10- Allport (copy)

Dispositional Theories

uniqueness

Gordon allport emphasized the - of the individual

Morphogenic science

Study of the individual

Nomothetic methods

gather data on groups of people

Morphogenic methods

gather data on a single individual

Particularism

theories that emphasize a single aspect of personality

49

How many definitions did Allport spell out as used in theology, philosophy,law, sociology, and psychology?

Personality

dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought

Dynamic organization

implies an integration or interrelatedness of the various aspects of personality

Psychophysical

emphasizes the importance of both the psychological and physical aspects of personality

determine

suggests that personality is something and does something

Characteristic

wished to imply individual or unique

Proactive behaviour

Psychological healthy people are characterized by -; that is they not only react to external stimuli but are capable of consciously acting on their environment in new and innovative ways

structure of personality

refer to its basic units or building blocks

Personal dispositions

most important structures are those that permit

the description of the person in terms of individual characteristics called -

Common traits

general characteristics held

in common by many people

Common traits

provide the means by which people within a given culture can be compared

to one another.

Personal dispositions

are of even greater importance because they

permit researchers to study a single individual.

Personal dispositions

generalized neuropsychic structure (peculiar to the individual),

with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate

and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior

18,000; 17,953

To identify personal dispositions, Allport and Henry Odbert (1936) counted

nearly - (-, to be exact) personally descriptive words in the 1925 edition

of Webster’s New International Dictionary,

Traits

relatively stable characteristics such as sociable or introverted

States

describe temporary characteristics such as happy or angly

Evaluative characteristics

Unpleasant or wonderful

Physical characteristics

tall or obese

Cardinal dispositions

Some people possess an eminent characteristic or ruling

passion so outstanding that it dominates their lives.

Cardinal dispositions

They are so obvious that they cannot

be hidden; nearly every action in a person’s life revolves around this one cardinal

disposition.

5-10

everyone has

several central dispositions, which include the - most outstanding characteristics around which a person’s life focuses.

Secondary dispositions

Less conspicuous but far greater in number than central

dispositions are the -

Secondary dispositions

Everyone has many - that are not central to the personality yet occur with some regularity and

are responsible for much of one’s specific behaviors

Cardinal dispositions

exceedingly prominent in a person

Central dispositions

which guide much of a person’s adaptive and stylistic behavior

Motivational dispositions

some are much more strongly felt than others, and Allport

called these intensely experienced dispositions -

Stylistic dispositions

referred to personal dispositions that are less intensely experienced

Stylistic dispositions

guide behavior

Motivational dispositions

initiate behavior

Proprium

All characteristics that are “peculiarly mine” belong to the

Proprium

refer to those behaviors and characteris-

tics that people regard as warm, central, and important in their lives.

Proprium

not the whole personality, because many characteristics and behaviors of a per-

son are not warm and central; rather, they exist on the periphery of personality

Proprium

warm center of personality, includes those aspects of life

that a person regards as important to a sense of self-identity and self-enhancement

Peripheral motives

those that reduce a need,

Propriate strivings

seek to maintain tension

and disequilibrium.

Reactive

Psychoanalysis and the

various learning theories are basi-

cally homeostatic, or -,

theories because they see people

as being motivated primarily by

needs to reduce tension and to

return to a state of equilibrium.

Proactive behavior

It must view people as con-

sciously acting on their environ-

ment in a manner that permits

growth toward psychological

health.

Functional autonomy

represents Allport’s most distinctive and, at

the same time, most controversial postulate.

Functional autonomy

represents a theory of changing rather than

unchanging motives and is the capstone of Allport’s ideas on motivation.

Functional autonomy

holds that some, but not all,

human motives are functionally independent from the original motive responsible for

the behavior.

Functional autonomy

reaction to what Allport called theories of unchanging

motives, namely, Freud’s pleasure principle and the drive-reduction hypothesis of

stimulus-response psychology.

Functional autonomy

any acquired system of motivation in which the

tensions involved are not of the same kind as the antecedent tensions from which the

acquired system developed

Perseverative functional autonomy

more elementary of the two levels of functional autonomy

Propriate functional autonomy

master system of motivation that confers unity on personality is

Propriate functional autonomy

which refers to those self-sustaining motives that are related to

the proprium.

Nomothetic

seeks general laws

Idiographic

peculiar to a single case

Morphogenic

refers to patterned properties of the whole organism and

allows for intraperson comparisons

Semimorphogenic approaches

include self-rating scales, such as the adjective

checklist; standardized tests in which people are compared to themselves rather

than a norm group; the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values (1960); and the

Q sort technique of Stephenson (1953),

Marion Taylor

During the late 1930s, Allport and his wife, Ada, became acquainted with an

extremely rich source of personal data about a woman whom they called

Letters from Jenny

Allport’s morphogenic approach to the study of lives is best illustrated in his famous

Personal structure analysis

Alfred Baldwin developed a technique called - to analyze 1/3 of the letters

Frequency and contiguity

Baldwin used two strictly morphogenic procedures for gathering evidence

Frequency

involves a notation of the frequency with which an item appears in the case material

Contiguity

refers to the proximity of two items in the letters

Contiguity

refinded this technique by determining statistically those correspondences that occur more frequently than could be expected by chance alone

Factor analysis

Jeffrey Paige used a - to extract primary personal disposition revealed by Jenny’s letters