Overview

• More than any other personality theorist, Gordon Allport emphasized the uniqueness of the individual.
• Consistent with Allport’s emphasis on each person’s uniqueness was his willingness to study in depth a single individual.
• • Allport’s concept of science, which deals with various methods of gathering data on patterns of behavior within a single individual.
  • methods that gather data on a single individual

  Morphogenic Science
• • An approach to the study of personality that is based on general laws or principles
  • methods that gather data on groups of people.

  Nomothetic
• Allport argued against particularism, or theories that emphasize a single aspect of personality
• To Allport, a broad, comprehensive theory is preferable to a narrow, specific theory even if it does not generate as many testable hypotheses.