Gordon Allport

Trait

Distinguishing characteristics or qualities that guide behavior: predisposition to respond in the same way to different kinds of stimuli.

3 Major Functions of Trait

• To summarize

• To predict

• To explain a person’s conduct

Gordon Allport

• First Personality theorist to study the psychologically healthy individual

• America’s first personality theorist

• Advocated an eclectic approach in theory building.

Characteristic of a Healthy and Mature Person

• Extension of the sense of self

• Warm relating of self to others

• Emotional security or self-acceptance

• Realistic perception of their environment

• Insight and humor

• Unifying philosophy of life

Individual Characteristics Personal Disposition

the most important structures are those that permit the description of the person in terms of individual characteristics

Personal Disposition

Throughout most of his career, Allport was careful to distinguish between common traits and individual traits.

Common Traits

general characteristics held in common by many people.

Individual Traits

permits researchers to study a single individual.

Levels of Personal Disposition

• Cardinal Disposition

• Central Disposition

• Secondary Disposition

Cardinal Disposition

• Some people possess an eminent characteristic or ruling passion so outstanding that it dominates their lives.

• They are so obvious that they cannot be hidden.

• Allport identified several historical people and fictional characters who possessed a disposition so outstanding that they have given our language a new word.

Central Disposition

• 5-10 most outstanding characteristics around which a person’s life focuses.

• Allport described ________ as those that would be listed in an accurate letter of recommendation by someone who knew the person quite well.

• Allport believed that most people have 5 to 10 central dispositions that their friends and acquaintances would agree are descriptive of that person.

Secondary Disposition

• Far greater in number than central dispositions

• Not central to the personality yet occur with some regularity and are responsible for much of one’s specific behaviors.

Motivational Disposition

• receive their motivation from basic needs and drives strongly felt.

• Initiate actions

Stylistic Disposition

• personal dispositions that are less intensely experienced.

• Guides action.

Proprium

• Refer to those behaviors and characteristics that people regard as warm, central and important in their lives.

• Includes those aspects of life that a person regards as important to a sense of self-identity and self-enhancement.

• Characteristics that an individual refers to in such terms as “That is me” or “This is mine”

• All characteristics that are “peculiarly mine” belong to the ________

Motivation

• Allport believed 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.

• Allport believed that a useful theory of personality rests on the assumption that people not only react to their environment but also shape their environment and cause it to react to them.

4 Requirements of Theory of Motivation

• Will acknowledge the contemporaneity of motives.

• Will be a pluralistic theory- allowing for motives of many types.

• Will ascribe dynamic force to cognitive processes - to planning and intention.

• Will allow for the concrete uniqueness of motives.

Functional Autonomy

• Allport’s most distinctive and most controversial postulate.

• In general, the concept of this holds that some, but not all, human motives are functionally independent from the original motive responsible for that behavior.

• If a motive is functionally autonomous, it is the explanation for the behavior, and one need not look beyond it for hidden or primary causes.

• Doing things simply because they like to do them.

Perseverative Functional Autonomy

Borrowed from the word "perseveration" which is the tendency of an impression to leave an influence on subsequent experience. Found in animals as well as humans and is based on simple neurological principles.

Propriate Functional Autonomy

• self-sustaining motives that are related to the proprium.

• causes one to respond appropriately to life’s challenge in order to progressively produce greater achievements.

Processes that are not Functionally Autonomous

• Biological drives

• Motives directly linked to the reduction of basic drives

• Reflex actions

• Constitutional equipment namely 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

The Study of Individual

Because psychology has historically dealt with general laws and characteristics that people have in common, Allport repeatedly advocated the development and use of research methods that study the individual.

Morphogenic Science

• Early in his writings, Allport distinguished between two scientific approaches:

• Nomothetic – seeks general laws

• Idiographic – emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual CUE: (“I am Unique”)

Methods of Morphogenic Psychology

Verbatim recordings, interviews, dreams, confessions, diaries, letters, some questionnaires, expressive documents, projective documents, literary works, art forms, autobiographies etc.