Psychology of Individual: Gordon Allport Flashcards
More than any other personality theorist, Gordon Allport emphasized the _____ of the individual.
uniqueness
He called the study of the individual _____ science and contrasted it with the nomothetic methods used by most other psychologists.
morphogenic
_____ methods are those that gather data on a single individual, whereas nomothetic methods gather data on groups of people.
Morphogenic
Allport also advocated an _____ approach to theory building. He accepted some of the contributions of Freud, Maslow, Rogers, Eysenck, Skinner, and others; but he believed that no one of these theorists is able to adequately explain the total growing and unique personality.
eclectic
He then offered a 50th definition, which in 1937 was “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment”.
In 1961, he had changed the last phrase to read “that determine his characteristic behavior and thought
Personality
Healthy adults are generally aware of what they are doing and their reasons for doing it.
Role of Conscious Motivation
- Characterized by proactive behavior; that is, they not only react to external stimuli, but they are capable of consciously acting on their environment in new and innovative ways and causing their environment to react to them.
- Motivated by conscious processes, which allow them to be more flexible and autonomous than unhealthy people, who remain dominated by unconscious motives that spring from childhood experiences.
- Experienced a relatively trauma-free childhood. Psychologically healthy individuals are not without the foibles and idiosyncrasies that make them unique. Also, age is not a requisite for maturity, although healthy persons seem to become more mature as they get older.
3 Assumptions Mature Personality
- Extension of the sense of self - participate outside
- Warm relating of self to others - love, respect
- Emotional security or self-acceptance - not exagg emotion
- Realistic perception of their environment - problem oriented
- Insight and humor - no pretend, they know no perfect
- Unifying philosophy of life - clear purpose
6 Criteria for the Mature Personality
- Cardinal Dispositions - obvious, sociable (isa lang disposition nag dodominate lifetime, narcissus)
- Central Dispositions - 5 to 10 most outstanding characteristics (how you define yourself, style, traits) friends, and close acquaintances would agree are descriptive of that person.
- Secondary Dispositions - less conspicuous but far greater in number, anxiety, shyness (sometimes unaware)
Levels of Personal Dispositions (Parang hierarchy)
Refer to those behaviors and characteristics that people regard as warm, central, and important in their lives, close to the core of personality, an important part of self, “peculiarly mine”
parang sense of self, “ako yan”, grupo of being me vs. central disposition, individual
Proprium
“Peripheral motives” are those that reduce a need (kain pag gutom, homeostasis), whereas “propriate” strivings seek to maintain tension and disequilibrium
Types of Motivation
Many older theories of personality, Allport believed, did not allow for possibilities of growth. Psychoanalysis and the various learning theories are basically homeostatic, or reactive, theories because they see people as being motivated primarily by needs to reduce tension and to return to a state of equilibrium.
An adequate theory of personality, Allport contended, must allow for proactive behavior. It must view people as consciously acting on their environment in a manner that permits growth toward psychological health.
Theory of Motivation
The master system of motivation that confers unity on personality is propriate functional autonomy, which refers to those self-sustaining motives that are related to the proprium.
Ex: nag teacher ako kasi need ko magbayad ng tuition fee, pero i fell in love with teaching, nagkaron ng passion
Propriate Functional Autonomy
