Gordon Allport’s TraitTheory

BORROMEO, Danica Jylle

CAINGAT, Dicky John

CRISTOBAL, Princess

FERNANDEZ, Amielle Liberty

SALAZAR, Dale Joseph

1H4

* BIOGRAPHY OF GORDON ALLPORT *

Gordon Allpport’s Early Life:

Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, on November 11, 1897, the youngest of four sons of John Edwards and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport. His early education was in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio, where his family moved when he was six years old.  A shy and studious boy, he was teased quite a bit and lived a fairly isolated childhood; the young Allport was the subject of high-school mockery due to a birth defect that left him with only eight toes.

His mother was a former school teacher who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion. He grew up not only with the Protestant religion, but also the Protestant work ethic, which dominated his home life. His father was a country doctor, which meant that Gordon grew up with his father’s patients and nurses and all the paraphernalia of a miniature hospital. Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training". Everyone worked hard.  His early life was otherwise fairly pleasant and uneventful.

Allport operated his own printing business during his teen years and served as the editor of his high school newspaper. In 1915, Allport graduated second in his class at Glenville High School at the age of eighteen. He earned a scholarship to Harvard College in 1919, where one of his older brothers, Floyd Henry Allport, was working on a Ph.D. in Psychology.

Meeting Sigmund Freud:

In an essay entitled Pattern and Growth in Personality, Gordon Allport recounted his experience of meeting psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. In 1922, Allport travelled to Vienna, Austria to meet the famous psychoanalyst. After entering Freud's office, he sat down and told a story about a young boy he had seen on the train during his travels to Vienna. The boy, Allport explained, was afraid of getting dirty and refused to sit where a dirty-looking man had previously sat. Allport theorized that the child had acquired the behavior from his mother, who appeared to be very domineering.

Freud studied Allport for a moment and then asked, "And was that little boy you?"

Allport viewed the experience as an attempt by Freud to turn a simple observation into an analysis of Allport's supposed unconscious memory of his own childhood. The experience would later serve as a reminder that psychoanalysis tended to dig too deeply.

Behaviorism, Allport suggested, did not dig deeply enough. Instead, Allport chose to reject both psychoanalysis and behaviorism and embraced his own unique theory of personality.

Allport’s Career: 

He traveled to Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, where he taught Economics and Philosophy for a year, before returning to Harvard to pursue his Ph.D. in Psychology on fellowship in 1920 (in addition to German, Allport remained partially fluent in modern Greek throughout his life). His first publication, "Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement" in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport, who became an important social psychologist. Allport earned his Master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert S. Langfeld, and then his Ph.D. in 1922 working with Hugo Münsterberg. Harvard then awarded Allport a coveted Sheldon Traveling Fellowship--"a second intellectual dawn," as he later described it. He spent the first Sheldon year studying with the new Gestalt School--which fascinated him--in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany; and then the second year at Cambridge University, England.

Then Allport returned to Harvard as an instructor in Psychology from 1924 to 1926. He began teaching his course "Personality: It's Psychological and Social Aspects" in 1924; it was probably the first course in Personality ever taught in the U.S. During this time, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, who was a clinical psychologist, and they had one child, a boy, who later became a pediatrician.  After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years, Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career. His work as a teacher also had a profound effect on some of his students, which included Stanley Milgram, Jerome S. Bruner, Leo Postman, Thomas Pettigrew and Anthony Greenwald. He died on October 9, 1967, in Cambridge, Massachusetts of lung cancer. He was 70 years old.

*TRAIT THEORY*

In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over time, differ among individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing whereas others are shy), and influence behavior.

Gordon Allport was an early pioneer in the study of traits, which he sometimes referred to as dispositions. He is known as a "trait" psychologist. One of his early projects was to go through the dictionary and locate every term that he thought could describe a person. This is known as the "lexical hypothesis." From this, he developed a list of 4500 trait like words. He organized these into three levels of traits.

Cardinal Trait

These are traits that dominate an individual’s whole life, often to the point that the person becomes known specifically for these traits. People with such personalities often become so known for these traits that their names are often synonymous with these qualities. Consider the origin and meaning of the following descriptive terms: Freudian, Machiavellian, narcissism, Don Juan, Christ-like, etc. Allport suggested that cardinal traits are rare and tend to develop later in life.

Central Trait 

These are the general characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality. These central traits, while not as dominating as cardinal traits, are the major characteristics you might use to describe another person. Terms such asintelligent, honest, shy and anxious are considered central traits.

Secondary Trait 

These are characteristics seen and often appear only in certain situations or under specific circumstances (such as particular likes or dislikes that a very close friend may know). They must be included to provide a complete picture of human complexity. Some examples would be getting anxious when speaking to a group or impatient while waiting in line.

*PERSONALITY*

Almost everyday we describe and assess the personalities of the people around us. Whether we realize it or not, these daily musings on how and why people behave as they do are similar to what personality psychologists do.

While our informal assessments of personality tend to focus more on individuals, personality psychologists instead use conceptions of personality that can apply to everyone. Personality research has led to the development of a number of theories that help explain how and why certain personality traits develop.

In 1937, psychologist Gordon Allport set out to answer the question, "What is personality?" Rather than start with his own assumptions, he decided to look at how other people used the word. He searched through magazines, newspapers, and books, until he had documented every way people used the term personality or the word person. He claimed to find 50 different definitions. To reach this impressive number Allport listed any usage of the word, such as the exclamation, "Oh that person!"

