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(Perspectives On Individual Differences) Kenneth H. Craik (Auth.), Kenneth H. Craik, Robert Hogan, Raymond N. Wolfe (Eds.) - Fifty Years of Personality Psychology-Springer US (1993) PDF
(Perspectives On Individual Differences) Kenneth H. Craik (Auth.), Kenneth H. Craik, Robert Hogan, Raymond N. Wolfe (Eds.) - Fifty Years of Personality Psychology-Springer US (1993) PDF
Personality Psychology
PERSPECTIVES ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
CECIL R. REYNOLDS, Thxas A&M University, College Station
ROBERT T. BROWN, University of Nurth Carolina, Wilmington
HANDBOOK OF CREATIVITY
Assessment, Research, and Theory
Edited by John A. Glover, Royce R. Ronning, and Cecil R. Reynolds
SCHIZOPHRENIC DISORDERS
Sense and Nonsense, in Conceptualization, Assessment, and Treatment
Leighton C. Whitaker
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual
shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Fifty Years of
Personality Psychology
Edited by
Kenneth H. Craik
University of California
Berkeley, California
Robert Hogan
University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma
and
Raymond N. Wolfe
State University of New York
Geneseo, New York
ISBN 978-1-4899-2313-4
vii
viii CONTRIBUTORS
ix
X PREFACE
feared that the materials for this book would themselves have become
''historic" by the time of their publication. We appreciate the patience
and goodwill of our contributors in this regard. We also want to acknowl-
edge the dispatch with which publication has been facilitated once
the final manuscripts became available-thanks are due here to Eliot
Werner and Patrick Connolly and their colleagues at Plenum and to
Robert Brown and Cecil Reynolds, coeditors of Plenum's series Per-
spectives on Individual Differences. Finally, we salute the sustaining
interest and support of Ross Stagner throughout this project.
Editing a volume can sometimes turn into a bit of a chore, but not
so in this case. We have been happy to serve as agents of a scientific
community delighted in sharing a worthy and inspiring heritage. That
community encompasses our contributors, our symposia audiences, and
now-we trust-the readers of this volume as well.
KENNETH H. CRAIK
ROBERT HOGAN
RAYMOND N. WOLFE
Contents
PART I. INTRODUCTION
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
Views on Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Retrospections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
References ................................................... 174
PART V. EPILOGUE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
3
4 KENNETH H. CRAIK
Stagner was 28 years old (born June 15, 1909), five years beyond his
Ph.D. degree, and an assistant professor at the University of Akron.
Allport maintained his association with Harvard University until
his death in 1967. Stagner's academic career also took him to Dart-
mouth College, then to the University of Illinois, and finally to Wayne
State University, where he is professor emeritus. As we well know,
both Allport and Stagner subsequently enjoyed eminent scientific ca-
reers: Allport in personality psychology and social psychology, Stagner
in personality psychology and industrial-social psychology. For exam-
ple, Allport was elected president of the American Psychological Asso-
ciation (1939-1940) and Stagner was elected president of APA's
Division of Personality and Social Psychology (1960-1961) as well as its
Division of Industrial (now Industrial-Organizational) Psychology
(1965-1966).
family (ii), (4) play and recreation relationships, (5) personality and the
school system, (6) economic conditions affecting personality, (7) person-
ality and patterns of culture (a chapter contributed by Abraham H.
Maslow), and (8) the personality and social values.
The basic organization of these two textbooks was continued in
their subsequent editions. In Pattern and Growth in Personality, All-
port (1961) retains five major parts: I. An approach to personality;
II. Development of personality; III. Structure of personality; IV. As-
sessment of personality; and V. Understanding personality. Some minor
changes occur at the chapter level; for example, the addition of a chap-
ter on culture, situation, and role. In his third edition, Stagner followed
Allport by adding a fifth section on development, through some reas-
signment of chapters: I. Introduction; II. Development; Ill. Descrip-
tion; IV. Dynamics; and V. Determinants.
Thus, the 1937 Allport and Stagner textbooks both embody an as-
surance regarding what the field of personality is all about. Further-
more, both authors organized their textbooks according to their own
personal and comprehensive formulation of the intellectual structure of
the field and its array of fundamental issues. Finally, in light of pres-
ent-day trends in the merchandising of textbooks, it is worth noting
that both authors risked a high level of difficulty in the expositions
presented in their books. Allport recalled his "desire to avoid jargon
and try to express my thoughts in proper and felicitous English. The
result was that some readers regarded the book as difficult and preten-
tious," but he also notes that others labeled it as "classic" (Allport,
1968, p. 394). In his preface, Stagner (1937) warns the reader that he
had set out to offer a coherent point of view on the field and "I ac-
cepted, in doing so, the danger of making the book too difficult" (p. viii).
CROSS-GENERATIONAL
DIFFERENCES IN VANTAGE POINTS
* In conjunction with the expansion of its research program to encompass the study of
persons within their cultural, institutional, organizational, and societal contexts, this
institute was renamed in 1992 as the Institute of Personality and Social Research (IPSR).
16 KENNETH H. CRAIK
CONTENTS
REFERENCES
Pervin, L.A. (1990). Handbook of personality: Theory and research. New York: Guilford
Press.
Pettigrew, T. F. (1990). A bold stroke for personality a half-century ago. Contemporary
Psychology, 35, 533-536.
Roback, A. A. (1927). A bibliography of character and personality. Cambridge, MA:
Sci-Art.
Smelser, N.J., & Smelser, W. T. (1964). Analyzing personality and social systems. InN.
J. Smelser & W. T. Smelser (Eds.), Personality and social systems (pp. 1-18). New
York: Wiley.
Stagner, R. (1933). Relation of personality to academic aptitude and achievement. Jour-
nal of Educational Research, 26, 648-660.
Stagner, R. (1937). Psychology of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Thayer, W. M. (1885). Thct, push, and principle. Boston: Earle.
Thorpe, L. P. (1938). Psychological foundations of personality: A guide for students and
teachers. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Valentine, P. F. (1927). The psychology of personality. New York: Appleton.
Walsh, W. B., Craik, K. H., & Price, R. H. (Eds.) (1992). Person-environment psychology.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
PART TWO
HISTORICAL AND
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
OF THE 1937 TEXTS
CHAPTER TWO
ROSS STAGNER
23
24 ROSS STAGNER
VIEWS ON METHODOLOGY
RETROSPECTIONS
REFERENCES
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The
authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row.
Allport, F. H. (1974). Autobiography. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), A history of psychology in
autobiography (Vol. VI, pp. 3-29). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.
Allport, G. W. (1967). Gordon W. Allport. In E. G. Boring (Ed.), A history of psychology
in autobiography (Vol. V, pp. 3-25). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Allport, G. W., & Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycholexical study. Psychological
Monographs, 47 (1, whole No. 211).
Allport, G. W., & Vernon, P. E. (1933). Studies in expressive movement. New York:
Macmillan.
Bagby, E. (1928). Psychology of personality. New York: Holt.
Cattell, J. M. (1886). Psychometrische Untersuchungen. Philosophische Studien, 3, 30&-
355.
Craik, K. H. (1986). Personality research methods in historical perspective. Journal of
Personality, 54, 18--51.
Gerow, J. R. (Ed.) (1988). Psychology 1923-1988 (Special Issue of Time). New York:
Time.
James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Holt.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of
fifty men of college age. New York: Oxford University Press.
OSS Assessment Staff (1948). Assessment of men. New York: Rinehart.
Roback, A. A. (1927). Personality, character, and temperament: A bibliography. Cam-
bridge, MA: Sci-Art.
Skinner, B. F. (1976). Particulars of my life. New York: Knopf.
Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist. New York: Knopf.
Skinner, B. F. (1983). Interview. Psychology Today, 17, 25ff
Stagner, R. (1933). Relation of personality to academic aptitude and achievement. Jour-
nal of Educational Research, 26, 648-660.
Stagner, R. (1935). Economic status and personality. School and society, 42, 551-552.
Stagner, R. (1936a). Fascist attitudes: An exploratory study. Journal of Social Psychol-
ogy, 7, 309-319.
Stagner, R. (1936b). Fascist attitudes: Their determining conditions. Journal of Social Psy-
chology, 7, 438-454.
Stagner, R. (1937). Psychology of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
38 ROSS STAGNER
INTRODUCTION
39
40 ALAN C. ELMS
My first paper on Allport focused on his one and only meeting with
Sigmund Freud. It was a story that Allport told often-so often that
the several· surviving versions of it in his own words are almost identi-
cal, sentence for sentence. It was the single personal anecdote included
in his New York Times obituary (October 10, 1967). The version below
has not been previously published, but it will sound familiar to the
many people who heard the story from Allport himself:
So, in my callow youth-this story is very much at my own ex-
pense-in my callow youth, I wrote Freud a note, announcing that
I was in Vienna and no doubt he would be glad to see me. I re-
ceived a reply in his own handwriting inviting me to come to his
office, at a certain time and place. I went there, to the famous red
burlap room with pictures of dreams on the wall. He opened the
ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY AND ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 41
door and invited me into the inner sanctum, and sat there silent.
You may not believe this possible, but I was not prepared for si-
lence. It occurred to me it was up to me to say something, so I
fished around in my mind and I told him about an episode on the
tram car coming out. I had seen a little boy about four years old
and the little boy obviously was developing a real dirt phobia. His
mother was with him. She was a starched Hausfrau, terribly clean
and purposive looking. And the little boy was saying: "I don't want
to sit there! Don't let him sit near me, he's dirty." He kept this up
all the time, and I thought it might interest Freud how early a
phobia of dirt can get set. He listened, and fixed his therapeutic
eye upon me and said "Was that little boy you?" Honestly, it
wasn't, but I felt guilty. (Allport, 1962, p. 2)
Allport's adjectives describing the boy's mother vary slightly from
version to version: "excessively clean and well starched ... domineering
in manner" (Allport, 1958, p. 2); "a well-starched Hausfrau, so domi-
nant and purposive looking that I thought the cause and effect appar-
ent" (Allport, 1967, p. 8); "well starched and very prim" (quoted by
Evans, 1970, p. 4). The little boy is described in 1958 as looking "exces-
sively clean and well starched" like his mother; in the 1967 account,
Allport says that to the little boy "everything was schmutzig" (p. 8);
otherwise the little boy's description remains the same in each telling.
The story's punchline ("Was that little boy you?" or "And was that
little boy you?") is always followed by Allport's denial: "It wasn't. (But
I felt almost guilty!)" (Allport, 1958, p. 2); "It was not, honestly, but I
felt guilty" (1964 filmed interview, slightly reworded in Evans, 1970,
p. 4); "Flabbergasted and feeling a bit guilty, I contrived to change the
subject. While Freud's misunderstanding of my motivation was amus-
ing.... " (Allport, 1967, p. 8).
As Allport indicates here, he told his story both as a kind of joke
on Freud and as a joke on the young Gordon Allport. However, he also
made clear that the incident was ultimately no joke for him. He re-
ferred to it variously as "profoundly revealing" about Freud in ways he
had thought back on "many times since becoming a professional psy-
chologist myself' (1958, p. 2), as "a very important experience to me"
(1962, p. 2), and as "an event of pungent significance ... [having] the
character of a traumatic developmental episode" (1967, p. 7). Allport
described his reaction following the meeting in this way:
But thinking that little episode over, it grew in importance to me,
because the fact is that Freud, with his tendency to see pathologi-
cal trains, and most of his people who came to see him were pa-
tients, of course, it was natural he should break through my
42 ALAN C. ELMS
defenses and get down to business, you see. But actually, he mis-
took my motives. If he had said, ''Well, here is a brassy young
American youth, a tourist who is imposing on my good nature and
time," he would have been somewhere near correct, I think. But to
ascribe my motivation to the unconscious in this case was definitely
wrong. (1964 filmed interview, somewhat reworded in Evans, 1970,
pp. 4-5)
In his autobiography, Allport summarized the Freud incident's longer-
term professional effects on him:
This experience taught me that depth psychology, for all its merits,
may plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do well to give
full recognition to manifest motives before probing the unconscious.
Although I never regarded myself as anti-Freudian, I have been
critical of psychoanalytic excesses. A later paper entitled ''The 'lhmd
in Motivational Theory" (1953) is a direct reflection of this episode
and has been reprinted, I believe, more frequently than any other
of my articles. (1967, p. 8)
Allport's vigorous and repeated denial that he was the little boy
with the dirt phobia intrigued me as it has intrigued others (e.g., Faber,
1970; Morey, 1987). I do not consistently practice what Erikson (1969,
p. 98) calls "originology," the strategy of attempting to explain adult
psychological patterns always by reference to their earliest and most
primitive form. But it seemed to me that if Allport insisted so stren-
uously on denying his resemblance to the clean little boy on the tram-
car, we should at least find out what sort of little boy Allport himself
had been.
In looking for such information, I quickly struck pay dirt. In his
autobiography, Allport described his childhood in only one cautiously
phrased paragraph. That paragraph, however, appeared to explain a
great deal about his reaction to the Freud encounter. Allport's para-
graph is worth repeating in full:
Our home life was marked by plain Protestant piety and hard
work. My mother had been a school teacher and brought to her
sons an eager sense of philosophical questing and the importance of
searching for ultimate religious answers. Since my father [a physi-
cian] lacked adequate hospital facilities for his patients, our house-
hold for several years included both patients and nurses. Tending
office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important
aspects of my early training. Along with his general practice my
ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY AND ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 43
Allport's series of denials, toward the end of the passage just quoted,
indicates one of the ways in which Freud's question had hit home.
" ... Freud had thought that I was suffering from an infantile trauma. I
ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY AND ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 49
I know what it is to be the object of scorn, but for personal and not
[group] membership reasons. As I said, this sensitivity gave me a vari-
ety of compensatory strivings in myself, and as I overcame my handi-
caps, I also grew in sympathy with any under-dog'' (Allport, n.d.). Early
in his academic career he told one correspondent, "I have published
several articles of no great importance, and am not to be confused with
my more eminent brother, F.H. Allport, of Syracuse University" (All-
port, 1928).
Gordon Allport did manage after college graduation to go off on his
own for a year, to teach in a small English-speaking school in Constan-
tinople, with nobody around who was likely to make him feel inferior.
But at the end of that year he headed back to Harvard, ready to be-
come a graduate student in the psychology department where brother
Floyd was already on the faculty-and at this point Freud had the
audacity to tell him he was still a little boy! No wonder so much of the
1937 Personality textbook and of Gordon Allport's later writing about
personality development stress the discontinuity between child and man,
through the development of the functional autonomy of motives and in
many other ways.
