GORDON ALLPORT: A TRAIT THEORY OF PERSONALITY:Personality as a

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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 26

GORDON ALLPORT: A TRAIT THEORY OF PERSONALITY

1- Biographical Sketch

2- What is personality?

3- Criteria for Adequate Personality Theory

4- Allport's Concept of Traits

5- Kinds of Traits

Cardinal Traits

ii)

Central Traits

iii)

Secondary Dispositions

6- Self

(An Eight Stage Developmental Sequence That Starts At Birth And Goes To Adulthood)

7- Functional Autonomy

8-Application: The Study of Values

1-Theoretical

ii)

2-Economic

iii)

3-Aesthetic

iv)

4-Social

5-Political

vi)

6-Religious

9- Summary

10- Evaluation

Trait:

A trait is a predisposition or way to respond in a manner to various kinds of stimuli.

A trait is what accounts for the more permanent, enduring features of our behavior.

"Generalized action tendencies".

The "Traits" of Traits

A trait has more than nominal existence.

ii)

A trait is more generalized than a habit.

iii)

A trait is dynamic or at least determinative in behavior.

iv)

A trait's existence may be established empirically.

No two people are completely alike. Thus, no two people react identically to the same psychological

situation or stimulus. Every personality theory, in one way or another must deal with the issue of individual

differences. Gordon Allport is a personologist who regards the explanation of an individual's uniqueness as

the paramount goal of psychology. Allport's emphasis on the uniqueness of the person is, however, only

one of the features of his position. In addition, there is a strong focus on the ways in which internal

cognitive and motivational processes influence and cause behavior.

Allport's theory represents a blend of humanistic and personalistic approaches to the study of human

behavior. It is humanistic in its attempts to recognize all aspects of the human being, including the potential

for growth, transcendence, and self-realization. It is personalistic in that its objective is to understand and

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predict the development of the real individual person (Allport, 1968b). Further, as a theoretician, Allport

may be broadly described as an eclectic because he incorporates insights from philosophy, religion,

literature, and sociology, blending such ideas into an understanding of the uniqueness and complexity of

personality. In fact, Allport's belief that each person's behavior derives from a particular configuration of

personal traits is the trademark of his orientation to personology.

Biographical Sketch

Allport was born in 1897 in Indiana, his father was a physician and mother was a school teacher, his elder

brother Floyd was a famous psychologist. He went to Harvard but his early grades were Cs and Ds but he

finished with straight As.

Allport was a social isolate who was skilled with words but poor at sports. One of his classmates, in a show

of contempt, once said: " that guy swallowed a dictionary" (1968a, p. 378). Although he finished second

highest academically in his high school graduating class of one hundred students, Allport insisted that he

was "a good routine student, but definitely uninspired. . . about anything beyond the usual adolescent Con-

cerns" (Allport, 1968a, p. 379). Allport pursued undergraduate study at Harvard University at the urging of

his older brother Floyd, who was then a graduate student in psychology at the same university.

Although he took several psychology courses at Harvard, Allport majored in economics and philosophy.

He also participated in a number of volunteer service projects during his undergraduate years.

Allport went to Vienna to meet his brother and he called on Freud, on the day of their meeting, Freud called

Allport into his office and sat down, saying nothing, and waited for Allport to speak. The silence grew

longer and Allport became uncomfortable under the intense, steady gaze of the world-famous

psychoanalyst.

Allport received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1922, at the age of 24. His thesis research focused on an

examination of the traits of personality and was the first such study done anywhere in the United States.

During the next two years, supported by a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, Allport studied at the universities

of Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and Cambridge in England. Returning from Europe he served as an

instructor for two years in Harvard's Department of Social Ethics.

In 1926 Allport accepted the position of assistant professor of psychology at Dartmouth College, where he

stayed until 1930. In that year, he was invited by Harvard to return at the same rank in the Department of

Social Relations.

Personality : A Personality Interpretation (1937)

The psychology of rumor (1947) with L. Postman.

The individual and his religion (1950).

The nature of prejudice (1954).

Personality as a "Something"?

In his first book, Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. Allport devoted an entire chapter to a review

of the many different notions of personality offered by theologians, philosophers, poets, sociologists, and

psychologists, and concluded that an adequate synthesis of existing definitions might be expressed in the

phrase "what a man really is" ? (1937, p. 48). What this definition possesses in the way of

comprehensiveness it certainly lacks in precision. Recognizing this, Allport went a step further and asserted

that "personality is something and does something. . . . It is what lies behind specific acts and within the

individual" (1937, p. 48). The notion of personality as merely a hypothetical entity, then, Allport argued

that it definitely is an existing "something" within the person. At least in Allport's system, personality is

alive, well, and functioning.

In 1937 Allport reviewed the history of the word personality, beginning with the Greek word persona

(mask) and studied some fifty definitions of the word personality before he gave his own definition

"personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of psychophysical systems that determine his

unique adjustments to his environment "

In 1961, Allport changed the phrase of the definition from" unique adjustments to his environment" to

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"Characteristic Behavior and Thought". Let us examine the key components

Dynamic Organization- humans always changing, becoming.

Psychophysical Systems- it entails body and mind fused together

Determine-personality is something and does something.

Characteristic Behavior and Thought"- to learn about an individual is to study about him.

