Gordon Allport: biography of this personality psychologist.

A review of the life and work of Allport, one of the referents of Personality Psychology.

Gordon Allport is widely known in the field of psychology especially for being one of the pioneers and founders of personality theory.

Not conforming to the behaviorist vision of North American psychology nor to the European psychoanalytic one, he chose to combine the best of both perspectives, considering that one should start from an empirical vision but not without interpreting the results of the investigations. His main theory, in which he highlights how he categorizes traits according to their weight in the person, is perhaps the best known of his intellectual legacy.

Let's take a closer look at the life of this American psychologist through this brief biography of Gordon Allport.

Biography of Gordon Allport

Allport has had an active professional life, working for the prestigious Harvard University, as well as making visits abroad and offering great contributions to psychology.

Early years and training

Gordon Willard Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, United States, on November 11, 1897.He was born in Montezuma, Indiana, United States, on November 11, 1897, although his family had to move to the state of Ohio when he was only a few years old. He was the youngest sibling in a family of four children, whose parents were a schoolteacher and a doctor, who had set up his own home clinic.

Thanks to his father's work, Gordon Allport had contact with the nurses and patients of his clinic, in addition to learning some useful facts about medicine, although it was never the career he decided to study. As for his mother, she marked him by offering him her strong Protestant values, which influenced Allport's life in terms of his view of good ethics for a psychologist to follow.

In his youth, the young Allport was a person who, although a hard worker, was characterized by being very reserved and isolated.. During his teenage years he ran his own printing business, in addition to serving as editor of his high school newspaper. As a result of her outstanding commitment to her studies, Allport managed to graduate second in her class in 1915, earning a scholarship to Harvard University. At the same university was his older brother, Floyd Henry, who later became a famous social psychologist. Gordon Allport received his doctorate in psychology from Harvard.

However, young Gordon Allport did not pursue psychology from the outset, opting instead to study philosophy and economics, completing his studies in 1919.finishing them in 1919. Subsequently, he had the opportunity to leave the United States for Istanbul, Turkey, to teach at Robert College in the fields in which he had just graduated.

His first publication, co-authored with his brother, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurements was published in 1921, making him already well known in the field of personality psychology while he was still a doctoral student. Subsequently, he returned to Harvard for a Ph, returned to Harvard for his doctoral degree in psychology in 1922 under the tutelage of Hugo Münsterberg.

Contact with Freud

Once he had received his doctorate, Allport had the opportunity to visit Austria in 1922. While in the Bavarian country, he went to Vienna to pay a visit to one of the most famous psychologists in history: Sigmund Freud. At the psychoanalyst's office, Allport, who was nervous about being in the presence of one of the greats, began to explain a case he had encountered while traveling by train. he had encountered while traveling by train.

Sitting in the vehicle, he had encountered a child with his mother, who was afraid of getting dirty, refusing to sit where a man of not very well-groomed appearance had previously sat. Based on this fact, Allport explained to Freud that he had hypothesized that the boy had acquired this phobia from his mother, who had a domineering appearance.

After hearing the case, Freud stared at Allport thoughtfully, then asked 'and was that child you?'

Professional life and later years

Gordon Allport began working as a professor at the same university where he had received his doctorate in 1924, although he later went to work at Dartmouth, New Hampshire. However, in 1930 he returned to his alma mater where he would remain for the rest of his academic life. While there he exerted great influence on some of his students, such as Stanley Milgram, Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman..

In the years he worked at Harvard University he became a prominent and influential member of the institution, working there until 1967. In 1931 he participated in the committee that was in charge of inaugurating the sociology department of that university.

In 1939 he was he was honored to be elected as president of the American Psychological Association (APA), as well as being (APA), as well as president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In the late 1940s he became one of the editors of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

Gordon Allport died while still a professor at Harvard on October 9, 1967, at the age of 69.

Views on psychology

As a result of his contact with Sigmund Freud, Gordon Allport was able to see how the Austrian psychoanalyst made a simple anecdote seen in an everyday place into an analysis in search of a deep trauma or repression in the American's memory. This visit to Vienna was an important event in Allport's life, since it was a reason to be critical of psychoanalysis. critical of psychoanalysis, but also of behaviorism, as proposed by other great psychologists proposed by other great psychologists such as Burrhus Frederic Skinner.

With respect to psychoanalysis, Allport considered that it tended to delve too deeply into events of mundane life, without even being necessarily related to the patient's life.

In contrast, in relation to behaviorism, which was the dominant view in the United States, Allport thought that it focused too much on the results without contextualizing them, without giving a minimal role to the unconscious processes that could explain the behavior.

On this basis, Allport did not completely reject both views, but rather opted for an eclectic perspective, combining what he believed best combining what he felt was best offered by psychoanalysis and behaviorism.

Personality trait theory

One of Gordon Allport's great contributions to the field of psychology is his study of personality and the explanations behind it. This theory was elaborated by consulting the English dictionary, noting down every word that referred to a personality trait. This laborious task concluded with the finding of about 4,500 words related to personality, categorizing them into three types.categorizing them into three types of traits:

1. Cardinal Traits

Cardinal traits constitute the core of the person, affecting and defining to a great extent his or her wide repertoire of behaviors. Therefore, they are the ones that have the greatest weight in his personality.

Basically, they would be defined in terms of obsessions, they would be defined in terms of the obsessions or passions that the person wishes to achieve, such as, for example, gaining fame, being very rich, having a large family.

2. Central traits

Central traits are sets of characteristics that influence the person's behavior in different contexts.. Among them would be honesty, kindness, sociability, among many others.

3. Secondary traits

Secondary traits are not part of the general personality of the individual, but may appear in certain very specific contexts.but may appear in certain very specific contexts, such as a sentimental breakup or being mugged.

All this set of factors of Allport's theory tries to understand personality as something complex, being each person configured by a series of unique traits.