Back to our core sentence again: "I am not that little boy...."
Allport treated as self-evident the fact that he was not the little boy he
had seen on the tramcar. Regardless of any possible similarities that
Freud might have hypothesized, Gordon W. Allport was one person and
the little boy was another person. Allport's first sentences in his Per-
sonality textbook are, "As a rule, science regards the individual as a
mere bothersome accident. Psychology, too, ordinarily treats him as
something to be brushed aside" (1937, p. vii). Allport was not about to
permit his own individuality to be brushed aside. Allport ends the book
with what is, for a textbook, an unusually stirring paragraph:
Thus there are many ways to study man psychologically. Yet to
study him most fully is to take him as an individual. He is more
than a bundle of habits; more than a nexus of abstract dimensions;
more too than a representative of his species. He is more than a
citizen of the state, and more than a mere incident in the gigantic
movements of mankind. He transcends them all. The individual,
striving ever for his own integrity, has existed under many forms
of social life-forms as varied as the nomadic, feudal, and capitalis-
tic. He struggles on even under oppression, always hoping and plan-
ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY AND ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 51
ning for a more perfect democracy where the dignity and growth of
each personality will be prized above all else. (pp. 565-566)
This stress on the individual was not altogether uncommon in psy-
chology by the 1930s. Gordon's older brother Floyd had already made it
a feature of his own influential approach to social psychology-for in-
stance, by attacking the "fallacy" of the "group mind" early in his 1924
textbook and by arguing instead that the so-called "mental structure"
of groups actually consists of "sets of ideals, thoughts, and habits re-
peated in each individual mind and existing only in those minds" (pp. 8-
9). What really distinguished Gordon Allport's position from that of his
brother, and from most other psychologists of his day, was Gordon's
emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual. Early in the final chapter
of Personality, he states:
Implicit in the modern point of view is the demand that psychology
expand its boundaries, revise its methods, and extend its concepts
to accommodate, more hospitably than in the past, the study of the
single concrete mental life.
This demand is thoroughly radical. It is directed against the
practice in general psychology of drawing the blood and peeling the
flesh from human personality, leaving only such a skeleton frame-
work of mind as is acceptable to the sparse canons and methods of
nomothetic science. By stripping the person of all his troublesome
particularities, general psychology has destroyed his essential na-
ture. The newer point of view reverses the perspective. The person
is no longer regarded as a neutral tinted background upon which
the all-important design of mind-in-general stands out. Quite the
reverse: the uniform design traced by general psychology becomes
the ground upon which the integral, three-dimensional, and unique
individual emerges as the salient feature. (p. 549)
That is a dramatic declaration of independence from the nomo-
thetic psychoanalysts and behaviorists of Allport's day. Even more, by
advocating the study not just of the individual but of the unique in-
dividual, Allport declared his uniqueness in comparison with brother
Floyd or with virtually anyone else in psychology at the time. "I am
not that little boy," he was saying; "I am nobody but me."
ALLPORT AS AN ADULT
Finally, having dealt with every other element of the core sen-
tence, "I am not that little boy with the dirt phobia," we are left with
its beginning: "/ am not." Erik Erikson, in his psychobiography of Mar-
52 ALAN C. ELMS
tin Luther, makes much of Luther's so-called "fit in the choir," when
Luther is said to have shouted out, "It isn't me!" or "I am not!" (1958,
p. 23). Declaring what you are not, according to Erikson, is often a way
to establish who you are, what your identity is (p. 36). Gordon Allport,
by his testimony, was not a neurotic, not a little boy, not a generic
personality interchangeable with other personalities; so what was he?
As he suggested in his 1962 "reminiscence" on the origins of the Per-
sonality textbook (" ... some people do grow up ... "), he was a grown-
up, a psychologically healthy adult.
And what does that imply? Well, as he said in the book, "There are
as many ways of growing up as there are individuals who grow, and in
each case the end-product is unique. But," he added, "if general criteria
are sought whereby to distinguish a fully developed personality from
one that is still unripe, there are three differentiating characteristics
that seem both universal and indispensable" (1937, p. 213).
Allport did little to demonstrate the universality or indispensabil-
ity of the three characteristics that he listed. But they are surely char-
acteristics that he felt he himself possessed in full measure, indeed
more than most people-as, on the whole, he did. He identified them as
self-extension, self-objectification, and a unifying philosophy of life
(1937, pp. 213-214). Self-extension involves having "a variety of auton-
omous interests" (p. 213), the incorporation into oneself of the many
things one loves: "Possessions, friends, one's own children, other chil-
dren, cultural interests, abstract ideas, politics, hobbies, recreation, and
most conspicuously of all, one's work" (p. 217, his emphasis). One is
reminded here of the busy Allport, who even as an undergraduate de-
voted himself enthusiastically to volunteer work with boys' clubs, social
service agencies, the Humane Society, and so forth, while joyfully dis-
covering the new intellectual world of Harvard, Cambridge, and Bos-
ton-a far cry from the Freud anecdote's narrowly focused dirt-phobic
boy and his well-starched mother.
Self-objectification includes the development of self-insight and of
that highly correlated quality, a sense of humor. The latter involves,
according to Allport, "the ability to laugh at the things one loves (in-
cluding of course oneself and all that pertains to oneself), and still to
love them" (p. 223). We might wonder about Allport's degree of self-
insight, as he resolutely insisted that that little boy had no relevance to
himself. But Allport certainly did display a sense of humor about the
matter, and he was very self-aware regarding the only level of person-
ality he thought important for normal adults-the conscious level.
Finally among Allport's criteria for a fully developed personality is
a unifying philosophy of life, one that represents to a person ''his place
ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY AND ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 53
in the scheme of things" (p. 214). Allport acknowledged that "there are
many ... unifying philosophies," but, he insisted, "Religion is the search
for a value underlying all things, and as such is the most comprehen-
sive of all the possible philosophies of life" (p. 226; his emphasis). Here
the very religious Gordon Allport could feel superior even to his older
brother Floyd, who had publicly given up the idea of a "transcendental,
monistic god" (Allport, 1933, p. 458). On this point Gordon could also
feel superior to Sigmund Freud. He observed that in the recently pub-
lished New Introductory Lectures, "Freud declares himself 'perfectly
certain' that this particular class of 'illusions' [i.e., religion] springs from
infantilism of the mind" (Allport, 1937, p. 227). Allport thought he knew
better; and in knowing better, he recognized himself as the true adult
among this company. While discussing his criteria for personal matu-
rity, Allport listed the major limitations of other approaches to the
psychology of personality, and here he made one simple complaint about
psychoanalysis: "Freudian psychology never regards an adult as truly
adult" (1937, p. 216; his emphasis). Like every personality theorist be-
fore and after him, Allport clearly knew of at least one adult who was
truly adult: the theorist himself.
CONCLUSION
telling it more often than any other story about himself, and tying it
directly to his life's work.
A year after Allport's personality textbook was published, another
milestone in personality psychology appeared: Henry Murray's Explor-
ations in Personality (1938). Murray dedicated his book in part "To
Sigmund Freud, whose genius contributed the most fruitful working
hypotheses ... and to Carl G. Jung, whose writings were a hive of great
suggestiveness." Allport had properly dedicated the Personality text to
his mother, whose virtues and teachings did indeed leave their strong
mark upon the book. But he might well have added to his dedication
these words: "And to Sigmund Freud, whose question stung me to
make this belated (but thoroughly adult) reply."
REFERENCES
M. BREWSTER SMITH
57
58 M. BREWSTER SMITH
ALLPORT ON ALLPORT
UNIQUENESS
The criticism here has come from the statistically minded and from
Murray. I am unrepentent. There have been three objections. First,
ALLPORT AND MURRAY ON ALLPORT'S PERSONALITY 59
MURRAY ON ALLPORT
ALLPORT IN REJOINDER
COMMENTARY
her, I was more acutely aware of Allport's limitations and less apprecia-
tive of his extraordinary strengths than I came to be in later retrospect
(Smith, 1972, 1990). The vignette stands out in my memory of an early
morning in December 1948, when on my hurried way to teach, having
just greeted my newborn first son at the Boston Lying-in Hospital, I
encountered Gordon on the steps of Emerson hall. As he took the cus-
tomary cigar from my outstretched hand, Gordon beamed his reserved
smile and said, "Very nice, Brewster. Every psychologist should have a
child and a dog." At the moment I could have throttled him! Thereaf-
ter, I understood his doctrine of the ''functional autonomy of motives"
as his ingeniously designed charter to let him leave untidy animals and
children to the behaviorists and psychoanalysts.
But in spite of the undoubted fact that Murray made him uncom-
fortable and represented a view of personality that was distinctly un-
congenial to him, Allport defended Murray with complete magnanimity
when it counted most. Only since Triplett's (1983) dissertation have we
known about the intense struggles behind closed doors concerning
Murray's tenure at Harvard, a closely fought academic battle in which
Allport was Murray's indispensable supporter.
REFERENCES
CURRENT STATE OF
PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY
AND ITS TEXTS
CHAPTER FIVE
LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
*This chapter is adapted from an address given at the Institute of Personality and Social
Research, University of California at Berkeley, Spring 1987.
tIt was particularly interesting for me to go back and read Allport, something I have been
prone to do over the years, since he was a professor of mine in 1957. At the time I failed
to appreciate his enormous wisdom.
69
70 LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
*Buss (1989) similarly includes both temperament and motive concepts under the trait
rubric.
72 LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
we do something for one reason alone. Consider, for example, the con-
fessions of a lawyer who seeks to answer the question of why he has
fought so hard for the interests of the guilty. In this Newsweek article,
the author suggests such motives as the following: emotional identifi-
cation with the underdog, performing well during a trial, a need for
power and admiration, winning, beating witnesses, voyeurism, and ex-
hibitionism. He concludes that "in trying to understand myself and my
work, I am led ineluctably to the murky and subjective realm of what I
brought with me when I first stepped into a courtroom. It was clearly
not just the belief that every criminal defendant has a right to counsel"
(Wishman, 1981, p. 25). Or, consider the more recent article in the New
York Times that suggested that women who choose to become surro-
gate mothers have such diverse and multiple motivations as money,
feeling confirmed as a woman, doing something special, altruism, grati-
tude for the life given them after they were adopted, and guilt over a
previous abortion (Goleman, 1987, p. C1). Indeed, this article suggests
many of the principles of system functioning that are suggested in the
works of Allport and Stagner and that seem particularly key to me:
equipotentiality, or the potential for similar motives to lead to quite
different (even contrasting) behaviors; equifinality, or the potential for
the same behavior to express different motives; and multidetermina-
tion, or the principle that behavior expresses the interaction among
multiple motives.
Similarly self-evident would appear to be the importance of con-
flict in our lives, here referring to conflict internal to the system,
though clearly conflict is a major issue in close interpersonal relations
(Peterson, 1989) as well as in the international relations level of system
functioning. Lewin (1935) gave considerable attention to the issue of
conflict, as did Dollard and Miller (1950) in their extrapolations from
psychoanalytic theory to stimulus-response theory, but the concept has
ceased to play a major role in most current personality theory and
research.
In my earlier research on goals (Pervin, 1984), I examined the
implications of goal conflicts for how situations are experienced. Each
of ten subjects rated the relevance of 11 conflicts to 20 situations, the
conflicts being standard for the group but the situations being idio-
graphic for the subject. The list of conflicts had been drawn from those
suggested by a small group of subjects and included items such as
"Relax, enjoy versus Do what 'should' do." and "Assert self versus
Gain acceptance, approval." Generally, situations that the subjects as-
sociated with negative affect were also found to be associated with
high conflict.
74 LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
AFFECT
then. The situation has changed of late, to the extent that affect is a
major concern of "cognitive-behavior therapists." However, much re-
mains to be done in the area of the organization of affects within the
person.
My own interest in the area of affect was spurred by a number of
factors: a long collegial relationship with Silvan Tomkins, dating back to
1962; ongoing practice as a psychodynamically oriented clinician; re-
search on free-response descriptions that primarily elicited affect de-
scriptors of situations; and a study of consistency of response across
situations that suggested that similar situations might not elicit similar
behaviors if they differed in a characteristic that elicited strong affect
(Champagne & Pervin, 1987).
I will describe some of the results of my research on affect and
personality, particularly as they relate to the issue of organization and
pattern, but let me note that this proved to be the most difficult and
frustrating piece of research in which I have engaged. I believe that
there is gold there, but the mining is difficult, involving the hazards of
digging deep and following false leads.
In any case, the research basically involved subjects rating the
relevance of an extended series of affects to situations and people they
had identified as being relevant to them. In addition, in one phase of
the research, subjects rated a list of prototypic situations and proto-
typic situation features for various affects to see if subjects could agree
about the nature of the situations and defining characteristics of situa-
tions critical for each affect. This research followed that suggested by
Buss and Craik (1983) in their work on traits. Finally, subjects indi-
cated the second-most likely affect they would experience in each
prototypic situation. This procedure was used to consider further rela-
tionships among affects and individual differences in the organization of
affects in prototypic as well as idiosyncratic situations. A feature of this
research, which has tended to be typical of the research I have con-
ducted over the years, is a mix of standard and free-response data, of
nomothetics and idiographics, of an interest in general principles estab-
lished through the study of patterns in individuals.
Generally, similar affect factors were found for individuals, with
three positive affect factors (Happy, Attraction-Love, Friendship) and
four negative affect factors (Anger Out, Anger In-Blows to Self-
esteem, Distress, Envy-Jealousy) being typical. In other words, gener-
ally individuals appear to organize affects in reasonably similar ways,
at least at the highest level of organization. This was true regardless of
whether subjects were rating affects in relation to situations, people, or
other affects. At the same time, there were considerable individual
78 LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
ceptualize the dynamic interplay between the person and the environ-
ment over time and across situations; that is, the ways in which people
bring coherence to their functioning while remaining adaptive to chang-
ing external circumstances. As Mischel (1990) has noted, his influential
1968 book was an effort to call attention to exactly this question, for
the most part neglected by trait and psychoanalytic approaches, rather
than an attack on the field of personality or the existence of individual
differences.
The second issue concerns the kinds of laws and predictions that
may be possible for us as personality psychologists. Perhaps the most
succinct way to express this is to state the possibility that human be-
havior is so multiply determined and influenced by highly idiosyncratic
meaning structures that general laws and specific predictions may be
unrealizable goals. Frequently of late I have come across the sugges-
tion that ultimately psychology will be composed of three segments:
neuroscience or neurobiology, artificial intelligence or cognitive science,
and some version of folk psychology or hermeneutics. One already sees
splits along these lines in many major departments of psychology, the
first two often being seen as part of the "hard sciences" and the latter
as part of the "soft sciences." Although I do not share this view, it is
raised, in one form or another, by some very respectable thinkers who
are not necessarily hostile to "soft psychology" generally or personality
in particular. One of the most provocative thinkers along these lines is
the anthropologist Richard Shweder (1989, 1990), who, in defining the
field of cultural psychology and the semiotic person, argues against the
view of people as the same wherever you go and instead for a view of
people as intentional beings who live in a world that is domain-specific,
cross-culturally diverse, and historically variable.