In arriving at his conceptual definition, Allport noted that the terms character and temperament have often

been used as synonyms for personality. This seems particularly true when considering the layman's use of

these terms. Allport explains how each may be readily distinguished from the concept of personality.

The word "character" traditionally connotes a moral standard or value system against which the individual's

actions are evaluated. For example, whenever another person is considered of "good character," a personal

judgment as to the social and or ethical desirability of his or her personal qualities is really the topic.

Character thus is actually an ethical concept. Or, as Allport (1961) put it, character is personality

evaluation, Character, then, should not be considered as some special region contained within personality.

Temperament is the mood or emotional component of personality.

Type A is a category or class in which a person can be placed say An Aggressive Type of person.

What a personality theory should be?

Specifically, Allport (1960) insisted that

1- A truly adequate theory of human behavior must regard the human personality as contained in the

organism.

Theorists have placed personality outside the person by equating it with social roles or interpersonal

relationships. The role theory, as proposed by sociologists and anthropologists, explains personality as

nothing more than one's membership in a group and the situationally defined roles one is expected to adopt.

According to this approach, any given person, say, A, for example, is known only by the roles he enacts, so

A is only a college student, son, consumer, church attender, part time drug pusher, and so on.

2- A complete theory of personality regards the organism as well-stocked" not empty.

Representing the antithesis of Skinner's position, Allport argued that we must assume a "well-stocked"

organism, not an empty one, if we are to advance in personality theorizing. Whereas Skinner believes

environmental events shape the "empty" organism, Allport believes personality is something that is located

within the organism:

3- An adequate theory must regard motivation as normally affect of present structure and function, not

simply as an outgrowth of earlier forces or experience.

Motivationally speaking, A is not a prisoner of his past. He does not forever drag the chains of his early

childhood experiences to rattle through his every adult action. Instead, Allport believed that an adequate

personality theory should portray A as he is now, as a 20-year-old college student, and interpret his

motivation.

4- The units of measure employed by an adequate personality theory must be capable of living

synthesis.

In order for a theory to be adequate it must employ units of analysis capable of living synthesis. This

requirement stipulates that personality must somehow be broken down into definable units (segments,

aspects, factors) for study, but that the units themselves must be of such a nature as to permit their

reconstruction, capturing that holistic quality of "dynamic organization" which is at the heart of Allport's

definition of personality. For example, to account for the personality of Humpty Dumpty, it would indeed

be necessary for a theory first to break him into pieces.

5- A theory must allow adequately for but not rely exclusively upon the phenomenon of self-

consciousness.

To portray A accurately, an adequate personality theory must recognize that he is consciously aware of

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himself. In fact, this self-consciousness is the most concrete evidence Adam has of his personal identity.

Concept of Trait

In simpler terms, a trait is a predisposition to respond in an equivalent manner to various kinds of stimuli.

Traits, in effect, are psychological entities that render many stimuli as well as many reponses equivalent.

Many stimuli may evoke the same response, or many responses (perceptions, interpretations, feelings,

actions) have the same functional meaning in terms of the trait. To illustrate this concept, Allport (1961)

cites the case of a fictitious Mr. McCarley whose leading trait is a "fear of communism." For him, this trait

renders equivalent the social stimuli of Russians, black and Jewish neighbors, liberals, most college

professors, peace organizations, the United Nations, and so forth. All are perceived and labeled as

communists.

According to Allport, traits are not linked to a small number of specific stimuli or responses; rather, they

are relatively generalized and enduring. By uniting responses to numerous stimuli, traits produce fairly

broad consistencies in behavior. A trait is what accounts for the more permanent, enduring, transsituational

features of our behavior.

It should be emphasized, however, that traits do not lie dormant waiting to be aroused by external stimuli.

In fact, the individual may actively seek stimulus situations that encourage the expression of her traits. A

person with a strong disposition toward sociability not only responds in a charming manner when in a

group of people but also seeks out company when she is alone.

The "Traits" of Traits

In Allport's system, traits themselves may be said to have "traits" or defining characteristics. Shortly before

his death, Allport (1966) published an article entitled "Traits Revisited" in which he summarized all that he

had learned in response to the question "What is a trait of personality?" In this article, he proposed that

eight basic criteria define a personality trait:

1 A trait has more than nominal existence: Personality traits are not fictions; they are a very real and vital

part of one's existence. Every person possesses inside his or her skin these "generalized action tendencies".

2 A trait is more generalized than a habit: Traits tend to cut across situations and thereby account for the

more permanent, enduring, and general features of our behavior. Habits while enduring, refer to more

narrow and limited types of tendencies and are thus less generalized in terms of the situations which may

arouse them or the responses which they' evoke.

3 A trait is dynamic or at least determinative in behavior: Traits underlie behavior- they cause behavior.

In Allport's system, traits do not lie dormant waiting to be aroused by external stimuli.

4 A trait's existence may be established empirically: If they're real,

psychologists ought to be able to

prove that they are. While traits as such can never be directly observed (how can you "see" sociability?),

Allport believed that they could be verified scientifically.

5 A trait is only relatively independent of other traits: To paraphrase a well known saying, "No trait is an

island." Traits overlap. There is no rigid boundary separating one trait from another. Rather, the personality

is comprised of a network of overlapping traits only relatively independent of one another. To illustrate,

Allport (1960) cites a study in which it was found that the traits of insight and humor are highly correlated

with one another. Clearly, these are separate traits, but they nonetheless are somehow related.

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