THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

GORDON ALLPORT
Group Members
• Afifa Kashif (22)
• Eman Kamran (25)
• Aleena Waseem (29)
• Jawairia Rehman (30)
• Urooj Zulfiqar (31)
• Laila Eman (33)
• Zainab Bibi (39)
 Content
• Biographical Background • Functional Autonomy
• The Nature of Personality • Perseverative Functional
• Closed and Open System Autonomy
• Propriate Functional
• Continuity and Discontinuity Theory
Autonomy
• Traits • Nature of Prejudice
• Common Traits
• Personal Dispositions • Criticism 
• The Proprium • Conclusion
• Propriate Functions
Biographical Background
• Born in Indiana, USA
• Shy and studious from childhood
• Met Sigmund Freud in 1920
• After the meeting, Allport concluded that psychoanalysis dug
too deeply into the unconscious and past experiences
• He approached psychology in a unique way i.e., Humanistic
approach
The Nature of Personality
• Personality is dynamic organization within the individual of
those psychophysical systems that determine characteristic
behavior and thought.
• Personality is not mere fiction but rather a real entity.
• Currently unobservable because it cannot be measured
empirically. 
• Someday, it could be directly shown within a person,
involving neural and physiological components.
Closed and Open System
• A closed system is a concept of personality that admits little
or nothing new from outside of the organism to influence or
change it in any significant way. Personality is seen as
complete within itself.
• An open system is the one that conceives of personality as
having a dynamic potential for growth, reconstitution and
change through extensive transactions within itself and with
its environment.
Continuity and Discontinuity Theory
• Continuity theory is the one that suggests that the
development of personality is the accumulation of skills,
habits and discriminations without anything new appearing in
the person’s make-up. 
• Discontinuity theory suggests that during development, an
organism experiences genuine transformations or changes so
that it reaches successively higher levels of organization.
Here, growth is conceived discontinuously.
Traits
• Common traits are hypothetical constructs that allow us to
compare individuals within a given culture.
• Personal disposition is a general determining characteristic,
unique to the individual who has it.
• Cardinal Dispositions: Pervasive, define a person to such an extent
that their names become synonymous with their personality.
• Central Dispositions: Form basic personality foundations, not as
dominant as cardinal dispositions, describe the major characteristics
you might use to describe another person.
• Secondary Dispositions: Attitudes or preferences, situational
The Proprium
• Proprium refers to the central experiences of self-awareness that
a person has as he/she grows and moves forward. 
• The proprium is defined in terms of its functions or the things it
does. These are propriate functions.
• Bodily self
• Self-identity
• Self-esteem
• Self-extension
• Self-image
• Self as rational coper
• Propriate striving
Functional Autonomy
• Closely related to concept of proprium
• Adult motivation is not necessarily tied to the past
• Perseverative functional autonomy: Acts or behaviors that
are repeated even though they may have lost their original
function.
• Propriate functional autonomy: It refers to those acquired
interests, values, attitudes, intentions and lifestyle that are
directed from the proprium and are genuinely free of earlier
motivations.
Nature of Prejudice
• Published in 1954
• Explored the root causes of prejudice
• Stereotypes were the foundations of prejudice
• Allport put forward a theory the “least effort principle” to
explain this
• Human brains use stereotyping as a normal cognitive
function to process information
Criticism
• Traits are often poor predictors of behavior
• Trait theories do not explain how or why individuals differ in
their personalities.
• It does not give clarity on the changeability of these traits.
Conclusion
• Personality traits are important ways to distinguish people.
• Personality trait theory has been particularly useful in
identifying several traits and their influence on human
behavior.