Allport Theory Of Personality
Gordon Allport (1897 – 1967) was a highly respected and influential American scholar in the field of psychology. He came from a family of workers who had the values of health and education very much at heart, which prompted him to delve into concepts such as motivation, impulses and personality. Below we will talk about the personality theory formulated by this scholar.
After graduating from Harvard, Allport traveled to Vienna where he met Sigmund Freud and then decided to embrace psychology and start his career. Back at Harvard, he obtained his doctorate in psychology and in the first half of the twentieth century he was already known for his contributions, including his theory of personality.
According to Allport, personality traits, which he later called personal dispositions, are influenced by childhood experiences, the social environment in which one lives and the interaction of these two dimensions. At the time, there was a widespread belief that past and present forces forged personality. Allport believed that the personality was composed of three traits: cardinal, central and secondary.
Allport knows Freud
Allport reported his encounter with Freud in the autobiographical essay Pattern and Growth in Personality. To break the ice, he said he had met a child on the train to Vienna who was afraid of getting dirty. He didn’t want to sit next to someone who was dirty, despite his mother’s attempts to reassure him. The child probably inherited this phobia from his mother, a very clean and seemingly dominant woman. After studying Allport for a few minutes, Freud asked: “And was that child you?” .
Allport experienced Freud’s attempt to bring this interaction back to an unconscious episode from his childhood. Psychoanalysis, in fact, tends to deepen the past and the unconscious, without dwelling on the most important, conscious and immediate aspects of the experience.
Although Allport never denied the importance of unconscious and historical variables on certain behaviors, his work emphasizes conscious or conscious motivations related to the present context.
Allport’s Theory of Personality
In 1936 Gordon Allport discovered that a single English dictionary contained more than 4000 words to describe different personality traits. His theory distinguishes three personality traits:
Cardinal traits
Some historical figures who would have proven to have a strong cardinal trait are Abraham Lincoln for his honesty, the Marquis de Sade for his sadism and Joan of Arc for her heroic self-service. People with such a personality are known precisely for these cardinal traits, so much so that their names are associated with the qualities they embody. According to Allport, cardinal traits are rare and tend to develop over the years.
When present, the cardinal traits give shape to the person, to the perception that this person has of himself, to his emotional dimension, to his attitudes and behaviors to the point of establishing his own historical identification on the basis of these characteristics.
Central traits
The core traits are the general characteristics that form the basis of personality. Although they are not as dominant as the cardinal ones, they are the main attributes that can be used to describe a person. They are present and important traits, but absolutely not dominant.
According to Allport’s theory of personality, each person has 5 to 10 core traits, present at different levels. Let’s talk about common traits, such as intelligence, shyness or honesty, that affect most of a person’s behaviors.
Secondary traits
Secondary traits are those elements that relate to attitudes or preferences, i.e. dispositions that are significantly less generalized and less relevant. They often occur only in certain specific situations or circumstances.
For example, a person who has assertiveness as a cardinal trait may show signs of submission when stopped by the police for speeding. It is just a situational trait that may or may not manifest itself based on other interpersonal encounters.
According to Allport, these secondary traits are difficult to identify because they are determined by a restricted set of stimuli and, in turn, emit a restricted set of equivalent responses.
Allport’s research on personality traits
The theory of personality traits is not based directly on empirical research and this is its Achilles heel. The psychologist actually published few studies to support his theory. However, together with his brother, the social psychologist Floyd Allport, he examined 55 college students and concluded that personality traits were identifiable and measurable in most individuals.
The main goal of this analysis was to develop a personality measure scale.
Another curious initiative by Gordon Allport led him to analyze a series of letters written by a certain Jenny Gove Masterson. In the last 11 years of her life, the woman wrote 301 letters to a married man. Allport obtained these letters and studied them. He asked 36 people to characterize Jenny based on the personality traits they were able to identify.
His study concluded that traits are not independent. Furthermore, at a given moment, the behaviors that motivate certain traits can conflict, emerging on each other as in a hierarchy.
Although various experts agree that it is possible to describe individuals based on their personality traits, the number of basic traits that shape human personality has not yet been established and the debate is still open.
For example, Raymond Cattell reduced the number of observable traits from 4000 to 171 and then to 16, combining certain characteristics and eliminating the most unique or difficult to define traits. The British psychologist Hans Eysenck, on the other hand, has developed a personality model based on only three traits.
However, Allport’s research and contributions regarding personality theory are considered pioneering works in the field of personality and psychology in general. He relied on statistical or objective data rather than his personal experience. There was no lack of criticism of his theory of personality, there are those who, in fact, argue that it does not deepen the emotional state of a person or his temporary behavior.