Finally, there is the issue of the organization of personality. Here I
fear that little progress has been made. Whether because of the dif-
ficulty of the problem, forces in the field that operate against such
exploration, or the lack of methodological tools appropriate for such
investigation, we find little consideration of pattern and organization in
personality functioning. In this sense I am in agreement with Carlson
(1984), though I wish to distinguish this issue from consideration of the
issues of idiographic versus nomothetic and laboratory versus natural-
istic research. In his 1937 text, Allport observed that "the truth of the
matter is that the total organization of personality is still a new and
poorly formulated problem in psychology. It is a many-sided issue
whose solution yet lies in the future" (p. 365). Fifty years later, the
problem is hardly new, though the rest of what Allport had to say
PATIERN AND ORGANIZATION 83
REFERENCES
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, Rine-
hart, & Winston.
Allport, G. W. (1939). Review of fifty years of personality. Paper delivered at the meet-
ings of the American Psychological Association, Berkeley, California.
Allport, G. W. (1955). Becoming: Basic considerations for a psychology of personality.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Allport, G. W. (1958). What units shall we employ? In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Assessment of
human motives (pp. 239-260). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Asch, S. E., & Zukier, H. (1984). Thinking about persons. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 46, 1230-1240.
Block, J. (1971). Lives through time. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft.
Borgatta, E. F., & Lambert, W. W. (Eds.) (1968). Handbook of personality theory and
research. Chicago: Rand MeN ally.
Buss, A. H. (1989). Personality as traits. American Psychologist, 44, 1378-1388.
Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1983). The act frequency approach to personality. Psycho-
logical Review, 90, 105-126.
Cantor, N., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1987). Personality and social intelligence. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Carlson, R. (1984). What's social about social psychology? Where's the person in person-
ality research? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1304-1309.
Champagne, B., & Pervin, L. A. (1987). The relation of perceived situation similarity to
perceived behavior similarity: Implications for social learning theory. European
Journal of Personality, 1, 79-91.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1988). From catalog to classification: Murray's needs
and the five-factor model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 258-
265.
Craik, K. H. (1986). Personality research methods: An historical perspective. Journal of
Personality, 54, 18-51.
Dollard, J., & Miller, N.E. (1950). Personality and psychotherapy. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
Emmons, R. A. (1989). The personal striving approach to personality. In L. A. Pervin
(Ed.), Goal concepts in personality and social psychology (pp. 87-126). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Goleman, D. (1987). Motivations of surrogate mothers. New York Times, January 20, Cl.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
Jackson, D. N., & Paunonen, S. V. (1980). Personality structure and assessment. Annual
Review of Psychology, 31, 503-551.
James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York: Holt.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton.
Lazarus, R. S. (1990). Theory-based stress management. Psychological Inquiry, 1, 3-13.
Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lewis, M., & Michalson, L. (1982). Children's emotions and moods: Developmental the-
ory and measurement. New York: Plenum.
84 LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
85
86 SALVATORE R. MADDI
for extolling the virtues of one's own variable at the expense of the
variables being extolled by others.
Allport clearly believed simple and sovereign theorizing to be too
limited and belligerent, in short, fragmenting to foster the scientific
development of a field. It is a kind of misuse of criticality that is unfor-
tunately very much alive in psychology. Indeed, most of the person-
situation debate already mentioned hinged on simple and sovereign
theorizing. Social psychologists and behaviorists (e.g., Bern, 1972;
Mischel, 1968) pounced on some evidence that personality measures
show only modest correlations with behavioral indices to argue that it
is situational pressures that are really important. Pushed on to the
defensive, some personality psychologists responded by insisting that
person variables control the lion's share of behavior (e.g., Alker, 1972;
Epstein, 1984). The ensuing fight over whether the situationists or the
personalists would triumph proceeded merrily despite the existence of
findings indicating that the interaction between situation and person vari-
ables accounted for the largest portion of behavior variance (e.g., Bowers,
1973). It took years before cooler heads could prevail and the interactional
accord was formulated (Bowers, 1973; Ekehammer, 1974). And even now,
some psychologists would prefer to keep fighting (e.g., Fiske, 1974).
Nor was this the first time the person-situation debate flared up.
Early this century, William McDougall (the Harvard instinct theorist)
and John B. Watson (the founder of behaviorism) engaged in long, heated
debate over whether instincts or situations were the real cause of be-
havior. Some feel that one or the other protagonist triumphed, but the
debate appears to have been rather inconclusive. Before too long, it
was Carl R. Rogers and B. F. Skinner who engaged in another pro-
longed debate concerning whether person-centered counseling freed per-
sons to follow their own inherent potentialities or merely shaped their
behavior in directions favored by their counselors. Despite its focus on
what the psychotherapist is really doing, this is clearly a form of the
person-situation debate. So inconclusive was the confrontation between
these two psychologists that the debate was continued by their stu-
dents. If there was any upshot of all this effort, it suggested that if the
unconditional positive regard person-centered counselors think they are
extending to their clients is really a shaping process, its end result is to
increase the likelihood of unusual or idiosyncratic responses that could
be described as freedom.
Whenever the person-situation debate bursts forth, it ends incon-
clusively. The reason for this is that it is a false debate in the first
place. It takes just a bit of thought to realize that behavior could never
be exclusively a function of either person or situation variables. Indeed,
88 SALVATORE R. MADDI
OVERSPECIALIZATION
So specialized have the subfields of psychology become that there
is little or no sense of common cause or even communication across
them. Odd though it may be, there is virtually nothing tying together
the subfields of cognition, personality, learning, development, social
psychology, biopsychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and
clinical psychology. There are separate journals with separate reader-
CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF PERSONALITY THEORY 91
ships, simultaneous sessions in different hotels at annual conventions,
misunderstandings and antagonisms in the conduct of academic depart-
mental affairs. In some universities, biologically oriented psychologists
belong to different divisions or schools than do socially oriented and
clinically oriented psychologists. In other universities there are several
departments that include psychologists. Introductory psychology courses
and textbooks have become increasingly more fragmented and unwieldy.
Indeed, at some universities the traditional introductory psychology
course has given way to several alternative courses, each emphasizing
some but not all aspects of the field. So fragmented is our field that it
has become a Tower of Babel in which many no longer feel that there is
any underlying discipline.
Perhaps this fragmentation is one reason why psychology is not a
central feature of university organization. Although it is a popular un-
dergraduate major, psychology appears rather peripheral to academic
structure and definition. Nor on an individual basis do many psycholo-
gists tend to play central intellectual roles among their academic col-
leagues from other disciplines. Although some psychologists are now
beginning to fill administrative roles at universities, this activity does
not seem to extend to influencing their colleagues in scholarly ways.
This may well be because psychologists have become so specialized that
they lack any overall format and agenda that can be persuasive to
scholars in other areas.
Certainly, the overspecialization renders it difficult for academic
psychologists to address such major problems of a psychosocial nature
as poverty, injustice, criminality, physical and mental illness, character
development, homelessness, and the like. The research problems that
fill our journals tend to be narrower and more esoteric. And there is
the alarming tendency to retreat even further from content than that
and define our science in terms of methodological prowess. Even in
reviewing each others' manuscripts for publication, we are more likely
to critique the methods than the content and conclusions. An aspect of
this is the tendency to avoid topics for study that appear too complex
to be researched easily. It is as if a retreat to methodology is the only
thing holding our fragmented field together.
results can convincingly favor theories on one side of the issue while
damaging those on the other. Through a concerted effort at such re-
search, the issues separating models could well be resolved. Once it is
clear which model is the most promising, psychologists could either
endorse the personality theory or theories well expressing this model
or build a new theory that explicitly capitalizes on what has been learned
in the comparative analytic research.
Whether or not you find the particular models I have proposed
convincing (they are certainly not the only ones it is possible to ab-
stract from existing personality theories), I hope you will appreciate
the enormous integrative potential in the comparative analytic approach.
At every step of this approach (and especially in the posing of issues
and their resolution), individual personologists would be well advised to
consult with their colleagues who hold differing theoretical perspec-
tives. There would be, through this task-oriented communication, pres-
sure on all personologists to be clearer and more definite about their
theoretical views and the research implications in them. Engaging in
comparative analysis would go a long way toward obviating fragmenta-
tion within personology. It would also facilitate the integrative effect of
personology on other areas of psychology in that many personologists
would have to use more explicitly and comprehensively information
available from these other areas in order to be specific enough to en-
gage in the collegial aspects of comparative analysis just outlined.
TEACHING PERSONALITY
A FINAL WORD
the uncritical nature of such surveys. But he was also objecting in part
to emphasizing these old theories.
To my mind there is no reason to either cherish or reject the com-
prehensive personality theories merely because they exist or may have
been formulated some time ago. If they are the subject matter of a
comparative analysis, we will see soon enough where they fit into mod-
els for understanding human behavior and how their model fares in
research-based issue resolution. Then there will be a reason to retain,
change, or reject existing personality theories that is based in intellec-
tual concerns rather than fashion. After all, if the concrete personality
theories that exist today had not been formulated already, there is
every reason to believe that personologists would invent them soon.
There is a small number of models for understanding human behavior
and a finite number of examples of these models that human imagina-
tion can construct.
REFERENCES
Alker, H. A. (1972). Is personality situationally specific or intrapsychically consistent?
Jaurnal of Personality, 40, 4-16.
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.
Allport, G. W. (1955). Becoming: Basic considerations for a psychology of personality.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bern, D. J. (1972). Constructing cross-situational consistencies in behavior: Some thoughts
on Alker's critique of Mischel. Journal of Personality, 40, 17-26.
Bowers, K. S. (19730. Situationism in psychology: An analysis and a critique. Psycholog-
ical Review, 80, 307-336.
Conant, J. B. (1947). On understanding science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Deci, E. L. (1971). The effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.
Jaurnal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105-115.
DeCharms, R. C., & Muir, M. S. (1978). Motivation: Social approaches. In M. R. Rosen-
zweig & W. Porter (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (pp. 000--000). Palo Alto,
CA: Annual Reviews.
Ekehammer, B. (1974). lnteractionism in personality from a historical perspective. Psy-
chological Bulletin, 81, 1026-1048.
Endler, N. S., & Magnussen, D. (1976). Toward an interactional psychology of personality.
Psychological Bulletin, 83, 956-974.
Epstein, S. (1984). The stability of behavior across time and situations. In R. A. Zucker,
J. Aronoff, & R. I. Rabin (Eds.), Personality and the prediction of behavior. New
York: Academic Press.
Fiske, D. W. (1974). The limits for the conventional science of personality. Jaurnal of
Personality, 42, 1-11.
Freud, S. (1925). Instincts and their vicissitudes. In S. Freud, Collected papers (Vol. 4).
London: Institute for Psychoanalysis and Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures in psychoanalysis (W.J.H. Sprott, trans.).
New York: Norton.
CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF PERSONALITY THEORY 101
Jung, C. G. (1933). Modern man in search of a soul. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs (Vol. I). New York: Norton.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1975). The endogenous-exogenous partition in attribution theory.
Psychological Review, 82, 387-406.
Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. (1975). Turning play into work: Effects of adult surveillance
and extrinsic rewards on children's intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 31, 116-125.
Maddi, S. R. (1970). The search for meaning. In M. Page (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on
motivation (pp. 000-000). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Maddi, S. R. (1988). Personality theories: A comparative analysis (5th ed.). Homewood,
IL: Dorsey. (Original publication 1968).
May, R. (1958). Contributions of existential psychotherapy. In R. May, E. Angel, & H. F.
Ellenberger (Eds.), Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology
(pp. 000-000). New York: Basic Books.
McClelland, D. C. (1951). Personality. New York: Dryden.
McClelland, D. C. (1981). Is personality consistent? In A. I. Rabin, J. Aronoff, A. M.
Barclay, & R. A. Zucker (Eds.), Further explorations in personality (pp. 87-113).
New York: Wiley.
Merton, R.K. (1957). The role-set: Problems in sociological theory. The British Journal of
Sociology, 8, 106-120.
Merton, R. K. (1968). Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press.
Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.
Mischel, W. (1973). Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality.
Psychological Review, 80, 252-283.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of
fifty men of college age. New York: Oxford University Press.
Reiss, S., & Sushinsky, L. W. (1975). Overjustification, competing responses, and the
acquisition of intrinsic interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31,
116-125.
Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships, as
developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study
of a science (Vol. 3, pp. 000-000). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ross, M., Karniol, R., & Rothstein, M. (1976). Reward contingency and intrinsic motiva-
tion in children: A test of the delay of gratification hypothesis. Journal of Personal-
ity and Social Psychology, 33, 442-447.
CHAPTER SEVEN
103
104 GERALD A. MENDELSOHN
*There are some mysteries about who is included and who is not in textbooks of person-
ality. For example, in what meaningful sense can Skinner be considered a personality
theorist and why has Gardner Murphy so completely disappeared from view?
106 GERALD A. MENDELSOHN
Now that I have made the necessary clarifications and staked out
a position, it is time to defend that position with more than sniping
comments. My brief will be in three parts. I will argue first that Theo-
ries of Personality are not really theories in any acceptable scientific
sense; second, that they are anachronistic; and finally, that they have
little to do with the research actually done by personality psychologists.
support the theory'' (p. 17). Do the Theories of Personality that appear
in textbooks conform to this definition? It would be hard to argue that
they do. They are rarely systematic in their statement of basic assump-
tions or concepts and the relationships among them. Key concepts are
ill-defined and central issues of methodology and measurement are not
addressed. Alternative hypotheses are numerous but unexamined, ad
hoc and post hoc interpretations abound, and many, perhaps most, of
the propositions of these theories are neither confirmable nor discon-
firmable, that is, they are not capable of generating precise predictions.
