Gordon Allport

Traits

• Allport also approached the discovery of traits from a behavioral perspective
• A person’s behavior can be described using the language of traits.
• Someone who is quiet and appears shy may be called an introvert
• Watching people’s behavior we can find their “expressive traits”
• Expressive traits are those traits “expressed” by the person in their behaviors of daily life.
• When studying an individual we can discover their expressive traits by watching the person’s style of living or tempo of their behavior.

Traits

• Another way to discover the traits of an individual is to review their verbal and written expressions.
• To Allport this method is acceptable to gather information for therapy treatment
• Finally a trait can be determined by giving individuals personality tests.
• This is a nomothetic approach which determines, through large samples, what the averages are and compares a person against the average.
• Studies of values show that values can change over time and within specific environments but that they are overall very stable.

Traits

• Other studies of values and traits show that the observable (phenotypical) behaviors do not always portray the underlying (genotypical) motives.
• Motives may be displayed differently.
• Some motives may not surface to be observed.
• Allport distrusted the “methodological” approach to studying personality and particularly did not trust factor analysis.
• He said we should not abandon the data but it is the theory and common sense (not the data) which should guide us.
• Too much emphasis on data could be called methidolatry.
• Remember that Allport came at personality from the individual perspective and the individual gets lost in the data.