Finals L5A: Gordon Allport - The Trait Theories

Trait

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

• To summarize

• To predict

• And explain a person’s conduct

What are the three major functions of traits?

Personality

The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.

1. Extension of the sense of self

2. Warm relating of self to others

3. Emotional security or self-acceptance

4. Realistic perception of their environment

5. Insight and humor

6. Unifying philosophy of life

What are the characteristics of a healthy and mature person?

Personal Dispositions

To Allport, the most important structures are those that permit the description of the person in terms of individual characteristics, and he called these individual characteristics _____.

• Common Traits

• Individual Traits

What are the two types of personal dispositions?

Common Traits

General characteristics held in common by many people.

Individual Traits

Permits researchers to study a single individual

• Cardinal Dispositions

• Central Dispositions

• Secondary Dispositions

What are the Levels of Personal Dispositions?

Cardinal Dispositions

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

Central Dispositions

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

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

Secondary Dispositions

• 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

All personal dispositions are dynamic in a sense that they have motivational power.

This kind of personal disposition receive their motivation from basic needs and drives and are strongly felt.

Stylistic Disposition

All personal dispositions are dynamic in a sense that they have motivational power.

This kind of personal disposition are those that are less intensely experienced.

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 proprium.

Motivation

• 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.

• Most people, 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

1. Will acknowledge the contemporaneity of motives.

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

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

4. Will allow for the concrete uniqueness of motives.

What are the 4 requirements of theory of motivation?

Functional Autonomy

Allport’s most distinctive and most controversial postulate.

• Holds that some, but not all, human motives are functionally independent from the original motive responsible for that behavior.

• 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.

Perseveration

The tendency of an impression to leave an influence on subsequent experience.

Perseverative Functional Autonomy

• Borrowed from the word "perseveration"

• Found in animals as well as humans and is based on simple neurological principles.

• Gives consistency and coherence to personality.

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.

1. Biological drives

2. Motives directly linked to the reduction of basic drives

3. Reflex actions

4. Constitutional equipment namely physique, intelligence and temperament

5. Habits

6. Patterns of behavior that require primary reinforcement

7. Sublimations that can be tied to childhood sexual desires

8. Some neurotic or pathological symptoms

What are processes that are not functionally autonomous?

• Nomothetic

• Idiographic

What the two types of scientific approaches according to Allport’s Morphogenic Science?

Nomothetic

The scientific approach that seeks general laws.

Idiographic

The scientific approach that refers to that which is peculiar to the single case.

• Emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual.