Gordon Allport (1897-1967) was one of the very first American psychologists who studied personality traits through a humanistic approach. He focused on the conscious instead of the unconcious, and that personality is guided more so by the present and future rather than the past. Allport defined personality as "the dynamic orginizaion within the individual of thoes psychophysical systems that determine characterictics behavior and thought" (Allport, 1937). This paper will go into further detail of Allport 's concepts and theories. Articles including some of Allport 's own case studies and writings were used for this paper. There is also information retrieved through articles of study on Gordon Allport 's life and his work. Some questioned …show more content…
"It gave me a feeling of compentence, to offset a generalized inferiority feeling."(Allport, 1967, pp.5-7). Allport was also strongly influenced by his religious family background and often had an eager sense of philosophical questing and religious answers. He grew up in a household of three older brothers. His mother was a teacher and his farther was a saleman who wanted to be a doctor. Allport 's mother had devout religous beliefs and practices that dominated the house. There was no smoking, deinking, dancing, or even card playing allowed in his own home. Also no family member was allowed to wear bright colored or distinctive clothing and jewlery of any kind. Allport wrote that his mother was "on the serve side with a strong sence of right and wrong and quite strict in her moral ideals"(Quoted in Nicholson,2003, p.17). Allport believed that personality was an evolving structure within an individual psychophysical system that determined characteristic behavior and thought. He defined traits as structures within a person that influence behavior and he distinguished between common traits and personal traits, which he later called personal dispositions to clarify uniqueness among each individual. Cardinal traits are powerful and pervasive, whereas central traits central traits are less persuasive. Also secondary traits are less conspicuously and less consistently than other types of traits. Allport 's idea of the proprium, which was termed
Everybody is unique or special in one form or another and each personality has a theory. For many years psychologists have based theories upon individuals and I the writer will compare and contrast three well known psychologists Sigmund Freud, Alfred Alder, and Carl Jung. Sigmund Freud was one of the greatest psychologists in time he Alder and Jung’s theories were very similar but then again very different. Within these theories we will discuss characteristics with which I agree and disagree with, explore the stages of Freud’s theory explaining characteristics of personality using stage components
The current paper will explore the history and future of personality in social psychology, and how the integration of these fields show more similarities than differences.
Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these
Burton, western & Kowaslki (2015) describes Personality as the enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances. In other words it can be defined as differences in characteristics in a person, including their way of thinking, likes, dislikes, sociability, openness, feelings and behaviour, which make them the person they are and differentiates them from others. All these traits when brought together is known to be the personality of that particular person.
Trait theories assume people have many traits that are continuing qualities that individuals have in different amounts. Allport’s theory suggests that there are 3 main traits: central, secondary, and cardinal. A central trait is a characteristic that controls and organizes behavior in various situations. A secondary trait can be described as a preference and is specific to certain situations. A cardinal trait is very general and pervasive. It is so pervasive that an individual is governed by it and it dictates everything a person does.
This essay is about comparing and contrasting two out of the eight personality theories commonly used to decipher one’s personality. Those two are the psychoanalytic perspective and the existential/humanistic perspective. Both perspectives are equally important as they play a major role in understanding personality in different ways and explaining them as well. Freud’s psychoanalysis helps us to understand the individual’s personality from its early years right up to adulthood while existential and humanistic theorists postulate the interpretation that personality changes throughout the lifetime. The contents of this essay include the comparing and contrasting between the structure, concepts, methods, theorists, and strengths
Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from
Simon Birch and his extraordinary experiences clearly represent the five dimensions of a person’s personality, S.P.I.E.S. Through his positive and negative thoughts, experiences and memories, Simon conveys the five dimensions of a personality: social, physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual in a different way than most.
Personality is looked at everyday purposely and accidently. Whether you are judging how your new professor for the semester will be, or if you are studying your best friend for a project, personality is studied abundantly. While there are many ways to define personality, there is not a worldwide definition around. Personality is the unique combination of patterns that influence behavior, thought, motivation, and emotion in a human being (boundless.com). That is one of many ways of defining personality. When examining personality, there are four main approachable theories including: The Psychodynamic Approach, The Trait Approach, The Social-Cognitive Approach, and The Humanistic Approach.
Everybody has his or her own type of personality. We all act in a certain way that makes us who we are. It is believed that our parents, peers and, the environment we grow up in, shape us. Personality is describes as a combination of emotions, attitude, and behavioral patterns of an individual. There is a reason that we are the way we are and there are many theories that go along with that. Different theorist present their own definitions of the word personality based on their own theoretical positions. Which brings us to discussing Carl Jung’s theory of analytical psychology and Harry
Introversion was defined as “withdrawn and often shy, and they tend to focus on themselves, on their own thoughts and feelings” (Jung, 1923) Therefore focusing on this personality trait can help to better understand why people tend to be reserved and withdrawn from everyday life. Carl Jung was the creator of the neopsychoanalytical approach, which focused on psychic energy. While Gordon Allport and Hans Eysenck contributor to the trait theory, focused on biology and individualized traits. Jung, Eysenck and Allport focused on extrovert vs. introvert, yet had completely different ideas of how introversion is seen in everyday life. Personally believeing this trait is one I carry, focusing on completely different approaches will bring light to many explanations of why people act the way they do, including myself. By using both case studies and personal work from the works of Jung, Eysenck, and Allport researching introversion should not be a an issue. Although there is a lot of work to do with introversion, through this research one can get a better overview.
This paper is a comparison of three different viewpoints on the subject of personality. Carl Jung, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers all had very different outlooks on what defined someone’s personality. As an added feature I have included myself as a theorist because my views are also different from the previous mentioned theorists. This paper will also look briefly into the background of each theorist because their views on life began in their childhood. Amazingly you will notice the all had similar backgrounds, but came up with completely different ways of looking at life.
For centuries, philosophers, personality theorists and other thinkers have been trying to answer: what personalities are like, how personalities are developed, why different personalities are developed and how personalities can be changed (Pervin & Cervone, 2013). George A. Kelly, an American psychologist born in 1905 in Kansa, is one of those major contributors in the field of personality psychology (Warren, 1998). In this paper, I am writing to critically review George A. Kelly's perspective on personality. I will first review Kelly's philosophy of
The American psychologist, Gordon Allport (1937) looked at these two major ways to study personality, the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology looks for general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the factor
“We are influenced by our own internal forces, forces of which we are unaware, have feelings towards, or urges we do not quite understand “(Freidman, 2012, p. 17). This is the struggle that personality psychology tries to understand, how and to what extent the unconscious forces plays a role in human behavior. It is believed that people are responsible for their own actions. There is a continuous struggle with personality psychology and the comprehension of and to what extent unconscious forces play in human behavior. “Meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction both are transformed” (Carl Jung 1993, p.57). There are various questions that are asked about the issues in personality psychology such as, “How important are social influences on the self, such as parental deprivation or excessive praise? Is the sense of self merely an inconsequential epiphenomenon or secondary perception arising from other forces that really matter? What is the core of who we are? A second core issue with the studies of personality studies is does each person require a unique approach? “Gordon Allport argued that a key aspect of the study of personality must focus on the individual and thus be idiographic” (p.18). To generalize an individual is a complication in itself because the personality of each person is complex in its own way so how can we generalize? Obtaining an answer to that question is still a dilemma. Allport complained