Furthermore, the empirical and observational sources of these theories
are questionable on several grounds. Generally, they have been based
on small, special, and historically limited samples. Introspection and
armchair reflection have more often been their sources than data of a
less subjective character. When some sort of evidence is adduced, it is
frequently contaminated by the means of its collection (e.g., clinical
interactions) and it is frequently impossible to distinguish between the
data and the interpretation of the data. This makes replication and
intersubjective agreement well-nigh impossible. Thus, the systematic
collection and analysis of evidence has had little to do with the origin,
modification, acceptance, or fall from grace of the Theories of Person-
ality. Finally, I have never understood why Personality should place
such heavy emphasis on theories originating in the study of atypical
groups. The study of pathology frequently provides illuminating infor-
mation, but it seems to me more sensible to regard pathology as a
deviation from general patterns than to make inferences about general
patterns on the basis of the exceptional. As Maddi (1989) points out, "A
theory of psychotherapy is one thing; a theory of personality is an-
other'' (p. 617).
The set of objections I have just rattled off obviously apply to
some Theories of Personality more than to others, but none is immune
to criticism on several of these grounds. Does that mean that I regard
them as worthless? Not at all, for they often raise issues of substantial
psychological importance and sometimes provide insights about them.
The classical Theorists of Personality, however, can scarcely be consid-
ered the only thinkers to have struggled with issues of psychological
importance or to have provided insights about them. So, too, did the
Greek dramatists and philosophers, the medieval scholastics, the Prot-
estant reformers, the Elizabethan playwrights, the Encyclopedists, and
the Russian novelists, to note only a few groups of Western writers.
The question then becomes what, if anything, have the Theorists of
Personality identified as issues or as conceptions of those issues or as
approaches to the study of those issues that distinguishes them from
PUTTING PERSONALITY THEORIES IN THEIR PLACE 109
the many, many others who have observed and written about human
behavior? What is special about their work? Why in our teaching of
personality should we pay particular attention to them as sources of
ideas in preference to artists, philosophers, and theologians?
The answers to those questions ought to have something to do
with psychology as a scientific endeavor. If the Theorists of Personality
have particular significance for psychologists who seek to be empirical
scientists, it ought to be the case that they present their ideas in a
form that facilitates a scientific understanding of personality. But that
is precisely what, I have argued, they fail to do. I am not alone in that
judgment; the authors of textbooks by and large raise the same criti-
cisms as I have in their evaluations of the theories they present. Hall
and Lindzey (1985) for example, explicitly pose the question of whether
the personality theories they examine in their book conform to their
definition of a theory. Their answer: "Hardly" (p. 17).
What we have, then, are theories in name only. Levy (1970), after
coming to the same basic conclusion, suggests the term "conceptions"
as more appropriate. Perhaps the term "viewpoints" would do equally
well; but whatever term is chosen, the comment by historian Peter
Brown (1967) about religious systems seems no less applicable to Theo-
ries of Personality: "The quality of a religious system depends less on
the specific doctrine, than on the choice of problems that it regards as
important, the areas of human experience to which it directs attention"
(p. 393). That is a function of genuine importance-there is no reason to
doubt that the field would be the poorer had the canonical theorists
(among others) not transmitted their understandings and speculations
to us. There remains, however, a fundamental difference between "con-
cepts" of personality and "theories" of personality; to ignore that differ-
ence is not a service to our students or our field.
Despite all that I have said so far, there is ano~her criterion for
evaluating theories that must be considered before concluding that the
canonical Theories of Personality are of historical interest only. This
criterion can be summed up as follows: "The bottom line in the evalua-
tion of personality theories is their heuristic value. However vague and
poorly developed a theory, if it can be shown to generate significant
research, the chances are that it has something important to say about
human behavior" (Hall & et al., 1985, pp. 19-20). While the second sen-
tence is perhaps arguable, the first embodies a view that appears in
one form or another in most textbooks. The implication of this view
seems clear enough: Theories of personality should play a major role in
the ongoing research activities of personality psychologists. Whether or
not they do is an empirical question, one that can be investigated by
examining representative samples of recent articles in the major jour-
nals of the field.
To be reasonably up to date and efficient in this research, I have
selected for study the most recent complete volumes of two major jour-
nals in the field, the Journal of Personality (Volume 57, 1989) and the
Personality Processes and Individual Differences section of the Jour-
nal of Personality and Social Psychology (also Volume 57, July-
December 1989). The two combined produced a sample of 81 articles in
which there is a total of 3799 references. First, I will report the good
news for partisans of Theories of Personality. Seventy percent of the
112 GERALD A. MENDELSOHN
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Now I do not wish to argue that what is, is necessarily the way
things ought to be. One cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that
the manifest neglect of Theories of Personality by contemporary re-
searchers has more to do with their ignorance, indifference, laziness,
lack of historical sense, and low horizons than with the inadequacies of
the classical theories. But that seems to me incorrect on several
grounds. First, it is implausible that researchers would not be drawn to
theories that are useful, ones that could serve integrative and heuristic
functions. Why would they willfully ignore so valuable a resource if it
existed? Second, as I argued earlier, the speculative, imprecise, and
anachronistic character of the canonical theories do, in fact, render
them inadequate for contemporary scientific purposes. It is important
to note in this respect that the theorists whose positions are most
nearly free of those limitations, for example, Allport, Bandura, Cattell,
Eysenck, and Mischel, have a far from trivial influence on current re-
search. Finally, I believe that it is a misreading of the contemporary
literature to regard it as devoid of theoretical inspiration or signifi-
cance. What is true is that, with the exceptions just noted, the theories
that figure in the literature are other than those that appear in text-
books. It would be difficult, however, for many, I fear most, of our
students to appreciate the fact or even to understand that personality
is an evolving field, not one mired in the contemplation of the great
figures of its past.
And yet a problem remains. If it is true, as I would have appeared
to argue, that the field is in a healthy and productive state, why is
there a widespread feeling (one I share) that much of the empirical
literature is empty and trivial. Might it not be that by turning away
from the theorizing of the canonical theorists or by concentrating on
middle-level theories (cf. Maddi, 1984), we have condemned ourselves
to the collection of "itty-bitty'' facts, to use Allport's (1961) telling phrase?
I do not think so. Recent theoretical work based on, say, evolutionary
biology or conceptions of ego development may be lacking in the liter-
114 GERALD A. MENDELSOHN
*The typical contemporary textbook in personality could be reserved for its proper setting
in courses explicitly devoted to the history of ideas in personality. As it stands now, such
courses would be indistinguishable from much of what is presently being taught in the
field; but if we were to break the addiction, they could serve an important function.
PUTTING PERSONALITY THEORIES IN THEIR PLACE 115
ways, did some 50 years ago. We could do no better than to take their
approach as a model now. In the end, all that I am advocating comes
down to this: "Preach what you practice."
REFERENCES
Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Alpert-Gillis, L. J., & Connell, J. P. (1989). Gender and sex-role influence on children's
self-esteem. Journal of Personality, 57, 97-114.
Barzun, J. (1958). Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a heritage. New York: Doubleday.
Brown, P. (1967). Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hall, C. S., & Lindzey, G. (1957). Theories of personality. New York: Wiley.
Hall, C. S., Lindzey, G., Loehlin, J. C., & Manosevitz, M. (1985). Introduction to theories
of personality. New York: Wiley.
Hilgard, J. (1948). Theories of learning. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Levy, L. H. (1970). Conceptions of personality. New York: Random House.
Maddi, S. R. (1984). Personology for the 1980s. In J. Aronoff, R.A. Zucker, & A. I. Rabin
(Eds.), Personality and the prediction of behaviar (pp. 7-41). Orlando, FL: Academic
Press.
Maddi, S. R. (1989). Personality theories: A comparative analysis (5th ed.). Chicago:
Dorsey Press.
Mendelsohn , G. A. (1983). What should we tell students about theories of personality?
Contemporary Psychology, 28, 435-437.
Moskowitz, D. S., & Schwartzman, A. E. (1989). Painting group portraits: Studying
life outcomes for aggressive and withdrawn children. Journal of Personality, 57,
723-746.
Simonton, D. K. (1989). Shakespeare's sonnets: A case of and for single-case histori om-
etry. Journal of Personality, 57, 695-721.
Stagner, R. (1974). Psychology of personality (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
PART FOUR
PRESENT-DAY
PERSPECTIVES ON BASIC
ISSUES
CHAPTER EIGHT
Presented in the APA Symposium, "Fifty Years of Personality Psychology,'' August 28,
1987, New York, New York.
119
120 IRVING E. ALEXANDER
Given such constraints, one would have expected the ultimate dis-
appearance of the study of the individual except when that could be
accomplished by the method of nomothetic comparison. Although this
pattern of investigation became dominant, fortunately it did not turn
out to be the exclusive model and I should like to briefly trace what
seemed to be some of the countervailing forces.
The largest of these remains the unabated curiosity that humans
have about other people and about themselves. This interest is reflected
124 IRVING E. ALEXANDER
The year 1990 produced two books that further illustrate the in-
creased receptivity for this kind of work in the study of personality.
One, Dan McAdams's The Person, is cast in a textbook format but
constitutes a rather wide departure from traditional personality texts.
Although it reviews both theory and research in what has become the
province of standard tomes in this area, its focus and major emphasis is
on the understanding of the person and not simply of people per se. In
this regard, he has devoted a sizable portion of the book, without ne-
glecting traditional coverage, to both theory and research in the per-
sonological mode. The book is dedicated to both Allport and Murray. It
is superbly written, filled with state-of-the-art literature, and should
have a most positive influence on young people beginning the study of
personality. The second, Personology: Method and Content in Person-
ality Assessment and Psychobiography, by Alexander (1990), will by
its title, if nothing else, legitimize the Allport and Murray heritage. It
offers methodological guides to the analysis of personal data, reviews
what may be critical in preparing young scholars for personological
inquiry, and seeks further insights into the interplay between the life
as lived and the work accomplished in the histories of Freud, Jung, and
Sullivan.
While I have reported briefly on what I see as a revival of serious
scholarly work in the personological tradition, I have focused almost
exclusively on work emanating from the general area of personality.
One cannot overlook the fact that the study of individual lives and their
products exists in a variety of fields, both in psychology and in neigh-
boring disciplines. The literature of child development and aging both
reflect recent interest in linguistic analysis of individual subjects. Psy-
chohistorical inquiry appears to be flourishing as evidenced by new
journals devoted to this kind of inquiry. Certainly political analysts
both in the popular press and biographical essays appear to be paying
increasing attention to the effect of personality factors in the perfor-
mance of political leaders. While the increase in scholarly activity is a
positive sign, it also serves to point up the multiplicity of problems
both theoretical and methodological that must be solved before such
study will stand on firm, consensual grounds. Many of these issues are
treated at length by Runyan (1982) and McAdams (1990). What role
personality psychologists and personologists particularly will play in
the development of this field of study will be critical to its essential
success. Historians, political scientists, other social scientists, and even
literary biographers are not likely to generate either the conceptual or
SCIENCE AND THE SINGLE CASE 127
REFERENCES
Block, J. (1961). The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric research.
Springfield, IL: Thomas.
Carlson, R. (1971). Where is the person in personality research? Psychological Bulletin,
75, 203-219.
Chassan, J. B. (1979). Research design in clinical psychology and psychiatry (2nd ed.).
New York: Irvington. (Original work published 1967)
Dailey, C. A. (1971). The assessment of lives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Davidson, P. 0., & Costello, C. G. (1969). N=l: Experimental studies of single cases. New
York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold.
Erickson, E. H. (1958). Young man Luther. New York: Norton.
Erickson, E. H. (1969). Gandhi's truth. New York: Norton.
Hersen, M., & Barlow, D. H. (1976). Single case experimental designs. New York: Per-
gamon Press.
Kelly, G. A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs. New York: Norton.
Kratochwil, T. R. (Ed.) (1978). Single subject research. New York: Academic Press.
Lamiell, J. T. (1981). Toward an idiothetic psychology of personality. American Psychol-
ogist, 36, 276-289.
Lewin, K. (1930). The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in
contemporary psychology. Journal of General Psychology, 5, 141-177.
McAdams, D. P. (1990). The person: An introduction to personality psychology. San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
McAdams, D. P., & Ochberg, R. L. (Eds.). (1988). Psychobiography and life narratives.
Special issue of the Journal of Personality, 56, 1-326.
McCurdy, H. C. (1961). The personal world. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Morgan, C. D., & Murray, H. A. (1935). A method for investigating fantasies: The The-
matic Apperception Test. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 34, 209-306.
Murray, H. A. (1955). American Icarus. In A. Burton & R. E. Harris (Eds.), Clinical
studies in personality (Chapter XVIII). New York: Harper & Brothers.
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Neufeld, R. W. (1977). Clinical quantitative methods. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Rorschach, H. (1921). Psychodiagnostik. Bern: Bircher.
Rosenberg, S., & Jones, R. (1972). A method for investigating and representing a per-
son's implicit theory of personality: Theodore Dreiser's view of people. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 22, 372-386.
Rotter, J. B., & Rafferty, J. E. (1950). Manual: The Rotter incomplete sentences blank.
New York: Psychological Corporation.
Runyan, W. McK. (1982). Life histories and psychobiography. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Scharfstein, B. (1980). The philosophers: Their lives and the nature of their thought. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, M. B. (1966). The single case in clinical psychological research. Journal of Gen-
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Simonton, D. K. (1975). Sociocultural context of individual creativity: A trans-historical
time-series analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 1119-1133.
Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (1979). Faces in a cloud: Subjectivity in personality
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Tomkins, S. S. (1979). Script theory: Differential magnification of affects. In H. E. Howe
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SCIENCE AND THE SINGLE CASE 129
Tomkins, S. S. (1987). Script theory. In J. Aronoff, A. I. Rabin, & R. A. Zucker (Eds.),
The emergence of personality (pp. 147-216). New York: Springer.
Tomkins, S. S. (1991). Affect, imagery, consciousness: The negative affects-anger and
fear (Vol. 3). New York: Springer.
Tomkins, S. S. (1992). Affect, imagery, consciousness: Cognition-duplication and trans-
formation of information (Vol. 4). New York: Springer.
White, R. W. (1975). Lives in progress. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Original
work published 1952; subsequent publication 1966)
CHAPTER NINE
Describing Lives
Gordon Allport and the "Science" of Personality
BERTRAM J. COHLER
No one has approached the task of describing lives with greater humil-
ity than Gordon Allport, whose contributions have been so important in
shaping contemporary psychological inquiry. At the time of his death,
in 1967, he was a preeminent figure in the human sciences; his work
encompassed social psychology and social ethics as well as personality
inquiry. He largely fashioned the concept of social attitudes, and his
conjectures about the ways these determine our actions have led to
numerous studies of attitude-behavior relations. His integrative work,
The Nature of Prejudice (1954b), illustrated how multiple perspectives
could be brought usefully to bear on a social problem. His historical
survey [in the Handbook of Social Psychology (1954a) and reprinted in
the two editions that followed] has edified numerous psychologists and
sociologists and promises to retain its status as a basic source well into
the twenty-first century.
