Verified Document

Allport's Psychology Gordon Allport Main Emphasis Has Essay

Allport's Psychology Gordon Allport main emphasis has been on uniqueness of each individual, and he built a theory of personality in criticizing the non-humanistic positions of psychoanalysis and animal-based learning theory. Nevertheless, he became free in his approach and incorporated various ideas from other theorists.

The proprium

Allport believes that personality should be described as a simple bundle of unrelated traits. It is made up of consistency, unity, and integration of traits. Therefore it is genuine to think that a general principle that unifies, attitudes, traits, motives, experiences, and values exists. On his part, Allport has a view that the problem of identifying and describing the nature of integration needs a fully inclusive construct, for instance the ego, self, or style of life; formerly called soul. Allport later introduced a "proprium" as the new term due to the term losing its taste.

He affirms that each theory of personality tend to revolve around its analysis of the nature of motivation. His proposal is that four requirements has to be met by an adequate theory of human motivation: It should recognize the contemporaneity of motives: It has to be a pluralistic theory that allows different types of motives: The theory has to ascribe dynamic force to the cognitive processes of an individual, particularly in terms of long-range intentions and plans of individual: Finally the theory has to give room for the concrete uniqueness of motives.
Contrary to the circular-feedback which are processes that forms perseverative autonomy, propriate functional autonomy describes acquired values, interests, intentions, and attitudes of an individual. Propriate autonomy which is…

Sources used in this document:
Reference

Louise Barkhuus (1999) "Allport's Theory of Traits" Retrieved April 24, 2013. http://www.itu.dk/~barkhuus/allport.pdf
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now