not just governed by the past. He emphasized
the primacy of learning and argued that current behavior and thoughts are the product
of an entire life history—including the present—rather than just some brief period in
early development.

ALLPORT’S APPROACH TO PERSONALITY THEORY

● Gordon Allport was one of the first researchers to come up with a trait theory.
● His main idea was that personality came about like a series of building blocks; referred
to here as traits. He further believed that personality was biologically determined but
could be shaped by someone’s environment.
●
● He argued that there are three classes of trait:
- Cardinal traits: these are the traits around which someone organises their whole
life. They are thought to develop later in life and become synonymous with a
person because that is how people primarily see them – ‘greedy Sam’ or ‘angry
Tony’ for example. (DOMINANT TRAITS)
- Central traits: these refer to major characteristics of someone’s personality and
lead to its foundation, such as shy, intelligent, deceitful or unkind. (CORE
TRAITS)
- Secondary traits: these refer to traits which refer to patterns of behaviour that
only occur under specific circumstances, for example a person who is usually
confident becomes nervous when they have to walk over a bridge.
TRAIT
A ‘trait’ is something that refers to a way in which we generally tend to describe a person.
Therefore, you might refer to someone as being ‘short tempered’ or ‘kind’ or ‘needy’ – these are
all traits that we might apply to ourselves or to other people.

A trait is also thought to be a stable characteristic that remains the same regardless of the
situation. Therefore, if three people were all caught in a rainstorm without a coat, the short-
tempered person might become angry about this, the kind person might offer to let them walk
under a shelter at their own expense and the needy person might feel aggrieved that they have
not been offered the shelter because they feel like they will be more inconvenienced by the
situation and therefore need it more.

One individual does not have one trait; according to the trait theory, someone will have several
traits, which combine to make their personality. Allport and Cattell are two of the main
researchers in this area and we shall now consider their work.
PERSONALITY

● Personality is a dynamic and complex phenomenon that has invoked curiosity among
many thinkers. People's personalities are defined by their thoughts, feelings, and acts.
● Personality is also responsible for how a person interacts with their surroundings.
● Personality is generally stable; though environmental factors can influence it. A person's
personality influences how they react to different circumstances and people. Many
theorists have tried to explain the concept.
● Sigmund Freud believed that a person's personality was the cumulative consequence of
their inbuilt instincts and parental influences. He believed that genes, as well as the
environment, worked together to form a complete personality.
● Carl Hung came up with the extrovert-introvert spectrum of personality.
● Gordon Allport disagreed with several aspects of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical
theory of personality and the behavioral point of view of personality.
● He came up with another theory of personality, which he named the trait theory of
personality. He believed that to understand people, we needed to break down their
behavior patterns into observable traits. According to trait theory, the trait is a
characteristic or attribute of an individual that is somewhat stable and lasts for a long
period. Traits' most important characteristics are their relative stability over time, varying
degrees of expression in different individuals, and their influence on behavior.

HIERARCHY OF PERSONALITY TRAITS

● Cardinal traits are the obvious main traits that dominate an individual's life. These traits
are rare, and they often take years to develop. When cardinal traits are present, they form
 a person's sense of self, emotional composition, and even attitude. Honesty and integrity
are examples of cardinal traits.
● Central traits are less pronounced than cardinal traits but are significant and distinct in
every individual. These traits are responsible for many behaviors, and examples of these
traits include shyness and intellect.
● Secondary traits are less obvious, less consistent, and less important in defining our
personality than cardinal and central traits. They have significantly fewer generalized and
relevant dispositions. They are only seen in specific situations or under specific
conditions. Food preference or music genre can be examples of secondary traits.

According to Gordon, cardinal traits are very prominent and cannot be hidden. People have ten
to fifteen central traits that describe their identity. Additionally, members of a culture or society
share common traits or dispositions. According to Allport, these characteristics are influenced by
our childhood experiences, the context in which it occurs, and the interplay between them.

on the uniqueness of each individual, built a

theory of personality as a reaction against
what he regarded as the non-humanistic
positions of both psychoanalysis and animal-
based learning theory. However, Allport was
eclectic in his approach and accepted many
of the ideas of other theorists.

II. Biography of Gordon Allport

● Gordon W. Allport was born in Indiana in

1897.
● He received an undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics from Harvard, and
taught in Europe for a year.
● While in Europe, he had a fortuitous meeting with Sigmund Freud in Vienna, which
helped him decide to complete a Ph.D. in psychology.
● After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard, Allport spent two years studying under some of
the great German psychologists, but he returned to teach at Harvard.
● Two years later he took a position at Dartmouth, but after four years at Dartmouth, he
again returned to Harvard, where he remained until his death in 1967.

III. Allport's Approach to Personality

● Allport believed that psychologically healthy humans are motivated by present, mostly
conscious drives and that they not only seek to reduce tensions but to establish new ones.
He also believed that people are capable of proactive behavior, which suggests that they
 can consciously behave in new and creative ways that foster their own change and
growth. He called his study of the individual morphogenic science and contrasted it with
traditional nomothetic methods.

IV. Personality Defined

● Allport defined personality as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought."

V. Structure of Personality

According to Allport, the basic units of personality are personal dispositions and the proprium.

A. Personal Dispositions
Allport distinguished between common traits, which permit ?? (kulang)
CURRENT RESEARCH AND EVALUATION

Trait Theory and Behavioral Theory have made valuable contributions to the field of leadership. The question
remains, Which is more relevant for modern leadership?