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:
Factors
Meaning/ Description
(inventive / curious vs.  Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and
consistent / cautious) variety of experience. Correlated with activity in the dorsolateral
Openness prefrontal cortex. Considered primarily a cognitive trait.

(efficient / organized vs.  A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim

easy-going / careless) for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior. Associated
Conscientiousness with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

(outgoing / energetic vs.  Energy, positive emotions, surgency, the tendency to

shy / reserved). seek stimulation in the company of others, and projecting one’s
Extraversion personality outward. Opposite of extroversion is introversion.
Extroversion is associated with various regions of the prefrontal cortex
and the amygdala.
(friendly /  Tendency to be compassionate  and cooperative rather
compassionate vs. than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
Agreeableness competitive / outspoken)

(outgoing / energetic vs.  A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such

shy / reserved) as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability. Neuroticism has a been
Neuroticism 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.