allport

• Gordon Allport emphasized the uniqueness of the individual and objected to trait and factor theories that tend to reduce individual behaviors to common traits.
• Gordon Allport was born in Indiana in 1897, the son of a physician and former school teacher.
• Gordon Allport received an undergraduate degree in philosophy and economics and a PhD from Harvard.
• Gordon Allport spent 2 years studying under some of the great German psychologists, but he returned from Europe to teach at Harvard.
• Gordon Allport taught the first college course on personality in the United States, in 1924.
• Gordon Allport defined personality as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine [the person's] behavior and thought."
• Gordon Allport's definition of personality includes both physical and psychological properties and both stability and flexibility.
• Gordon Allport's definition of personality states that it is both something and it does something, including both behavior and thinking.
• Gordon Allport's definition of personality emphasizes that it is a dynamic organization, constantly evolving and changing in motivation and self-regulation.
• Gordon Allport's definition of personality highlights the importance of both psychological and physical aspects of personality.
• Gordon Allport's definition of personality states that it determines the behavior and thought of the individual.
• Allport distinguished traits from habits in that habits are narrower than traits.
• Common traits permit inter-individual comparisons and are hypothetical constructs that permit us to compare individuals within a given culture.
• Personal dispositions are unusual to the individual and interpersonal comparisons are inappropriate.
• Unifying philosophy of life: have a clear view of the purpose of life (not necessarily religious)
• A personal disposition or PD, is defined as “a 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.”
• Genotypical personal dispositions are of much the deeper nature and are the ones with which the psychoanalyst wishes to deal.
• Structure of Personality: Allport, the most important structures of personality are those that permit description of the individual in terms of individual characteristics, and he called these individual structures personal dispositions.
• Central dispositions are the five to ten traits that most influence a person’s behavior.
• Personal Dispositions: Allport distinguished between common traits, which are general characteristics held in common by many people, and personal dispositions, which are peculiar to the individual.
• Cardinal dispositions is a single trait which dominates the personality and behavior of a person.
• Allport acknowledged that behavior is influenced by a variety of environmental factors, and that it is virtually impossible to use traits to predict specific behaviors.
• Secondary dispositions are those traits that are not in the central traits but influenced our behavior in a smaller role.
• Insight & humor: no need to attribute their own mistakes and weakness to others; can laugh at themselves; see themselves objectively
• Phenotypical personal dispositions attempt to describe behavior in terms of the present or ongoing behavior.
• Trait is different from attitudes, in that the latter have specific referents and are either favorable or unfavorable.
• All characteristics that are "peculiarly mine" belong to the proprium.
• Allport insisted that an adequate theory of motivation must consider the notion that motives change as people mature and also that people are motivated by present drives and wants.
• Peripheral motives are those that reduce a need.
• Allport's proactive approach emphasized the idea that people often seek additional tension and that they purposefully act on their environment in a way that fosters growth toward psychological health.
• Proprium refers to those behaviors and characteristics that people regard as warm, central, and important in their lives.
• Motivational and Stylistic Dispositions are personal dispositions that initiate action and guide behavior respectively.
• Propriate strivings seek to maintain tension and disequilibrium.
• Proprium has become uniquely an Allport word, meaning “the aspects of personality which together seem singularly one’s own.” These aspects taken together make for individuality and inward unity.
• The proprium includes all the collected aspects of an individual’s personality that are uniquely his own.
• The proprium does not develop automatically, nor does it develop very quickly.
• Proprium suggests the core of one's personhood (values/conscience).
• The proprium includes bodily sense, rational thinking, propriate striving, and the concepts of self-image, self-identity, self-extension, and self-esteem.
• Not all behaviors are functionally autonomous: biological drives, reflex actions, physique, intelligence, temperament, habits in the process of being formed, patterns of behavior that require primary reinforcement, sublimations that can be tied to childhood sexual desires, and some neurotic or pathological symptoms.
• A behavior is functionally autonomous to the extent that it seeks new goals, as when a need turns into an interest.