Gordon Allport Flashcards
Challenges to Freud
- Rejected roll of unconscious in healthy adults (only important for neurotic and disturbed)
- Emotionally healthy = rational & conscious
- Guided more by present/future than past
- opposed collecting data from abnormal personalities
Life of Allport
- Isolated and rejected by 3 brothers & peers
- Inferiority feelings - strive to excel
- Competition with older brother (followed him to Harvard - psych)
- Threatened his individuality, to refute identification with brother he declared adult motives separate from childhood - functional autonomy
Nature of Personality
Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine behaviour and thought
Dynamic Organization
Growth of personality is organized not random
Psychophysical
Mind and body functioning together as a unit, neither all mental nor all biological
Heredity and Environment
Heredity provides raw materials, is shaped by environmental conditions
Genetics and learning interact to form personality
Genetic variability = uniqueness
Two Personalities
Childhood: primitive biological urges
Adulthood: psychological
Discrete discontinuous nature of personality
Personality Traits
Predisposition to respond in similar manner to different stimuli - consistent and enduring ways of reacting
Characteristics
- Real & existent w/in each person
- Determine of cause behaviour (interact w environment to produce behaviour)
- can be demonstrated empirically, observing
- Interrelated with other traits
- Vary with situation
Personal Dispositions
Relabeled common traits as traits and individuals traits as personal dispositions
-3 kinds
Cardinal Traits
- Pervasive and powerful traits
- A ruling passion
- Not everyone
Secondary Traits
- Least important
- Displayed inconspicuously and inconsistently
- Only a close person would notice
Central Traits
- Outstanding traits
- Describe ones behaviour
- 5 to 10 themes
Functional Autonomy of Motives
Motives in normal, mature adults are independent of childhood
- adults motives cannot be understood by exploring childhood, but by investigating why people do what they do now
Preservative Functional Autonomy
- Level of FA that relates to low level & routine behaviours
- behaviours continue on their own without external rewards
- routines, habits, addictions
Proprium
- ego of self
- unique
- ego determines which motives are maintained or discarded
- retain motives that enhance self esteem
- direct relationship w interests and abilities
Organizing Process Maintains Self Image
- Determines how we perceive the world (remember, direct thoughts)
- Choose from mass of environmental stimuli relevances to interests & values
- 3 principles
Organizing Energy Level
How we acquire new motives out of necessity to help consume excess energy
Mastery and Competence
Motivation to perform better & more efficient, master new skills and increase competency
Propriate Patterning
Striving for consistency and integration of the personality
We organize our perceptual and cognitive processes around the see, keeping what enhances self image
Development of the Proprium
- Aspects that unite attitudes, perceptions and intentions
- Before proprium, infants experience no self consciousness
- automatic and reflective reactions w no ego
- Parent child reactions are important - determines positive growth (mature) or frustrated growth (neurotic)
Healthy Adult Personality
Biologically dominated in infancy to mature psychological organism
-Motivation separated from childhood, oriented to future self
Personal Document Technique
Examine diaries, autobiographies, letters, etc,
determine the number and kind of traits
Identified traits and reduced them to common categories
-words: expressing anger, rage, etc. can be coded as constituting the trait of aggression
Study of Values
Personal values are basis of unifying philosophy of life
Everyone posses some of each value, 1-2 will be prominent
Theoretical values: truth, empirical, intellectual rational
Economic: useful, practical
Aesthetic: artistic experiences, form, harmony, grace
Social: human relationships, altruism, philanthropy
Criticism
- Little research to test propositions
- Terms difficult to study
- FA: not clear how an original motive becomes autonomous
- difficult to generalize
