Trait Approach
Gordon Allport
ICSP254 Theories of Personality
Agenda
Psychoanalytic
NeoFreudian
Object
Relations
Individual
Trait
Social
Humanistic
Behavioral
What is a trait?
• Trait is a distinguishing personal characteristic or quality that
guide behavior
• In our daily lives, we use trait approach to describe personality
by selecting the outstanding characteristics or feature to
summarize what the person is like.
• “Jennifer is really smart” “Joyce is competitive”
• Hippocrates (460-377 BC) distinguished 4 types of people:
happy, unhappy, temperamental, and apathetic
Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
• Important in the formal study of personality est in the 1930s
• Disputed Freud’s psychoanalysis
1. Did not accept that unconscious forces dominate personality
(unconscious important only in neurotic/disturbed behavior)
2. Dispute historical determinism, we’re guided by present and view
of future
3. Opposed collecting data from clinical population vs. healthy
adults (vs. Freud’s view of continuum)
4. No universal laws, emphasis on uniqueness of personality
Nature of Personality
Heredity and Environment
• Heredity provides personality with raw materials (physical
aspects, intelligence, temperament) that may be shaped,
expanded, or limited by our environments
• Importance of both genetics and learning interactions that
create unique personality that no two person is the same
Nature of Personality
Two Distinct Personalities
• Uniqueness and free from the past, thus
1. Childhood personality – biological urges and reflexes
2. Adulthood personality – psychologically driven
Both unrelated and not constrained by one another
What we’re covering today
Traits
Motivation
Childhood
Personality
Adult
Personality
Personality Traits
• Traits – distinguishing characteristics that is consistent and
enduring ways of reacting to our environment
• Measured on a continuum and are subject to social,
environmental, and cultural influences
Personality Traits
• 5 characteristics of traits
1. Personality traits as real and exist within each person. Not theoretical
constructs or made up labels
2. Traits determine or cause behavior (vs. arise in response to stimuli)
3. Traits can be demonstrated empirically by observing behavior over time
4. Traits are interrelated. Diff traits can overlap such as aggressiveness and
hostility happen together
5. Traits vary with situation. A person can be neat in one situation and
disorderliness in another.
Personality Traits
• 2 types of traits
1. Individual trait – unique to a person and define her character
2. Common trait – shared by number of people such as people of
the same culture
Common trait can change over time as society/culture norm
changes. Thus, common straits are subject to social, environmental,
and cultural influences
Personal Dispositions
• Common traits
Traits
• Individual traits
Personal dispositions
Personal dispositions vary on intensity and significance
• Cardinal trait – most pervasive and powerful that it touches almost every aspect
of a person’s life. It’s a “ruling passion” ex. Sadism or chauvinism. May be
displayed or not. Not everyone has it.
• Central traits – everyone has a few traits that describe person’s behavior ex.
Aggressiveness, pessimism. This is the kind we mention when describe someone’s
personality
• Secondary traits – person may display inconspicuously and inconsistently that
only a close friend would notice evidence of them. Ex. Minor pref for certain
type of music
Habits and Attitudes
Traits vs. Habits
• Traits and personal dispositions (T & P) ≠ habits and attitudes;
although they can all initiate and guide behaviors
• Habits – specific, inflexible responses to specific stimulus
• Traits are broader, combination of several habits that share
adaptive function
• Ex. washing hands before eating so often it become
automatic (habit). Many of these habits may form a trait of
cleanliness
Habits and Attitudes
Traits vs. Attitude
• Attitudes – specific object of reference (attitude toward
something..) and involve either positive or negative evaluation
• Ex. Attitude toward abortion (you either are for or against it)
• Trait is not directed toward object or category and does not
involve judgment or evaluation
What we’re covering today
Traits
Motivation
Childhood
Personality
Adult
Personality
Motivation
• Functional autonomy of motives – motivations of mature adults are not
connected to childhood experiences, in which they originally appeared
• Analogy – when we are mature, we become independent from our parents
although we remain related to them. We’re no longer functionally
dependent on them and they should no longer control or guide our life.
• Ex. Skilled jeweler insisted on doing a meticulous job on the ring even though
he does not get paid extra for it. The original motive (when this jeweler was
poor, to make money) has been transformed into something autonomous.