Allport identified the central issues regarding both methods of study
and substantive areas of inquiry in social psychology. However, he is
best known for his contributions to the study of the person. Reviewing
the history of personality psychology, Craik (1986) suggests that All-
port's 1937 text, along with Stagner's (which appeared in the same
year), had much to do with advancing the study of personality from a
131
132 BERTRAM J. COHLER
problem held little interest for Allport: It did not fully address the rich
distinction laid out by Windelband.
Allport (1962) advocated a "morphogenic" perspective, which pre-
sumed (1) a unique organization or structure of personality within each
person, and (2) no uniqueness of elements (i.e., traits) of which the
structure was composed. He was more concerned with advancing the
morphogenic point of view than with predicting particular actions, dem-
onstrating behavioral regularity, or highlighting the idiography-
nomothesis polarity as initially portrayed by Windelband.
PERSONAL DOCUMENTS
Allport opposed the mechanistic "drive" theories of his time and those
developmental theories that postulated strong links between early child-
hood experiences and one's adult personality. His psychology is a reac-
tion against behavioristic interpretations (e.g., Miller & Dollard, 1941),
which regarded personality as sets of habits or behavior tendencies
specific to the particular situations in which they were learned, as well
as against those psychoanalytic theories of development that presume
powerful and long-lasting motivational consequences of the child's mas-
tering of developmental tasks.
The formulation devised by Allport designates traits as the units
in terms of which personality is to be described and the proprium to
account for the individual's sense of selfhood.
TRAITS
organization within the individual rather than whether they are instru-
mental or motivational. Indeed, the definition of personal disposition
(Allport, 1961, p. 373) is virtually identical with the definition of trait
(p. 347), except for a parenthetical addition of the phrase "peculiar to
the individual." Morphogenic study, the mapping of personal disposi-
tions in terms of their salience and interconnectedness, is a means of
achieving comparatively full knowledge of another person.
Interconnectedness is clearly of prime importance. If the theory
cannot specify how the elements go together, it ends by portraying the
person as little more than a bundle of traits, some highly salient, some
less salient. A theory of personality ought to account for one's feeling of
identity or at least attempt to explain how it is that most people achieve
and maintain a sense of coherence or integrity of experience.
The past two decades have seen an appreciable shift toward sub-
jectivism in personality psychology. This trend has led to a resurgence
of interest in the self (including self-esteem) and in phenomenological
approaches to personality. The focus is now on subjective organization
of experience; there has been a dramatic turning away from the be-
havioral tradition. Concern with overt actions and their consequences
has been replaced, to a large extent, by concern with the ways persons
construct meaning in their lives. A partial list of illustrative topics
includes the origins and functions of plans and intentions (Ainlay, 1986);
autobiographical memory (Rubin, 1986) and its incessant revision (Green-
wald, 1980); the social construction of narratives (Elder et al., 1984);
wishes, goals, strivings, and projects (Emmons, 1989; Little, 1983); main-
tenance of self-congruity in the face of inconsistent or dissonant infor-
mation (Sirgy, 1986); and the ways in which we formulate the meanings
of our actions (Wegner & Vallacher, 1987).
Within psychoanalysis, concern has shifted from study of experi-
ence-distant concepts derived by analogy from experimental psychol-
ogy (such as ego functions or processes ) to the experience-near realm,
focusing on determinants of sense of coherence and capacity for solace.
Theorists as diverse as W. D. Winnicott (1965), George Klein (1976),
and Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977) have sought to describe dynamics of the
process by which one maintains a sense of personal integrity. Within
child psychology, works by Kagan (1980, 1981) and Kegan (1982) pre-
sent constructiv~evelopmental perspectives highlighting the emer-
gence of selthood.
Lasch (1979) views this emerging focus on subjective experience as
DESCRIBING LIVES 141
and the social psychologists Gergen and Gergen (1983) and Antonovsky
(1979, 1987) are just a few of the many writers whose descriptions of
the self are highly compatible with Allport's 1961 statement. The writ-
ings of Klein and Kohut are perhaps the clearest examples. Klein pos-
tulates the existence of an active self that functions as an integrator or
synthesizer of one's experiences; when it is operating effectively, the
person has a sense of continuity, coherence, and integrity-experience
is rendered "self-syntonic." Perceived coherence is by no means a lux-
ury, though. Kohut has documented the impact on lives of the failure to
maintain it: People who lack a coherent narrative of the course of their
lives report feelings of depletion and low morale. They sometimes re-
sort to disavowal or disowning of their actions in order to maintain a
consistent self-narrative, but this is a psychologically risky expedient
because it often leads to a sense of fragmentation.
I do not wish to imply that all the self theorists took their cue from
Allport's concept of the proprium. They may well have come by their
ideas independently or gotten them from others (in 1951, for example,
both Carl Rogers and Jean Piaget published books specifying the im-
portance of congruity between percepts and self-structures or sche-
mata). Though Allport was a penetrating thinker and writer, like other
scholars he was also both product and agent of the Zeitgeist. His works
need to be understood in historical perspective as well as on their own
merits. I want to suggest that Allport was one of the creators of the
Zeitgeist of academic psychology in the second half of the twentieth
century; as such, it is likely that he influenced some of the self theorists
who were his contemporaries and some of those who followed.
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
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(Eds.), Making sense of modern times: Peter L. Berger and the vision of interpretive
sociology (pp. 31-56). New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Allport, G. W. (1929). The study of personality by the intuitive method: An experiment in
teaching from The Locomotive God. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
24, 14-27.
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, Rine-
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Allport, G. W. (1954a). The hist~rical background of modern social psychology. In G.
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Addison-Wesley.
Allport, G. W. (1954b). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Allport, G. W. (1960). Personality and the social encounter. Boston: Beacon Press.
Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Allport, G. W. (1962). The general and unique in psychological science. Journal of Per-
sonality, 30, 405-422.]
Allport, G. W. (1965). Letters from Jenny. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Allport, G. W. (1966). Traits revisited. American Psychologist, 21,1-10.
Allport, G. W. (1968). The person in psychology: Selected essays. Boston: Beacon Press.
Allport, G. W., & Vernon, P. E. (1931). A study of values. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, stress, and coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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stay well. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bandura, A. (1982). The psychology of chance encounter and life paths. American Psy-
chologist, 37, 747-755.
Bern, D. (1983). Constructing a theory of the triple typology: Some (second) thoughts on
nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality. Journal of Personality, 51,
566-577.
Chiriboga, D. (1978). Evaluated time: A life-course perspective. Journal of Gerontology,
33, 388-393.
144 BERTRAM J. COHLER
and the human sciences: Philosophical papers (Vol. 2, pp. 15-57). Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Wegner, D., & Vallacher, R. (1987). The trouble with action. Social Cognition, 5, 179--190.
Weintraub, K. J. (1975). Autobiography and historical circumstances. Critical Inquiry, 1,
821--848.
Windelband, W. (1904). Geschicte und Naturwissenschaft. Strassburg: Heitz.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Ego distortion in terms of the ''true" and "false" self. In D. W.
Winnicott (Ed.), The maturational processes and the facilitating environment
(pp. 140-152). New York: International Universities Press.
CHAPTER TEN
147
148 DAVID G. WINTER
Second, the dates of moves of Glenn and Isabel and the birth of
their first child match the actual details of the Allports' life. Moreover,
all of the facts about "Ross" mentioned in the letters are consistent
with the biographical details of Allport's roommate, as printed in the
class of 1919 reports published by the Harvard Alumni Office: private
preparatory school in Chicago, military service during 1917-1919, and
various merchandising positions in New York up to his death.
In publishing the letters, Allport wrote that he disguised the names
of all places (except New York and Chicago) and persons when he
published the letters (1965, p. vi). For example, Ross is said to have
attended Princeton, and Jenny's family of origin was said to be located
in Montreal. In fact, however, Allport neglected to alter a few minor
details, and these "slips" first suggested to me the real identities of the
correspondents. (1) On August 27, 1926, Jenny wrote ironically that
"This has been a wonderful week-Pres[iden]t Eliot gone-Valentino
gone .... " Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University from 1869
to 1909, died on August 22 (Rudolf Valentino, the movie star, died the
next day), but surely this event would be of greater interest to the
mother of a Harvard graduate than to the mother of a Princeton grad-
uate. (2) On a Sunday in November 1929, Jenny wrote:
Last night when coming home ... my eye fell on the evening paper
"Princeton 10-Yale 6." ... How lovely for our beloved College to
win again. Only 1 year ago yesterday Ross drove me to New Haven
to the game. (Allport, 1965, p. 72)
In fact, 10--6 was the score of the Harvard-Yale game in 1929, and it
was the Harvard-Yale game (not the Princeton-Yale game) that had
been played in New Haven the previous year.
Ross's obituary in the Harvard Class of 1919 fourth report (issued
in 1936) was signed by "G. W. A." (obviously Gordon Allport). It in-
cludes the following remembrance, which is both consistent with and
yet quite different from the Ross of the letters:
His classmates will remember [Ross] for his distinguished appear-
ance and bearing, for his Irish love of argument, and for his persua-
sive speech. He took unfailing delight in the gentle pleasures of
social and intellectual comradeship. Always prepared to challenge
uncritical opinions held merely on the strength of tradition, he ex-
erted a maturing influence on his associates such as might be ex-
pected from an instructor but scarcely from a fellow student.
Although vigorous in argument, he never harbored grudges nor
placed undue emphasis upon mere differences in opinion. He had
many friends. (Harvard class of 1919, 1936, p. 189)
150 DAVID G. WINTER
What a delicate task writing this obituary must have been for Gordon
Allport! The occasion called for praising Ross; yet Allport was also
regularly corresponding with Jenny, who kept pouring out her own
ambivalent feelings and bitterness about Ross. In fact, Jenny read and
edited what he wrote. (A draft of this obituary, with annotations in
Jenny's handwriting, is preserved in the Allport papers in the Harvard
University Archives.) The obituary concludes with a simple sentence
that gives scarcely a hint of the Jenny and Ross saga of the Letters:
"He is survived by his mother who resides in New York."
* I have retained the pseudonyms "Jenny" and "Ross" because I do not see any reason to
use their real names (although they are given in available records). I have used "Glenn"
and ''Gordon Allport" interchangeably.
GORDON ALLPORT AND "JENNY" 151
to Jenny does not alter the relationship, nor does it affect the flow of
the narrative" (1965, p. viii); but without examining both sides of the
correspondence, we cannot evaluate such a claim.* Even Jenny's side is
incomplete. For "purposes of publication," we are told, "the Letters
have been abridged to approximately one-third their original length."
Baldwin (1941, p. 19) states that originally there were 301 letters, of
which 100 were used in his analysis; but the published book contains at
least portions of over 150 letters. We know little about the selection
process beyond Allport's vague statement that he "made a special ef-
fort to preserve the original proportion of subject matter'' (1965, p. vi). t
Since the unpublished parts of the correspondence are not in Allport's
papers in the Harvard University Archives, we must assume that they
were destroyed. Perhaps scattered references to "Jenny'' will be found
among Allport's other correspondence, teaching notes, or other personal
papers that would shed more light on his feelings about the relationship.
Whatever Allport's reasons for editing, commenting on, and pub-
lishing the letters, we must realize that he was not a detached editorial
observer, but rather a participant in a demanding and difficult relation-
ship. Most readers, for example, find Jenny a difficult and double-binding
correspondent, who demanded time and effort while playing on emo-
tions and guilt. Christmas 1926 was an example. On December 15, 1926,
she wrote, "Ask dear Isabel not to send any Christmas gift this year,
* Interestingly
enough, Allport discussed these issues in his classic work on the use of
personal documents in psychology:
The use of letters in research ... is complicated by the necessity of considering
the personality of the recipient as well as that of the sender, the relationship
existing between the two, and the topics of thought that comprise the exchange
of letters. (1942, p. 108)
t Baldwin gives the most detailed description of how this selection was made:
The material eliminated was the personal information which would identify the
characters, and most of the incidental chatter common in letters. This included
thanks for gifts, answers to questions asked by the correspondents, and similar
material. The remaining material in the letters included narratives of past and
present experiences, comments on Jenny's attitude toward these experiences,
and remarks about the people she met. A fair sample of this material was
included in the selection. The selected set of letters was designed to give the
same impression of Jenny as the original. (1942, pp. 165-166)
There is some confusion about the exact materials used by Baldwin (1941, 1942). Accord-
ing to Allport (1942, p. 46), Baldwin used the complete text of Jenny's letters, from the
beginning through November 2, 1927, a period represented by only 35 whole or partial
letters 1n Letters from Jenny. As noted above, Baldwin stated that he used 100 out of 301
letters.
152 DAVID G. WINTER
Even at the end of his life, Allport wrote about Jenny in his own auto-
biography: "Here surely is a unique life, calling for psychological analy-
sis and interpretation" (Allport, 1968a, p. 403).
Regardless of how much Jenny influenced Allport's idiographic con-
cerns, his description and analyses of Jenny (1965, Chapters 5-9)-
seven or eight major themes, each expressed in adjectives or phrases
chosen both to capture the unique individual characteristics of the per-
son and also to reveal whatever latent unities exist beneath superfi-
cially divergent behaviors-stands as a model of the Allportian method
of personality assessment. His descriptive methods might be compared
to art history (tracing the stylistic development of the individual) rather
than chemistry (analyzing complex substance into a few basic elements).
Allport actually developed such a comparison in a 1938 lecture that was
published in a collection of papers on personality (Allport, 1960) while
Murray explicitly used the chemistry analogy to describe his own ap-
proach (Murray, 1938, pp. 142-143).
THERAPEUTIC SKEPTICISM
Knowing his true role in the Jenny case, we can see in Allport's
editorial discussion of the role of Glenn and Isabel a sense of personal
powerlessness about the possibility of intervention:
What Glenn and Isabel wrote to Jenny did not alter the relation-
ship appreciably. Jenny wanted a pair of sympathetic listeners. Hav-
ing found them she proceeded to pour out the story of her hopes,
jealousies, striving and defeat. For eleven years Glenn and Isabel
listened willingly but made no effective attempt to alter the life-
drama being enacted before them. Indeed, they were powerless to
do so. (Anonymous, 1946, p. 316)
While Allport may have felt powerless to alter Jenny's life, he did write
letters recommending that she be admitted to a church-supported home,
some 18 months after Ross's death.*
Allport's feelings of powerlessness to intervene in Jenny's life stand
in sharp contrast to his committed activism in many other situations.
