The Psychology Book (98 page)

personality-describing words in English.

but the “propriate” striving persisted,

and though he welcomed each

In 1936, Allport and his colleague

of the English language available

success, it simply raised his level

H.S. Odbert proposed that individual

at the time, to find 18,000 words

of aspiration. Having sailed the

differences that are most salient

that described personality. They

Northwest Passage, Amundsen

and socially relevant in people’s

narrowed this down to 4,500

embarked upon the project that led

lives eventually become expressed

adjectives that they considered

to his success in reaching the South

through language; and the more

to be observable and stable

Pole. Then, after years of planning

important the difference, the more

personality traits.

and discouragement, he flew over

likely it is to be expressed as a

the North Pole. His commitment

single word. This idea is known as

Cardinal traits

never wavered, and he eventually

the lexical hypothesis. The two

Based on a further analysis of

died attempting to save the life of a

researchers went on to study the

his lexical study, Allport defined

less experienced explorer.

most comprehensive dictionaries

three distinct categories of traits:

cardinal, common, and secondary.

Less fundamental traits

Cardinal traits are those that are

In contrast to cardinal traits,

fundamental to a person, governing

common traits are general

their entire approach to life. Not

characteristics, such as honesty,

everyone has a cardinal trait,

that are found in most people.

according to Allport, but when they

These are the building blocks that

A man can be

do, they may even be famous for

shape our behavior, but they are

said to have a trait;

them; in fact some people are so

less fundamental than cardinal

but he cannot be

famous for them that their name

traits. Common traits, Allport said,

said to have a type.

becomes a byword for that trait,

develop largely in response to

Gordon Allport

giving us terms such as Byronic,

parental influences, and are a result

Calvinistic, and Machiavellian.

of nurture. They are shared among

On a less iconic scale, a person’s

many people within a culture but in

cardinal trait might be something

varying degrees; aggressiveness,

like “a fear of communism,” where

for instance, is a common trait

this is so central and important to

that varies by degrees. According

PSYCHOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE 311

quite another. This is because our

very angry when tickled” or “she

motives today are not continuously

gets nervous on flights.” These

dependent on the past. We may

traits express preferences or

start learning to draw, for instance,

attitudes that are open to change.

to compete in popularity with

In the absence of another person,

another child in class, but

secondary traits might be present

Any theory that

ultimately become more interested

but quite invisible. Added to

regards personality

in perfecting the craft for its own

the common and cardinal traits,

as stable, fixed, or

sake. This means that how we

they provide a complete picture

invariable is wrong.

think and act today is only

of human complexity.

Gordon Allport

indirectly affected by our past.

Functional autonomy is also

Traits and behavior

thought to explain obsessive and

Allport was interested in how traits

compulsive acts and thoughts: they

are forged in a person, and their

may be manifestations of

connection with behavior. He

functionally autonomous traits,

suggested that a combination of

where someone has no idea why

internal and external forces

to Allport, most of us have

he is doing something, but can’t

influence how we behave. Certain

personalities made up of five

stop himself from doing it.

internal forces, which he called

to ten of these traits at a level

Allport’s third category of traits,

“genotypes,” govern how we retain

whereby they have become our

known as secondary traits, exert

information and use it to interact

“outstanding characteristics.”

much less influence on us than

with the external world. At the

Over time, common traits may

cardinal or common traits. They are

same time, external forces, which

achieve “functional autonomy,” by

only seen in certain circumstances,

he named “phenotypes,” determine

which Allport means that although

because they are determined by

the way individuals accept their

we start doing something for one

context or situation. For instance,

surroundings and how they allow

reason, we may carry on doing it for

we might say of someone “he gets

others to influence their behavior. ❯❯

Genotype traits
are internal,

but phenotype traits are

Person in difficulty

Kindness to others

external—they require

stimuli from the outside

world to make them manifest.

Self-sufficiency

Genotype traits

Phenotype traits

Spider

Gluttony

Fear

Personality

Traits

Irritation

Creative thinking

Rude person

312 GORDON ALLPORT

Robinson Crusoe
, Allport concluded,

must always have had many distinctive

personality traits, but some were only

uncovered by new circumstances after

he was shipwrecked and met Friday.

whom she was friendly. Allport used

these letters for his analysis, asking

36 people to characterize Jenny’s

personality traits from her letters.

Eight trait “clusters” encompassing

198 individual traits were relatively

easy to identify, with broad

agreement from all the people

rating the documents. These traits

were: quarrelsome–suspicious;

self-centered; independent–

autonomous; dramatic–intense;

aesthetic–artistic; aggressive;

cynical–morbid; and sentimental.

However, Allport concluded that

this trait analysis of Jenny was

These two forces, he said, provide

and persistence to teach him to

somewhat inconclusive, and so he

the groundwork for the creation of

speak English, and the capability

went on to use a number of other

individual traits.

to convert him to Christianity.

frameworks, including Freudian

Applying these ideas to the

While Crusoe always had these

and Adlerian analysis. Assisted

story of Robinson Crusoe, Allport

personality traits, they remained

by his students Jeffrey Paige and

saw that, prior to his meeting with

unexpressed on the island until he

Alfred Baldwin, he also applied

Friday, Crusoe’s genotypes, or

formed a relationship with Friday.

“content analysis” to the material.

inner resources, along with some

The idea is similar to a well-known

This was a new form of computerized

phenotype aspects, helped him to

philosophical puzzle: if a tree falls

analysis, where the computer was

survive alone on a desert island. He

down in a forest, and there is

programmed to count the number

had the resilience to overcome his

nobody there, does it make a noise?

of times words or phrases occur

initial despair, and fetched arms,

For Allport, traits make behavior

that are related to a given topic or

tools, and other supplies from the

consistent; they are always there,

emotion. Allport was particularly

ship before it sank. He built a

even if no one is around to evoke

impressed by this new method

fenced-in compound around a cave,

them or witness them in action.

and kept a calendar. He hunted,

grew corn and rice, and learned to

An idiographic study

make pottery and raise goats, and

After the publication of
Personality:

he also adopted a parrot. He read

A Psychological Interpretation
in

the Bible and became religious.

1937, Allport turned his attention to

These activities demonstrated the

the topics of religion, prejudice, and

Personality is far too complex

expression of Crusoe’s genotypical

ethics. But in 1965 he returned to

a thing to be trussed up in a

traits and resulting behaviors.

the subject of personality by

conceptual straight jacket.

However, it was only with the

undertaking an idiographic study

Gordon Allport

arrival of Friday that other aspects

of the personality traits of Jenny

of his phenotypic behaviors could

Masterson, who lived from 1868 to

find expression: he helped Friday

1937. During the last 11 years of her

to escape from his captors; he

life, Jenny wrote 300 personal

named him; he had the patience

letters to a married couple with

PSYCHOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE 313

because of its potential to analyze

idiographic data, confirming his

belief that the idiographic approach

can identify subtleties of an

individual character that trait

questionnaires alone cannot reveal.

Allport urged psychologists

In 1966, Allport published a

to study personality traits

paper entitled
Traits Revisited

and leave character to the

suggesting that the aim of

province of philosophy.

personality study should not be the

Martin Seligman

microanalysis of individual traits,

but the study of the psychic

organization of the whole person.

He stated that his early writings

Gordon Allport

about traits were written in an age