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Allport and Skinner

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Allport and Skinner
ALLPORT 'S EARLY YEARS
Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, in 1897, the youngest of four brothers. As a shy boy, he was teased and lived an isolated childhood. (Oloson/Sihed p191) His father was a country doctor, and this meant that his father 's patients were always in the house. Everyone in his house worked hard. His early life seemed to be pleasant and uneventful. What is known about his life is Allport received his PH.D. in Psychology in 1922 from Harvard, following in the foot steps of his brother Floyd, who became an important social psychologists. (Allport 67) In the research collected, all that was mentioned was: When he was 22 he traveled to Vienna. He had arranged to meet with Sigmund Freud. There was at first silence, finally Gordon blurted out an observation he had made on his way to meet Freud. He mentioned that he had seen a little boy on the bus that was very upset at having to sit where a dirty old man had sat previously. Gordon thought that this child had learned this from his mother, a very neat and apparently a domineering type. Freud, instead of taking it as a simple observation, took it to be an expression of some deep, unconscious process in Gordon 's mind, and said "And was that little boy you? (Boeree 65) This experience led him to his theory, it made him realize that psychology sometimes digs too deep, in the same way that he had realized earlier that "Behaviorism often doesn 't dig deeply enough". His career was spent developing his theory, examining social issues like prejudice, and developing personality tests.
ALLPORT 'S THEORY Allport, a trait theorist, was against opportunistic functioning. His belief of this term was characterized as reactive, past-oriented, and of course biological. He felt it was unimportant when trying to understand most human behavior. He believed most human behavior, was motivated by functioning in a manner expressive of the self – which he called propriate functioning.



Cited: Allport, G. W. (1967) Autobiography. In E.G. Boring G. Lindzey (Eds), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol 5, pp 1-25). Ney your:Appelton-Century- Crafts. Allport GW (1937) personality: A psychological Interpretation: New York Henry Hott An Introduction to Theories of Personality 5th edition B.R. Hergen bahn and Mathew H". Oloson – Sihed (pp 271-301, 189-201). Boree, George C Dr. (1904-1990)B.F. Skinner Biography http://www.ship.edu/~cgboree/skinner.htm) pg 1-6 Boree, George C Dr. (1897-1967) Gordon Allport Biography http://www.ship.edu/~cgboree/allport.htm) pg 1-6 McAdams, D. P (1996). Personality, Modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary framework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295-321. McAdams, D.P. (1999). Personal narratives and the life story. In L.A. Pervin & O.P. John (Eds.) Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, (pp. 478-500). New York: Guilford. Bjork D.W. (1997) Allport: A Life in Washington D.C. American psychological association Stevenson, Harold W. Behaviorism and Instructional Technology "Online" http:1129.7.160115/inst5931/behaviorism.html pg 1-6 Skinner, G. W. (1967) Autobiography. In E.G. Boring G. Lindzey (Eds), A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol 5, pp 387-413). New York:Appelton-Century-

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    Gordon Allport was the first American-born personality theorist and hailed from the state of Indiana, Montezuma. He was born on 11 November 1897 and died a month before his 70th birthday (9 October 1967) due to lung cancer. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts, (majoring in Economics and Philosophy), Masters of Art in 1921 and a PhD (all three at Harvard University) at the tender age of 24. After he completed his degree, he took a gap year and taught English and Sociology at a university in Istanbul, Turkey. Gordon was lucky to have encountered an experience with Sigmund Freud for when he was returning back to the U.S to start off fellowship to do graduate work in psychology at Harvard, he stopped off at Vienna to visit one of his brothers and wrote to Freud (who was situated there) a letter asking for permission to visit him. The permission was granted and he explained there encounter as an unsuccessful on. He told Freud a story of whereby he met a young boy in a tram car ride who had a dirt phobia and he frantically told his mother not to let a dirty man sit next to him. Freud then went on to insinuate that the little boy was Allport and this caused a misunderstanding between them. This event lead to Allport having to probe further into psychology and the elements of personality because he felt that depth psychology overlooked the important truths. He developed a theory that ignored the unconscious and that was not scientifically-based thus, stating that in order for one to learn about an individual, they have to be studied and not base the…

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