GORDON ALLPORT

Gordon allPort

1897-1967

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LIFE

• Born: November 11, 1897, Montezuma, Indiana, U.S. • Youngest in four sons • Performed military duties (WW1) • Graduated at Harvard University (1919) • Gained his doctorate in Psychology in Harvard University (1922) • Taught the 1st course in personality studies in Harvard (1924) • American Psychologist • Died: October 9, 1967, Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 70 (lung cancer)

WORKS

• Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston; 1937. • The Individual and His Religion • The Nature of Prejudice • Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. • Pattern and Growth in Personality.

PORTFOLIO

Psychoanalysis & Behaviorism

Psychoanalysis

• Offered an in depth approach, arguing for the existence of ab unknowable unconscious that controls personality.

(Had a fundamental problem with both of these approach)

Behaviorism

• Being interested only in how we acquire (or learn) our behavior.

theory of personality

2 different approaches to the study of personality

Nomothetic

• Aims to be as objective and scientific as possible and it is exemplified in the study of human intelligence.

Idiographic

• Studies in direct opposition in the nomothetic method, it studies one individual in breadth and depth, taking into account in their biography, personality traits, and their relationships.

THE Lexical Hypothesis

(Allport and Odbert’s Lexical Hypothesis)

• Rested on the idea that the most important and relevant personality differences are reflected by language; they identified 18,000 personality-describing words in English.

The lexical hypothesis

Three Categories of Traits

• Cardinal Traits

•Common Traits

• Secondary Traits

cardinal TraITS

• “The ruling passion”, such as altruism. Not everyone has cardinal traits and those that do are often famous of it.

comMON tRAITS

• Such as honesty or aggression, In the absence of cardinal traits, personality is shaped by these traits.

sECONDARY TRAITS

• Such as being nervous when meeting strangers or laughing at inappropriate moments. These traits are evoked by specific situation.

tRAITS AND bEHAVIOR

• Allport was interested in how traits are forge in a person and their connection with behavior. He suggested that a combination of internal and external forces influence how we behave.

Internal forces or "Genotypes"

External forces or "Phenotypes"

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gENOTYPES

iNTERNAL fORCES

• Govern how we retain information and use it to interact with external world.

EXTERNAL FORCES

PHENOTYPES

• Determines the way individuals accept their surroundings and how they allow others to influence their behavior.

THANK YOU!

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