Omnibus Definition

Allport said that when he sorted the serious definitions of personality into categories, he found three different types. The first type of definition might be called sweeping, all-purpose definitions. Allport called them omnibus definitions. A sweeping, all-purpose definition is one that attempts to cover all influences or factors that might affect personality. For example, we might say:

"Personality is everything that makes you an individual. It is the integration and interaction of your genetic inheritance, your experience, and your ways of relating the two."

Allport said this type of definition was useless. It covered all the possibilities, but it did not provide any useful guidance. It did not tell how to distinguish different personalities.

Trait Approach

A second approach to define personality is the trait approach. This can be used, among other ways, to draw up profiles of individual people. Profiling requires that people be rated or described using a series of traits or dimensions. Allport called this the integrative/ configurational approach because overall personality would be seen as an integration or configuration of these different traits or dimensions.

What does a trait theory describe?

A trait is a consistent psychological, behavioral, or physical characteristic such as shyness, level of physical activity, or shape of the ear. If you rate a person on a variety of traits, the result is a profile of the person. Allport became a leading trait theorist in the 1940s and 1950s. Trait approaches enjoyed a revival of interest in the late 20th Century.

Systems Approach

A third approach to defining personality is the systems approach (what Allport called the hierarchical approach) in which one attempts to describe different components and levels of control in the personality system.

What are three widely agreed-upon components?

Most psychologists implicitly (that is, without saying so) seem to endorse a simple set of assumptions about the way personality is put together in humans. Most distinguish between three different components or layers in personality: the persona, the self, and the unconscious processes.

Persona

First, people use a mask or external layer—perhaps several of them, for different occasions. This is the personality an individual shows the world. The word persona is used to describe this layer. Persona is also the name used in ancient Greece for theatrical masks worn by actors to indicate emotion. People are usually aware that the appearance they put on is distinct from the underlying true self. Different masks or roles can be assumed, depending upon the context—a person does not necessarily act the same way in class, at a party, or at home. So it is normal to have a variety of masks or personas for different social settings.

Personal Identity

The second level of personality, behind the mask, is the private self or ego. This can also be called the personal identity. To most people, this is the personality. It is the part that switches around in dissociative identity disorder (DID) or "multiple personality." Whatever you call it (me, myself, I, ego, identity) this part of personality dominates conscious experience. It is closely tied to our memory for personal episodes in our lives. It seems to have something to do with controlling other mental processes and is often called an executive process, because it sets up plans to be executed.

Unconscious Processes

The third component, distinct from both the persona and the conscious self, is the realm of unconscious processes in the mind. Unconscious processes include everything not normally accessible to conscious awareness. As we will see, several of the early personality theories (those of Freud and Jung) emphasized unconscious processes. Modern cognitive psychologists are aware of many different unconscious processes, and they now regard the executive process as a small part of the total cognitive system.

Reviewing the three main approaches to defining personality, we find that one approach (the omnibus approach) is almost useless. One approach (the hierarchical or systems approach) is so universally agreed-upon that it is almost taken for granted. That leaves only one—the approach that Allport called integrative/configurational but which might be more simply called the trait approach—as a basis for research.

Personality Traits

In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors (or Five Factor Model; FFM) of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality.

The Big five factors are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extra- version, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN). The Neuroticism factor is sometimes referred to as Emotional Stability. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret the Openness factor, which is sometimes called "Intellect". Each factor consists of a cluster of more specific traits that correlate together. 

The Big Five factors and their constituent traits can be summarized as follows:

FactorsMeaning/ Description

Openness

(inventive / curious

vs. consistent /

cautious)

Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual

ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience. Correlated

with activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

Considered primarily a cognitive trait.

Conscientiousn

ess

(efficient /

organized vs. easy-

going / careless)

A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim

for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous

behavior. Associated with the dorsolateral prefrontal

cortex.

Extraversion

(outgoing /

energetic vs. shy /

reserved).

Energy, positive emotions, surgency, the tendency to

seek stimulation in the company of others, and

projecting one’s personality outward. Opposite of

extroversion is introversion. Extroversion is associated

with various regions of the prefrontal cortex and the

amygdala.

Agreeableness

(friendly /

compassionate vs.

competitive /

outspoken)

Tendency to be compassionate  and cooperative rather

than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

Neuroticism

(outgoing /

energetic vs. shy /

reserved)

A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily,

such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

Neuroticism has a been linked to serotonin transporter

(5-HTT) binding sites in the thalamus: as well as activity

in the insular cortex.

Samples of the Big Five Factors of Personality Traits

Openness

* I have a rich vocabulary.* I have a vivid imagination.* I have excellent ideas.* I use difficult words.* I am not interested in

abstractions. * I do not have a good imagination.

Conscientiousness

* I am always prepared.* I follow a schedule.* I get chores done right away.* I pay attention to details.* I leave my belongings around. * I often forget to put things back

in their proper place.

Extraversion Items

* I am the life of the party.* I don't mind being the center of

attention.* I feel comfortable around people.* I am quiet around strangers.

(reversed)* I don't like to draw attention to

myself. * I don't talk a lot. (reversed)

Agreeableness

* I am interested in people.* I feel others' feelings* I make people feel at ease.* I sympathize with others’

feelings.* I am not interested in other

people’s problems.* I insult people.

Neuroticism

* I am easily disturbed.* I change my mood a lot.* I get irritated easily.* I have frequent mood swings.* I often feel blue.* I seldom feel blue.