Yet this powerlessness does echo his professional doubts about the pos-
sibility of deep-seated transformations of character through therapy.
(Allport's own theory of personality, for example, has few explicit ther-
apeutic implications.) In the introduction to the published letters, All-
port asked of Jenny, "Could proper guidance or therapy at an appropriate
*Letters from Allport to D. B. Aldrich, April 26, 1931, Allport papers in the Harvard
University Archives.
GORDON ALLPORT AND "JENNY" 155
time have helped alter the rigid course of her conduct" (1965, p. viii)?
In the end, he was pessimistic: "Glenn and Isabel made a good 'third
ear' as does any helpful psychotherapist. But Jenny was incapable of
advancing in insight because of the tenacity of her temperament and
the set of her world-view'' (1965, p. 218).
and the usefulness of projective techniques all follow from this funda-
mental distinction. '1\vo examples illustrate the point:
I am fully aware of my heterodoxy in suggesting that there is, in a
restricted sense, a discontinuity between normal and abnormal mo-
tivation, and that we need a theory that will recognize this fact....
There is still a world of difference, if not between normal and ab-
normal people, then between the healthy and unhealthy mecha-
nisms involved in the development of motivation. (1953, p. 105)
The issue, as we have said, is of the highest importance for person-
ality theory. If we regard all the acquisitions of an adult (his altru-
ism, his ideals, his mature tastes, and his "ought" conscience) as
"secondary," or, as Freud has said, as "transparent sublimations" of
id processes, we have an animalistic view of the nature of normal
adult personality.... The point at issue, we repeat, is the relative
importance of unconscious and conscious functions in forming and
maintaining personality. (1961, pp. 148-149)
Elms (1972) described Allport's view of human nature as "the clean
personality ... reject[ing] psychological data on such unsavory creatures
as rats, children, and neurotics as being largely irrelevant to the under-
standing of the mature personality'' (pp. 630-631). Actually, Allport did
not deny the existence of unconscious wishes that distort reality and
defeat rational striving. Rather, he was concerned to circumscribe their
role, to limit their application, to "segregate" the normal and the abnor-
mal. This is made clear in his final summing up of Jenny:
We shall have to admit that in her personality neurotic processes
took the upper hand. Narrowness, rigidity, inappropriateness marked
her behavior. Compulsively she expressed her anger, having little
tolerance for frustration. Almost always she dwelt on the past, rig-
idly and regressively.... If character neurosis is ''inflexible self-
centeredness" ... then Jenny stands diagnosed .... Toward the end
of her life ... from the neurosis an actual psychosis seems to be
developing. (1965, p. 221)
FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
What role did the relationships with Jenny and Ross play in All-
port's own experience? Here again, without a complete biography it
is difficult to distinguish influence from illustration, or causation from
resonance. Still, a few themes can be identified as guides to further
exploration.
158 DAVID G. WINTER
JENNY AS MOTHER
Nellie (his mother) and Jenny were both similar and different. Like
Jenny, Nellie had a strong philosophical interest (but one that kept
evolving rather than getting mired in the same self-defeating grooves),
a strong sense of autonomy, and great sensitivity to beauty. Early reli-
gious training fostered in both women a sense of "unworthiness." In
later years, however, Nellie's religious views, broadened with the study
of anthroposophy, evolved into a sense of gratitude and serenity, whereas
Jenny remained an embittered skeptic, tormented by self-hatred. Per-
haps as a result, Nellie was generous and therefore generative, never
putting "obstacles in the paths of others" (Allport, 1944, p. 27), while
Jenny's Letters are the story of obstacles between mother and son.
ROSS AS DOUBLE
World War I
At the end of their sophomore year in the spring of 1917, however,
their paths diverged. The United States entered World War I. Ross
enlisted in the ambulance corps and went off to France. Returning in
1919, he finished college but was never able to settle down and estab-
lish himself. From 1920 until his death in 1929, Ross held and lost jobs
with at least four different companies and even served in the Marines
for a short time. As he wrote to Glenn shortly before his death, "I am
worried about my job which seems shaky, and my life which seems
futile" (Allport, 1965, p. 66). As a result of the war, he had become, as
160 DAVID G. WINTER
Allport put it, a member of the ''lost generation ... distorted, badly
adjusted to old scenes and old ambitions" (Allport, 1965, p. 5).
For Gordon Allport, in contrast, "World War I dislocated my pro-
gram only slightly" (1968a, p. 381). He stayed in college and graduated
with his class in 1919. A year teaching English in Istanbul gave "free-
dom and novelty and [a] sense of achievement" (p. 383). There followed
a fellowship for graduate study at Harvard, a traveling fellowship for
two years in Germany (where he studied with Wertheimer, Kohler, Spran-
ger, Stern, and Werner) and England. With the offer of an instructor-
ship at Harvard and an invitation to develop a course in the new field
of the "psychology of personality," he was clearly launched on a suc-
cessful and distinguished career.
* Baldwin, writing with at least the implicit imprimatur of Gordon Allport, gives the most
vivid description of Ross (and Jenny's view of Ross) during this time:
Ross and his [first] wife were divorced, but Jenny bitterly resented Ross's
interest in other women. She found numerous defects in the character of each
likely candidate for Ross's affection. A number of girls entered the scene, each to
be succeeded by the next in line. Vivien, the last and most prominent, was not
disliked at first but her interest in Ross made her thoroughly hated. (1942,
p. 165; see also 1941, pp. 22-25)
GORDON ALLPORT AND "JENNY" 161
SUMMARY
This chapter has established Gordon Allport's true role in the Let-
ters from Jenny. I have gone beyond this established fact to speculate
*These speculations suggest that Allport's view of Freud would have become more nega-
tive after the beginning of the Jenny correspondence (1926) and especially after the death
of Ross (1929). Such a prediction could be explored through a close reading of Allport's
psychological writings and papers, notes, and professional correspondence between 1921
(when he actually met Freud) and 1937, when he published Persorwlity: A Psyclwlogical
Interpretation.
162 DAVID G. WINTER
about how Allport's role affects our interpretation of the Jenny case
and to suggest ways in which aspects of the case may relate to All-
port's life and personality theory. Of course, these speculations need to
be checked against the facts that will emerge from further biographical
research on Gordon Allport. In a time when personality psychology has
begun to focus on the personalities of its founders, this chapter is a
small contribution to that task.
REFERENCES
LAWRENCE S. WRIGHTSMAN
OVERVIEW
165
166 LAWRENCE S. WRIGHTSMAN
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES-
ALLPORT'S AND THE PRESENT
A second contrast between Allport's work and the present deals
with theoretical perspectives. Allport himself, in Letters from Jenny
(1965), carried out one of the most visible and extensive analyses of
ALLPORT'S PERSONAL DOCUMENTS 171
personal documents. Between the ages of 58 and 70, Jenny Gove Mas-
terson wrote more than 300 letters to two young friends, a married
couple who were living in a nearby Eastern college town. Her friend-
ship with the young man extended back to the time-a decade before-
when he had been a college roommate of Jenny's son, Ross. The exchange
of letters began in March 1926 and continued without interruption-an
average of a letter exchanged about every two weeks-for 11:1,.2 years,
until Jenny's death in October 1937.
Allport, after reprinting excerpts from most of the letters, analyzed
Jenny's personality from three theoretical perspectives: existential (or
phenomenological), depth (or psychoanalytic), and structural-dynamic.
Allport carried out his interpretations in the early 1960s before psy-
chology had felt the impact of dialectic thinking.
We now have other and, I believe, more appropriate models for
interpreting sets of letters (Wrightsman, 1988). Different theories of
personality seem congenial with different types of personal documents.
Autobiographies and memoirs are retrospective, and often there are
significant acts of filtering, reframing, and justifying within them; their
analyses seem most congenial with deterministic theories such as psy-
choanalysis or social-learning theory. In contrast, diaries and collections
of letters are more relevant to a dialectic theory, because they repre-
sent an ongoing, but constantly changing, production of raw material.
My reading of Jenny Masterson's letters leads me to conclude that
what is missing from Allport's analyses is a focus on the dynamic, con-
stantly changing relationship between Jenny and her son, Ross, who
was clearly the most important person or object in her worldview. Jenny's
feelings shift from trust and love to distrust and revulsion and back
again. We could employ various ways of labeling the dialectic that is
operating within Jenny: a tug between trust and distrust of Ross; pulls
between insistence on her financial independence and her reliance and
dependence on Ross and others; vacillations between realistic planning
and helpless despair. Thus can contemporary theory enrich the inter-
pretations of personal documents.
5. Stewart and Healy (1985): The study of adaptation to stress and life change
The explosion of interest in adult psychological development that we have witnessed
in the last decade has given renewed interest to the study of autobiographies. Daniel
Levinson and his colleagues (1977) elicited autobiographies from their subjects as part of
their investigation of stages in men's development. Abigail Stewart and Joseph Healy
have analyzed autobiographies in identifying reactions to stressful events and adaptation
to life changes.
CONCLUSION
the cost in carrying them out. (He once told me that every piece of
research he had completed was unfunded, with the exception of the
information transmission research he did for the government during
World War II.) He might be surprised that some fundamental prob-
lems, such as how to generalize knowledge from a single case, have still
not been systematically examined. I believe he would urge us, in his
gentle way, not to forget the whole person as we apply our new and
sophisticated analyses to the investigation of personal documents.
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Allport, G. W. (1942). The use of personal documents in psychological science. New
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write Death comes for the Archbishop. Commonweal, 7, 713-714.
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ALLPORT'S PERSONAL DOCUMENTS 175
ROY F. BAUMEISTER
177
178 ROY F. BAUMEISTER
ciation of its importance and capabilities. Each decade since has added
its views and its data, as not only psychology but indeed all the social
sciences and humanities became fascinated with the nature of selfhood
and identity.
Second, it is remarkable to note that Allport was willing to at-
tempt a comprehensive summary of self, listing if not integrating all
major aspects of it that psychology had found. A similar comprehensive
inventory is desperately needed today. Our theories and findings about
self have expanded all out of control, and few attempt to provide an
overview or even to fit their data into a comprehensive theory of the
self. For a great scholar like Allport to attempt such an overview in the
1940s was intellectually audacious; for anyone to attempt it today, with-
out years of work, is almost absurd. Yet in a sense it fails to do justice
to Allport's memory for us not to try. Later in this chapter, I shall
attempt to provide at least an outline of what such a comprehensive
theory of self would require today.
Third, one notes that Allport sometimes confused self and person-
ality. This confusion persists today; it is hard to draw the line. Most of
us would say that the self is not the same thing as the totality of
personality; perhaps the self should be considered part of personality.
All personality traits do not belong in the self. One's score on extraver-
sion, for example, is not a measure of self. The reason for the confusion
between self and personality has to do with the self-concept, which
does potentially include all one's traits--or at least one's beliefs about
one's traits. A recent work defined the self as "a person's mental repre-
sentation of his or her own personality" (Kihlstrom et al., 1988, p. 146).
While this definition leaves out interpersonal aspects, social identity,
the decision-making aspect of self, and perhaps a few others, it does
effectively call attention to the relation between self-concept and per-
sonality. Self includes one's ideas about one's personality.
Fourth, Allport had fairly little to say about identity. Erik Erikson
had not yet coined the term identity crisis. Writing in 1943, in the
middle of World War II, Allport did not see the Americans as obsessed
with their identity crises, with finding themselves, and so forth. Since
then, this has become an area of major focus. Identity, as a socially
constructed definition of self, has been an increasingly important fea-
ture of self research over the past several decades. In Allport's day, the
self was understood primarily in terms of the psychodynamic ego, but
later generations of scholars have come to appreciate the need to aug-
ment the notion of ego with an understanding of cultural factors, inter-
personal processes, and so forth.
Fifth, Allport emphasized the unity of self. The self is indeed expe-
CONCEPTIONS OF SELF AND IDENTITY 179
The natural self includes the two inevitably or innately given as-
pects of selfbood. First, there is the physical body. Nowadays in psy-
chology we do not pay all that much attention to the body as an aspect
of self, except perhaps in developmental psychology. Developmentalists
recognize the importance of the bodily self because their attention is
repeatedly forced back to the ineluctable fact that self-knowledge be-
gins with awareness of one's own body. It is also important to keep in
mind that outside the modern, industrialized world, self has always
been equated very much with body. The psychological self, as a net-
work of inner experience and identity definition, is far from universal.
But bodies exist all over the world. Bodies are culturally universal. Self
starts with body.
The other aspect of the natural self is that little window of con-
sciousness that is sometimes called the "knower." Like the body, the
knower is cross-culturally universal. Every conscious individual has one.
It is the owner of sensations and experiences, the subjective aspect of
CONCEPTIONS OF SELF AND IDENTITY 181
We labeled the two types of identity crisis identity deficit and identity
conflict. Identity deficit crises mean having not enough identity: There
is not enough in one's identity to make the choices that need to be
made. The identity deficit has been shown to be much more common
with males than with females, and it seems to be most common in
adolescence and then again at mid-life. It is a matter of not knowing
what one wants to be, not having personal commitments and beliefs,
lacking a long-term life plan, and so forth. The person shows mood
swings, experiments with lots of new possible identifications and ideas,
ruminates over grand issues, reflects a great deal on his or her own
actions and their possible meanings, and so forth. Erik Erikson's work
helped us to see this period of vacillation and personal turmoil as a
form of personal experimentation. The individual tries on new ideas,
traits, loyalties, and futures just as a shopper might try on new clothes
to see what fits and what elicits a favorable reaction from others.
The other is identity conflict, which means too much identity. That
is, faced with some choices or demands, the different parts of identity
make conflicting demands on the person or they prescribe contradic-
tory, incompatible courses of action. For example, the opportunities and
demands of one's chosen career may conflict with obligations to family
and children. Likewise, the immigrant wants to retain allegiance to the
old culture but also embrace the new one. Identity conflicts can occur
at any point in life; unlike identity deficits, they seem to have no partic-
ular developmental link. There is no experimentation or search for new
identifications, no trying out of new patterns. Rather, there is only the
anguished struggle for a path of compromise and often the guilt-filled
repudiation of one of the conflicting elements.
Lastly, let us turn to the action self. The two subheads here refer
to the agent, who makes the choices and decisions, and the motivational
aspect of self. The self is both an actor and a wanter.
The agent is the active element of self. It is what decides, initiates,
chooses. This is a familiar and vitally important aspect of self. This was
perhaps the core of Freud's original concept of the ego, and it is no less
valid and important today.
