• Helped bring personality into the mainstream, and he formulated a theory of personality development in which traits play a prominent role
• Allport challenged Freud’s psychoanalysis on several points
  • He did not accept the notion that unconscious forces dominate the personality of normal mature adults

• The unconscious is important only in the behavior of neurotic or disturbed people
• We are not prisoners of childhood conflicts and past experiences, as Freud believed
• Instead, we are guided more by the present and by our view of the future

• Allport opposed collecting data from abnormal personalities
  • Whereas Freud saw a continuum between the normal and abnormal, Allport saw a clear distinction
  • To Allport, the abnormal personality functioned at an infantile level

• He emphasis on the uniqueness of personality as defined by each person’s traits
• He opposed the traditional scientific emphasis on forming general constructs or laws to be applied universally
• He argued that personality is not general or universal but is particular and specific to the individual

• “..Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine…characteristic behavior and thought”
• By dynamic organization, Allport means that although personality is constantly changing and growing, the growth is organized, not random

• Psychophysical means that personality is composed of both mind and body functioning together as a unit
  • It is neither all mental nor all biological
• By determine, Allport means that all facets of personality activate or direct specific behaviors and thoughts
  • The phrase characteristic behavior and thought means that everything we think and do is typical of us

• Personality reflects both our heredity and our environment
  • Heredity provides the personality with raw materials, such as physique, intelligence, and temperament, that may then be shaped, expanded, or limited by the conditions of our environment
  • Allport invokes both personal and situational variables to indicate the importance of both genetics and learning

• A predispositions to respond, in the same or a similar manner, to different kinds of stimuli
  • Traits are consistent and enduring ways of reacting to our environment
• Personality traits are real and exist within each of us
  • They are not theoretical constructs or labels made up to account for behavior

• Traits determine or cause behavior
• Traits can be demonstrated empirically
  • By observing behavior over time, we can infer the existence of traits in the consistency of a person’s responses to the same or similar stimuli
• Traits vary with the situation
  • e.g. person may display the trait of neatness in one situation and the trait of disorderliness in another situation.

• Traits are interrelated; they may overlap, even though they represent different characteristics
  • e.g. aggressiveness and hostility are distinct but related traits and are frequently observed to occur together in a person’s behavior

• Allport proposed two types of traits: individual and common
  • Individual traits are unique to a person and define his or her character
  • Common traits are shared by a number of people, such as the members of a culture
  • This demonstrates that common traits are subject to social, environmental, and cultural influences

• Allport relabeled common traits as traits and individual traits as personal dispositions
• Our personal dispositions do not all have the same intensity or significance.
• They may be cardinal traits, central traits, or secondary traits

• A cardinal trait is so pervasive and influential that it touches almost every aspect of a person’s life
  • Allport described it as a ruling passion, a powerful force that dominates behavior
  • Allport offered the examples of sadism and chauvinism
  • Not everyone has a ruling passion, and those who do may not display it in every situation

• Everyone has a few central traits, some 5 to 10 themes that best describe our behavior
  • Allport’s examples are aggressiveness, self-pity, and cynicism
  • These are the kinds of characteristics we would mention when discussing a friend’s personality or writing a letter of recommendation

• The least influential individual traits are the secondary traits, which appear much less consistently than cardinal and central traits
  • Secondary traits may be so weak that only a close friend would notice evidence of them
  • They may include, for example, a minor preference for a particular type of music or for a certain food

• Cognitive processes, that is, our conscious plans and intentions, are a vital aspect of our personality
• Functional autonomy of motives is the idea the motives of emotionally healthy adults are not connected to the prior experiences in which they initially appeared
  • Forces that motivated us early in life become autonomous, or independent, of their original circumstances

• Perseverative functional autonomy is repetitive physical actions such as habitual ways of performing some routine, everyday task
  • The behaviors continue or persevere on their own without any external reward
  • The actions once served a purpose but they no longer do and are at too basic and low a level to be considered an integral part of personality

• Propriate functional autonomy is more important than perseverative functional autonomy and is essential to understanding adult motivation
  • The word propriate derives from proprium, Allport’s term for the ego or self

• The healthy personality changes and grows from being a biologically dominated organism in infancy to a mature psychological organism in adulthood
• Our motivations become separated from childhood and are oriented toward the future

• Mature adults extend their sense of self to people and activities beyond the self
• Mature adults relate warmly to other people, exhibiting intimacy, compassion, and tolerance
• Mature adult’s high degree of self-acceptance helps them to achieve emotional security

• Mature adults hold a realistic perception of life, develop personal skills, and make a commitment to some type of work
• Mature adults have a sense of humor and self-objectification (an understanding of or insight into the self)
• Mature adults subscribe to a unifying philosophy of life, which is responsible for directing the personality toward future goals

• Allport conducted considerable research on what he called expressive behavior, described as behavior that expresses our personality traits
  • Expressive behavior is spontaneous and reflects basic aspects of the personality
  • In contrast to coping behavior, expressive behavior is difficult to change, has no specific purpose, and is usually displayed without our awareness

• He also identified coping behavior, which is oriented toward a specific purpose and is consciously planned and carried out
  • Coping behavior is determined by needs inspired by the situation and is ordinarily directed toward bringing about some change in our environment

• Personality is so complex that to evaluate it we must employ many techniques. He listed 11 major methods, from tests and scales to projective techniques
• BUT Allport relied heavily on the personal-document technique

That involves examining diaries, autobiographies, letters, literary compositions, and other samples of a person’s written or spoken records to determine the number and kinds of personality traits