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Gordon Allport Biography

Gordon Willard Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personality psychology. He contributed to the formation of values scales and rejected both a psychoanalytic approach to personality, which he thought often was too deeply interpretive, and a behavioral approach, which he thought did not provide deep enough interpretations from their data. He emphasized the uniqueness of each individual, and the importance of the present context, as opposed to past history, for understanding the personality.

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Gordon Allport Quotes

There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, "I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn't like. "

Hate, Like, Oxford, Stories, Student

The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth.

Science, Being True, Theist, Stops, Contradicts, Truth

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

Dog, Experiments, Innumerable, Long, Offering, Original

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.

Adversity, Life, Men, Responsibility, Spite

Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

Real, Hands, World, Discovers, Reason, Cause

Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur. A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be?

Events, Experience, New Experiences, Past, Speaking, Strictly

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism". . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

Close, Discovered, Links, Prejudice, Study

Each person is an idiom unto himself, an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.

Idiom, Person, Science, Syntax, Unto, Violation

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume. . . that we really know the score. . . . [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out. '

Assume, Comforting, Intellectual, Score, Thinking

The specific goals we set for ourselves are almost always subsidiary to our long range intentions. A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)

Science, Long, Goal, Set, Values, Successive

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

Dramatic, Facts, Generalizations, Given, Thimbleful, Tubs

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge.

Exposed, Prejudgments, Prejudice, Reversible, Thinking

It takes a major unhappiness, a prolonged and bitter experience, to drive us away from loyalties once formed. And sometimes no amount of punishment can make us repudiate our loyalty.

Loyalty, Punishment, Bitter, Make, Experience

It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry.

Race, Class, Play, Ease, Marry

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

Acquiring, Becoming, Firsts, Hints, Orderly, Psychology

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.

Ashamed, Diversity, Eliminating, Justice, People, Prejudices

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

Thinking, Way, Helping, Manner, Partisan, Help

The mature religious sentiment is ordinarily fashioned in the workshop of doubt.

Doubt, Faith, Mature, Religious, Workshop