The motivational aspect includes what the self desires. Actually,
the term "motivation" tends to connote something impersonal, perhaps
unconscious, perhaps situationally induced, and so when referring to
the self it may be more appropriate to use the term "desire." The self's
main desires are the desire to maximize self-esteem and the desire to
184 ROY F. BAUMEISTER
CONCLUSION
I think that these three main parts of the self are sufficient to
cover what is currently known and thought about the self. Some of
these notions were already old hat in Allport's day, whereas others had
scarcely been studied then but have received all of their attention in
the recent decades. Still, that is where we are now in the psychology
of self.
I wish to conclude with one further impression. When I set out to
write my first book on identity, my starting point was the modern
dilemma of identity. Finding oneself, self-actualization, knowing oneself,
and all the other cliches that suggest that problems of identity are
rampant in modern life. The attempt to furnish an account of identity
today in Western culture led me into a project that kept me fascinated
for several years and taught me a great deal.
Yet, when I finished that book, I felt that I had not really solved
my original problem, which was understanding this core dilemma of
modern life. I had indeed given an account of the dilemma of identity,
but I also concluded that much of what we call identity problems is not
really a matter of identity. Rather, it is a matter of the meaning of life.
Finding oneself, and all the rest, is often not a quest for identity per se,
but rather a search for a meaningful life. The underlying malaise is not
a lack of self-knowledge but a lack of purpose and meaning in how one
interprets one's own existence. The natural sequel to my study of iden-
CONCEPTIONS OF SELF AND IDENTITY 185
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
INTRODUCTION
The period from 1968 until the early 1980s was not a prosperous one
for personality psychology. There was growing disenchantment with
the traditional individual differences paradigm and with the apparent
lack of theoretical progress being made in the field. Authors of the
Annual Review chapters on personality regularly bemoaned the state
of the field. Apparently feeling a seven-year itch, the most trenchant
critiques appeared at septimal intervals (Adelson, 1969; Rorer & Widi-
ger, 1983; Sechrest, 1976). The major reason for the dissatisfaction was
the failure of trait measures to predict specific behaviors and the fail-
ure of trait indicators to correlate appreciably with each other. The
most popular solution to the behavioral consistency controversy, the
person X -situation interaction approach, was misguided from the start.
Personologists since the time of Allport argued that situations and per-
sons are not independent of each other, that people seek out and avoid
situations on the basis of their psychological propensities. This has now
been demonstrated in several empirical studies (Diener et al., 1984;
Emmons & Diener, 1986; Emmons et al.,1986; Snyder & Ickes, 1985).
Clearly it makes no sense to partition variance to persons and situa-
187
188 ROBERT A. EMMONS
cite Walter Mischel in the opening paragraph of our articles nor apolo-
gize for the sad state of affairs of the field. A renewal of interest in
motivational concepts has played a significant role in this revival. It is
appropriate that on this 50th anniversary we are returning to an idio-
graphic analysis of motivation. There has been a clear shift from the
nomothetic social motives, which dominated the motivational literature
over the past 30 years, toward more molecular, idiographic goal units,
which are tied closer to everyday naturally occurring experience. Goals
possess many desirable properties. Their hierarchical structure with
links to both higher and lower levels, the flexibility and discrimina-
tiveness yet coherence that the concept implies and its amenability to
individual differences measurement make the goal concept a highly de-
sirable unit of analysis for personality psychology.
RECOMMENDATIONS
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196 ROBERT A. EMMONS
Allport (1937) had a very strong opinion about where to look in order
to figure out the content and structure of people's personalities: Look
at their expressive movements. That is, look not only at what people
are doing, but how they are doing it; listen not only to what they are
communicating, but also the manner in which they are communicating
it. In telling us to take these expressive movements very seriously,
Allport was not telling us to disregard what people are doing or trying
to do. In fact, he maintains that what people are trying to do is most
fundamental in revealing the nature of their traits. But still, he cau-
tioned, we should not ignore the "hows" of behavior. Sometimes the
ways that people do things are redundant with the fact that they are
doing those things. To embellish Allport's own example a little (1937,
pp. 464-465), if a group of people were to walk to Yankee Stadium
every time the Yankees had a home game, that behavior would suggest
that they were very enthusiastic about Yankee baseball. If, in addition,
one were to observe that on the way to the Stadium, they all had
bubbly faces and sprightly gaits, and that their tee shirts, hats, watches,
and tote bags were all emblazoned with the Yankee insignia, that infor-
mation would only serve to underscore the information already avail-
able from the knowledge that they attend every game. But, Allport
197
198 BELLA M. DEPAULO
Allport had a very broad view of the kinds of behaviors that might
be meaningfully expressive. Some of these are very familiar to contem-
porary students of nonverbal communication, including cues such as
facial expressions, body postures, speech fluency, and vocal intensity.
Other expressive cues that interested Allport are somewhat less famil-
iar to us now-cues such as the speed with which we draw things, the
size of the check marks that we make when filling out checklists, and
the degree to which we overestimate the size of angles. Still other cues
are ones that were once of some interest to psychologists, but, with a
few exceptions, are no longer taken very seriously. These include styles
of handwriting and the pressure applied to one's pen or pencil while
writing.
Allport thought that these very diverse expressive behaviors fell
into three basic clusters of expansiveness, emphasis, and outward ten-
dency or extraversion. But if he had modern data-analytic techniques
at his disposal, his heart would be not in the specific clusters but in the
unrotated first factor. He believed that one of the fundamental truths
about expressive behaviors was that they all simultaneously expressed
the same trait. To cite one of his favorite quotes, "One and the same
spirit is manifest in all."
Allport's assumption, then, is clearly one of consistency of expres-
sive movements. He believed that different expressive behaviors were
consistent with each other and that any given expressive behavior, for
a particular individual, would be consistent across time and across situ-
ations. His expectations were not absolute, however. Instead, he cau-
tioned that we should never expect consistency to be perfect. If it
were, then we could take any one expressive behavior and learn every-
thing about personality from it. In contrast, Allport's belief was that
we need to look at the entire patterning of expressive cues and that we
should expect to find as much consistency in expressive behavior as
there is in the personality itself-not more and not less. Expressive
behavior, like personality, includes much that is consistent, but it is also
marked by conflict and contradiction.
ABILITY TO JUDGE OTHERS 199
such as Izard (1971) and Ekman (1972; Ekman & Friesen, 1986) elicited
emotions such as surprise, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and
(most recently) contempt in this very careful way, they found that the
resulting facial expressions could be recognized by persons on every
continent and in every little village into which these researchers ven-
tured. This research, of course, was on accuracy of emotion perception,
and Allport was even more interested in accuracy of personality per-
ception. But that issue, too, has resurfaced, and with a theoretical and
methodological vengeance. At this very moment, three recast papers
on accuracy of person perception are already in print in Psychological
Bulletin: David Funder's (1987), Dave Kenny and Linda Albright's
(1987), and Arie Kruglanski's (1989). Accuracy is back-and just in time
for this fiftieth anniversary celebration.
REFERENCES
207
208 DAVID C. FUNDER
* Ken Craik brought this passage to my attention several years ago. Since then, I have
exploited it many times to establish my own bona fides as a personality psychologist.
t Indeed, things have gotten so had that even some personality psychologists seem to think
there is something wrong with including the study of interpersonal judgments within the
field of personality (e.g., Carlson, 1984).
JUDGMENTS AND PERSONALITY ITSELF 209
* Indeed, research on the judgment process, such as error research, was originally and
explicitly designed to avoid accuracy issues. The brilliant insight of Asch (1946) was that
interesting and important infonnation about the process of judgment could be obtained
in experiments in which subjects judged stimuli that were wholly artificial. As Jones
(1985) pointed out, "Asch solved the accuracy problem by bypassing it." What Jones
210 DAVID C. FUNDER
meant was that by inventing a research paradigm that allowed accuracy issues to be
finessed through the use of artificial stimuli, Asch had provided a way to address other
important issues concerning the process of judgment. It seems ironic as well as unfortun-
ate that, over the years, researchers seemed to forget all this and began to make the
fundamental mistake of interpreting research on process and error as implying that
human judgment is flawed. That is not what Asch had in mind. (Incidentally, human
judgment may well be flawed. But error research is not constituted in such a way as to
find out.)
JUDGMENTS AND PERSONALITY ITSELF 211
* I do not underestimate the problems in gathering the sort of behavioral data that would
allow the accuracy of judgments of personality to be assessed. My point is that unless one
takes the accuracy question seriously, by focusing on more than just the relationship
between different judgments, one will not even begin the formidable task of formulating
and gathering such data.
212 DAVID C. FUNDER
REFERENCES
Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.
Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Joo:rool of Abnormal and Social
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Block, J. (1968). Personality measurement: Overview. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International
Encyclqpedia of the Social Sciences (Vol. 12, pp. 141-179). -New York: Macmillan
and Free Press.
214 DAVID C. FUNDER
Carlson, R. (1984). What's social about social psychology? Where's the person in person-
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nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 303--315.
Funder, D. C. (1987). Errors and mistakes: Evaluating the accuracy of social judgment.
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Psychology, 55, 149-158.
Funder, D. C., & Colvin, C. R. (in press). Congruence of self and others' judgments of
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Funder, D. C., & Dobroth, K. M. (1987). Differences between traits: Properties associated
with interjudge agreement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 409-
418.
Gage, N. L. & Cronbach, L. J. (1955). Conceptual and methodological problems in inter-
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logical Bulletin, 52, 1-23.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gordon Allport
Father and Critic of the Five-Factor Model
215
216 OLIVER P. JOHN AND RICHARD W. ROBINS
(Gough, 1987, p. 1). Whereas each of the individual trait terms repre-
sented in the Big Five structure is a folk concept, the five factors
represent a higher level of abstraction. They were derived from inter-
correlations among trait ratings and, therefore, may not represent any
individual's folk theory. For example, the empirical discovery of the
Surgency (or Extraversion) factor implies that attributions of sociabil-
ity, energy, and dominance tend to covary across individuals, whether
or not the individual making these attributions is aware of these popu-
lation correlations. Nor does the discovery of the Big Five imply that
individual "folk" actually use these broad concepts when thinking about
and describing themselves or others. The difficulty undergraduates have
in remembering the five factors in their personality courses provides
testimony against the folk concept status of the Big Five.
*See McCrae and John (1992) for a discussion of differences between the lexically based
and the questionnaire-based factor structures.
ALLPORT AND THE FIVE FACTORS 223
The change in the empirical status of the Big Five was accom-
panied by a shift in its conceptual status. So far, we have discussed
224 OLIVER P. JOHN AND RICHARD W. ROBINS
the discovery and the evidentiary basis of the five factors. How
should this empirical finding be interpreted? Some researchers be-
lieve that the Big Five constitute a theory of personality. For exam-
ple, Hogan and Hogan (1989) referred to the five dimensions as the
"'big five' theory" (p. 274), and Digman and Takemoto-Chock (1981)
described them as "an impressive theoretical structure" (p. 164).
Such claims are difficult to evaluate because the concept of theory,
especially in personality psychology, is so ambiguous (Chapter 7, this
volume).
Initially, the five factors were tied to the natural language of trait
description and, therefore, were properly interpreted as dimensions of
trait description or attribution (John et al., 1988), rather than as dimen-
sions of personality or traits. Strictly speaking, the Big Five structure
provides only a taxonomy of trait descriptions. Although these trait
descriptions are usually thought to reflect observable regularities in
behavior (e.g., Norman & Goldberg, 1966), the lexical tradition makes
no explicit assumptions (or claims) about the ontological status of the
trait terms or about the causal origin of the regularities to which the
trait terms refer. The Big Five structure was derived through purely
empirical and purposely atheoretical procedures; theoretical considera-
tions, such as questions about the existence and explanatory status of
traits, were deemed unimportant.
However, these questions are of considerable importance to
the Five-Factor Model. The FFM represents one interpretation of
the Big Five dimensions: Although the FFM adopts the Big Five as
its basic structural model, it also includes a number of theoretical
assumptions that do not necessarily follow either from the lexical
approach or from the empirical discovery of the five factors. The FFM
can be viewed as a particular instance of trait theory and makes the
following major claims (McCrae & Costa, 1990): Personality can be de-
scribed in terms of five broad content domains, each of which sub-
sumes several more narrowly defined and correlated subsets or
facets; individual differences in these domains are stable over long
periods of time, have a genetic basis, and derive in part from as yet
unspecified internal (e.g., physiological) mechanisms; individuals can
be described both in general terms by their scores on the five di-
mensions and in more detail by their scores on the larger number of
facets. It is now widely assumed that the FFM has the same concep-
tual status as other questionnaire-based models of personality struc-
ture advocated by trait theorists such as Eysenck (e.g., 1986),
Guilford (e.g., 1959), Cattell (e.g., Cattell et al., 1970), or Tellegen
(e.g., 1985).
ALLPORT AND THE FIVE FACTORS 225
*A third view (Ryle, 1949; see also Wright & Mischel, 1987; Zuroff, 1986) treats traits as
dispositions, defined as tendencies to behave in certain ways in certain kinds of situations.
Whether or not dispositions are causal concepts remains a matter of debate.
tThis causal interpretation does not imply that the five factors are isomorphic with the
underlying causal structures or that they constrain the number of these structures.
ALLPORT AND THE FIVE FACTORS 227
and work toward their goals. Although the five dimensions have not
been used in this way, their origin in the natural language makes
them ideally suited for applications in this type of person-centered
research.
*This Allportian inclination to attend to and value the specific descriptive function that
each trait term might perform has also been highlighted by Buss and Craik (1985).
ALLPORT AND THE FIVE FACTORS 231
CONCLUSIONS
REFERENCES
Allen, B. P., & Potkay, C. R. (1981). On the arbitrary distinction between states and
traits. Journal of Perscmality and Social Psychology, 41, 916-928.
Allport, G. W. (1937). Perscmality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt.
Allport, G. W. (1946). Personality psychology as science: A reply. Psychological Review,
53, 132-135.
Allport, G. W. (1958). What units shall we employ? In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Assessment of
human motives (pp. 238-260). New York: Reinhart.
Allport, G. W. (1962). The general and the unique in psychological science. Journal of
Personality, 30, 405--422.
Allport, G. W. (1968). Traits revisited. In The person in psychology: Selected essays by
Gordon W. Allport (pp. ~6). Boston: Beacon Press.
Allport, G. W., & Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological
Monographs, 47, (No. 211).
Angleitner, A., Ostendorf, F., & John, 0. P. (1990). Towards a taxonomy of personality
descriptors in German: A psycho-lexical study. European Journal of Personality, 4,
89-118.
ALLPORT AND THE FIVE FACTORS 233
Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five dimensions and job performance: A
meta analysis. Personnel Psychology, .U, 1-26.