• Therefore, adults motives cannot be understood by exploring a person’s
childhood/past but to be understood by asking why people behave as they
do today
2 Levels of Functional Autonomy
Perseverative
Propriate
Perseverative Functional Autonomy
• Related to our low-level and routine behaviors
• Concerned with behaviors such as addictions and repetitive physical
actions such as habits
• Routine/Habitual/Familiar behaviors we maintain on our own, even
without any external reward
• Ex. Rat has been trained to run maze for food. Even when it’s given
more than enough food, it may still run the maze, but for some other
purpose than the food (maybe for fun, for boredom)
• Ex. Make the bed daily now (even if we don’t get any reward from
parents like we used to as a child)
Propriate Functional Autonomy
• Related to our values, self-image, and lifestyles
• Essential to understand adult motivation
• Propriate derives from proprium (Allport’s term for ego or self)
• Propriate motives are unique to individuals
• Ego determine which motives to maintained and which to stop,
i.e., depending on which one enhances our self-esteem
• Thus, direct relationship between our interests and our abilities:
we enjoy doing what we do well
Propriate Functional Autonomy
• Ex. In childhood has no interest in playing piano but was forced
to play by parents. As adult, playing piano becomes a selfimage (“I’m the hot guy that knows how to play piano!”). The
original motive (fear of parents’ disapproval) has disappeared,
and the continued behavior become necessary to self-image
(of a talented hot guy).
What we’re covering today
Traits
Motivation
Childhood
Personality
Adult
Personality
Childhood Personality
Proprium is
Allport’s term
for “ego” or “self”
Stages of Development
Stage 0 – Before development of proprium
• Before proprium emerge, infant experiences no selfconsciousness, no awareness of self. No separation of “me”
from everything else.
• Infant receives sensory info and react automatically/reflexivly.
No ego to mediate between stimulus and response.
• Allport described infants as “unsocialized horrors” pleasure
seeking, destructive, selfish, impatient, and dependent
Stages of Development
Stage 1 – Bodily Self (Birth – 4)
• Babies differentiate between their body and others ex.
become aware of their own fingers and the object they are
grasping
Stage 2 – Self-Identity (Birth – 4)
• Sense of continuity of one’s identity despite changes in bodies
or abilities
• Enhanced when child learn her name and see herself as
different from others.
Stages of Development
Stage 3 – Self-Esteem (Birth – 4)
• Child discover she can accomplish things on her own. Child
motivated to build, explore, manipulate objects
• Esteem = Take price in their accomplishments
• If parents frustrate the child’s need to explore, then selfesteem will be replaced by feeling of humiliation of anger
Stages of Development
Stage 4 – Extension of Self (Age 4-6)
• Involves the growing awareness of objects and people in
environment and identification that they belong to the child
• “my house” “my mom”
Stages of Development
Stage 5 – Self-Image (Age 4-6)
• Develop actual and ideal self-images of self
• Develop from interactions with parents who make child
aware of their expectations, and of extent to which child is
satisfying or failing to satisfy those expectations
Stages of Development
Stage 6 – Self as a Rational Coper (Age 6-12)
• Child realize that reason and logic can be applied to solving
everyday problems
Stage 7 – Propriate Striving
• Teens begin to formulate plans and goals for the future (in
which propriate is developed)
Parent-Child Interactions
• Very important throughout the stages of development of the
proprium
• Focusing on Infant-mother bond
• If child received affection and security, proprium will develop
steadily and child achieve positive psychological growth
• Child’s needs are frustrated, self will not mature properly. Child
becomes insecure, aggressive, demanding, jealous, and selfcentered. Neurotic adult who functions at level of childhood
drives
What we’re covering today
Traits
Motivation
Childhood
Personality
Adult
Personality
Adult Personality
• Adult personality grows out of childhood but not determined
by childhood drives
• Allport did not explain whether neurotic adult could
overcome negative childhood experiences
• He was more focused on positive psychological growth
Adult Personality
• 6 Criteria for normal, mature, emotionally healthy, adult personality
1. Extends sense of self to people and activities beyond the self
2. Related warmly to others, exhibiting intimacy, compassion, and
tolerance
3. Self-acceptance help him/her achieve emotional security
4. Holds realistic perception of life
5. Has sense of humor and self-objectification (an understanding of
self)
6. Subscribes to a unifying philosophy of life, which is responsible for
directing the personality toward future goals
Questions about Human Nature
Past
Present
Free Will
Determinism
Nature
Nurture
• Past or Present?
Dispute historical determinism; we’re guided more by
present and our view of future. Adult personality not
tied by to or driven by childhood conflicts
• Free Will or Determinism?
People function in rational and conscious term,
aware and in control
• Nature or Nurture?
Both influence personality. Raw materials
(nature/genetics) are shaped by learning and
experiences (nurture)
Questions about Human Nature
Uniqueness
Universality
Equilibrium
Growth
Optimism
Pessimism
• Unique or Universal?
Uniqueness as defined by each person’s
trait. Personality is not general or universal
• Equilibrium or Growth?
Not to reduce tension (to find equilibrium)
but to increase tension to propel us to
seek new challenges and grow.
• Optimism or Pessimism?
Optimist image of human nature