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(reprinted 1978). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
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zation of behavior. In W. A. Collings (Ed.), Minnesota symposia on child psychology
(Vol. 13, pp. 39-101). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Briggs, S. R. (1989). The optimal level of measurement for personality constructs. In D.
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directions (pp. 246-260). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1984). Acts, dispositions, and personality. In B. A. Maher &
W. B. Maher (Eds.), Progress in experimental personality research (Vol. 13, pp. 241-
301). New York: Academic Press.
Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1985). Why not measure that trait? Alternative criteria for
identifying important dispositions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
48, 934-946.
Cattell, R. B. (1943). The description of personality: Basic traits resolved into clusters.
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476-506.
Cattell, R. B. (1945a). The description of personality: Principles and findings in a factor
analysis. American Journal of Psychology, 58, 69-90.
Cattell, R. B. (1945b). The principal trait clusters for describing personality. Psychologi-
cal Bulletin, 42, 129-161.
Cattell, R. B. (1957). Personality and motivation structure and measurement. Yonkers-
on-Hudson, NY: World.
Cattell, R. B., Eber, H. W., & Tatsuoka, M. M. (1970). Handbook for the Sixteen Person-
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Ability Testing.
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Review of Psychology, 41, 417-440.
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personality: Re-analysis and recomparison of six major studies. Multivariate Behav-
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234 OLIVER P. JOHN AND RICHARD W. ROBINS
PETER BORKENAU
237
238 PETER BORKENAU
mental settings. Among the first empirical studies designed with Mischel's
critique in mind were Jaccard's (1974) on single-act and multiple-act
criteria and Bern and Allen's (1974) on individual differences in cross-
situational consistency. Bern and Allen (1974) referred to Allport's work
at length. The present chapter explores how their approach worked
empirically and the extent to which it embodied Allport's ideas.
stealing. The children did not all have the same trait, but they had
nevertheless their own traits. (Allport, 1937, p. 251-252; italics in
the original)
Thus Allport suggested that it is not situational factors that ac-
count for the low cross-situational consistency of particular behaviors.
Rather, in this passage he is claiming that persons are consistent with
themselves and implying that such consistency is what enables oth-
ers-acquaintances and psychologists alike-to predict their behaviors
from knowledge of their individual dispositions. Cross-situational con-
sistency estimates, however, presume that all subjects do possess ex-
actly the same trait, albeit to different degrees.
Furthermore, Allport points out that there may be qualitatively
important mismatches between subjects' actual traits and the trait con-
jectured by the investigator; these will, of course, tend to reduce the
apparent consistency of personality.
The error of probing for consistency in the wrong place (and failing
to find it, pronouncing in favor of specificity) has been likened by G.
B. Watson to the absurdity of asking whether a person using the
public library has a trait causing him to take out only books with
red or with blue covers. Of course he hasn't. If only the bindings
were studied, no consistency should be expected. But if the subject-
matter of the chosen books was investigated, well-organized traits
of interest would appear. (Allport, 1937, p. 256; italics in the original)
And concerning the problem of misinterpreting individual traits as
situational specificity, he stated: "Statistical methods are ordinarily ap-
plied only to those variables to which all people may be ordered. If
many people do not happen to fit the variable then the illusion of spec-
ificity results" (Allport, 1937, p. 256).
extent, should have the same traits. Rather, trait words are usually
selected from the huge vocabulary of thousands of trait-descriptive
terms (Allport & Odbert, 1936) such that they fit the specific equiva-
lence classes of the individual being described. For instance, we distin-
guish between persons who can be counted on to keep their promises
and persons who are habitually punctual. But if a person has one of
these traits and not the other, we do not speak of him as inconsistently
dependable. We do not first impose a trait term and then modify it by
describing the instances that fail to fall into that equivalence class.
Rather, we attempt first to organize the person's behaviors into ratio-
nal sets and label them afterward.
All this is a paraphrase of Allport's ideas, as Bern and Allen readily
admitted. However, Bern and Allen also suggested a procedure to over-
come the main shortcoming of Allport's idiographic approach; its inabil-
ity to yield testable hypotheses. This is probably the main reason why
Allport's ideas, although documenting an ingenious insight, did not in-
spire a considerable research program (Allport, 1966). Research psy-
chologists are simply not interested in investigating the personalities of
particular ordinary individuals. Rather, they search for general princi-
ples. The main contribution of Bern and Allen's (1974) article, therefore,
was its conceptualizing and initiation of a research program rooted in
Allport's (1937) ideas. The kernel of this program was: "Separate those
individuals who are cross-situationally consistent on the trait dimension
and throw the others out .... we believe that the rewards for this small
idiographic commitment can even be paid in the sacred coin of the
realm: bigger correlation coefficients" (Bern & Allen, 1974, p. 512).
Bern and Allen (1974) tested their prediction for two personality
traits, friendliness and conscientiousness. Subjects completed an
86-item personality inventory, rated themselves on two traits (e.g.,
"In general, how friendly and outgoing are you?"), and indicated their
cross-situational variability for these traits (e.g., "How much do you
vary from one situation to another in how friendly and outgoing you
are?"). Ratings of friendliness and conscientiousness by parents and
peers and several behavior observations served as criteria for cross-
situational consistency. Two measures of trait variability were used:
(1) the self-rated situational variability and (2) a so-called ipsatized
variance index (lVI), which was the ratio of the individual's variance on
the multiple-item scale of the trait and the variance of all responses to
the 86-item inventory. The effects of self-reported variability were as-
sessed by: (1) correlations among ratings of various judges (self, par-
ents, peers, etc.), (2) correlations among observed behaviors, and
(3) correlations between judges' ratings and observed behaviors. It
242 PETER BORKENAU
turned out that the response to the "How much do you vary" item for
friendliness, but not the corresponding lVI, predicted individual differ-
ences in consistency for friendliness. In contrast, the lVI but not the
response to the "How much do you vary" item for conscientiousness
predicted individual differences in consistency for conscientiousness.
Bern and Allen's (1974) study was intriguing and widely cited. There
are more than 500 citations listed in the Social Science Citation Index
up to 1991. Most of the citations welcomed this fresh approach to the
study of personality. The more critical comments, however, referred to
two main problems: the one theoretical and the other one empirical-
whether Bern and Allen's study was really idiographic and whether the
phenomenon could be replicated. I will discuss these two issues in turn.
CONCLUSIONS
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INDIVIDUAL TRAITS 249
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the early 1980s, the idea that ordinary human social cognition is
rational or scientific in character was under serious attack in personal-
ity and social psychology. Personality psychology was in the throes of
the debate concerning whether behavior was consistent across situa-
tions and, although the jury was still out on the issue, powerful voices
and persuasive data suggested that the concept of personality traits
was a quaint shibboleth of commonsense psychology. As Nisbett and
Ross (1980) put it, "the personality theorists' (and the layperson's) con-
viction that there are strong cross-situational consistencies in behavior
may be seen as merely another instance of theory-driven covariation
assessments operating in the face of contrary evidence" (p. 112).
In social cognition circles, a flood of research on errors and biases
in social judgment apparently demonstrated that laypeople were sub-
ject to an extraordinary range of invidious social judgment biases-
laypeople were purported to underestimate the causal role of situa
tional determinants of behavior and overestimate the role of personal
determinants (the so-called fundamental attribution error), to be poor
statisticians, to be unduly influenced by prior theories while underuti-
lizing data, and much more (for reviews, see Markus & Zajonc, 1985;
Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Ross, 1977). As Fiske and Taylor (1984) con-
251
252 GARTH J. 0. FLETCHER
*For philosophical accounts of scientific realism see Bhaskar (1978), Hooker (1987), and
McMullin (1984); for more psychologically oriented treatments, see Howard (1985),
Manicas and Secord (1983), and Greenwood (1989).
254 GARTH J. 0. FLETCHER
Feyerabend, 1975; Kuhn, 1970). The same point holds good for social
psychology and personality research, which is full of controversies in
which apparently disconfirming data have failed to convince the pro-
ponents of the original theories that their hypotheses or theories were
false; examples would include the debate between self-perception theory
and cognitive dissonance theory, the role of consensus information in
social judgment (see Ross & Fletcher, 1985), and whether trait-related
behavior is consistent across situations (see Chapter 17, this volume).
However, what to the orthodox empiricist appears to be a blatant
disregard for evidence can instead be construed as perfectly legitimate
strategies for dealing with recalcitrant data, including positing method-
ological deficiencies in the relevant research, reinterpreting the data so
as to render them consistent with one's preferred theory, or simply
modifying the original theory.
The thrust of my argument can be summed up in the aphorism
that theory is underdetermined by data. This point implies that there is
no algorithm that connects data to theory selection. Instead, theory
evaluation within a scientific community is always a judgment call that
proceeds in a relatively disheveled fashion involving a complex and
subtle interplay between conceptual and empirical concerns.
The loose relation between data and theory perhaps explains why
dissent and argument are permanent features of psychology, and
indeed all science. However, scientific disciplines, again including psy-
chology, can hardly be described as irredeemably inchoate: contro-
versies are resolved, consensus is often attained, and progress is
made. What explains the existence of this consensual aspect of psychol-
ogy? My short answer is in terms of the rational structure of science,
which provides an interlocking set of normative values, rules, and aims
that regulate theory appraisal and development. These values include
some important epistemic criteria used for theory evaluation, apart
from the consistency between theory and data or predictive accuracy
(Fletcher & Haig, 1990; Howard, 1985).
Consider, for example, the following epistemic criteria proposed by
Fletcher and Haig (1990): Explanatory depth involves the postulation
of one or more underlying causal mechanisms to account for the surface
phenomena. A theory that manages to integrate and explain hitherto
disparate items of knowledge possesses the valuable property of unify-
ing power. A theory whose content is not marred by logical inconsisten-
cies has internal coherence while a theory that is consistent with other
entrenched or accepted theoretical knowledge has the virtue of exter-
nal coherence. Fertility refers to the ability of a theory to stimulate
further fruitful lines of research or generate novel and powerful exten-
SCIENTIFIC CREDIBILITY OF COMMONSENSE PSYCHOLOGY 255
sions to our knowledge base. The notion of simplicity has proved diffi-
cult to formulate; nevertheless, scientists are frequently attracted by
theoretical elegance rather than cumbersome complexity. Finally, the
successful application of a mature theory counts as an important epi-
stemic value in a science concerned to give us useful knowledge.
The first criterion (that of explanatory depth) is especially relevant
to scientific realism and embraces a particular theory or concept of
causality known as a generative concept. To conclude this section, I
turn to a brief examination of this concept.
In fact, the evidence concerning this issue shows that the layperson's
hypotheses or theories are usually influenced by data-the claim that
subjects' performance is less than optimal is based on the usual finding
that subjects underutilize the data, according to some normative model
of inference such as Bayes's theorem or to the standard Fisherian anal-
ysis using significance tests (for reviews substantiating this point, see
Einhorn & Hogarth, 1981; Higgins & Bargh, 1987; Ross & Fletcher,
1985). One can view the glass as half full or half empty and be im-
pressed or dismayed at the layperson's attention to predictive accuracy.
A second pivotal point is that if we dispense with a standard
hypothetico-deductive framework and accept the idea that there are
several epistemic criteria available for theory evaluation, then this can
alter the standard interpretation of the layperson's performance in re-
search tasks. Why? Because psychologists typically do not consider all
the epistemic values that their subjects may quite reasonably be con-
sidering. Take, for example, the study by Lepper, Ross, and Lau (1986),
concerned with belief perseverance, in which two groups of high school
subjects performed very well or very poorly at solving novel problems
under the guidance of either thoroughly effective or ineffective instruc-
tional films. In spite of being made aware at a later time of the impact
of the instructional films, subjects continued to draw unwarranted in-
ferences (to use the author's words) concerning their own levels of
ability that were based on their original performances.
But consider the plausible possibility that subjects would have
tried to explain their initial performance and sought to integrate this
new information with their extant knowledge. If we consult our prior
list of epistemic values, this implies that subjects were utilizing values
of explanatory depth, unifying power, and internal and external co-
herence. In turn, this bolstering of the initial ability attributions may
have rendered these judgments less susceptible to sudden revision
when information was received that, from the experimenter's perspec-
tive, apparently decisively invalidated the subjects' original ability at-
tributions. It is all too easy to place subjects in research contexts that
produce inaccurate subject inferences, but this does not entail that such
judgments are necessarily irrational or unwarranted.
Finally, let me briefly consider the overall research literature on
errors and biases in social judgment. Several authors have drawn sim-
ilar conclusions based on literature reviews of this research (Fletcher
& Haig, 1990; Klayman & Ha, 1987); namely, under unfavorable condi-
tions that promote a casual, automatic, or data-driven style of informa-
tion processing, laypeople will typically rely on fallback heuristics or
easily used rules of thumb. On one hand, these heuristics are often
258 GARTH J. 0. FLETCHER
CONCLUSION
One theme running through this chapter has been that common
sense may be more subtle and sophisticated than is often appreciated
and that much of the research and theorizing (of both philosophers and
psychologists) may be vitiated by their often cavalier specification of
the content and structure of our folk psychology theory. Being anxious
to avoid falling into the same trap, I would stress there are some im-
portant and obvious differences between commonsense theory and the
corpus of "scientific" psychological theories.
Commonsense psychological theories, to a large extent, consist of
tacit knowledge, whereas "scientific" theories are laid out in compara-
tively explicit detail. In addition, commonsense psychological theories
seem to have a wider range of uses and aims than scientific theories
and consist of a more amorphous, flexible and sprawling set of concepts
and models than most psychological theories.
Finally, I have argued for the scientific credibility of commonsense
psychology and have suggested that under certain conditions laypeople
are considerably more rational in their social judgments than suggested
by mainstream social cognition. This does not mean, however, that per-
sonality and social psychologists should exploit commonsense psychol-
ogy in an unreflexive fashion or that folk psychology necessarily
represents the correct psychological theory (as, of course, could be said
of any theory in science). To treat common sense as a resource for
theory building is a fine strategy, but to sanctify it is quite another
matter-caveat emptor!
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268 GARTH J. 0. FLETCHER
A Commonsense Approach to
Personality Measurement
RAYMOND N. WOLFE
The sun, the moon, the clouds, and the stars provided ancient astrolo-
gers with clues to people's characters and destinies. Other oracles re-
lied on other sources of information: The hydromancer read the airs,
winds, and waters; the necromancer consulted with the dead; the
haruspex interpreted patterns of lightning or the entrails of a sacrificed
animal; the alchemist read shapes formed by a thin stream of molten
lead poured into a bowl of water. These soothsayers were regarded as
unenlightened by their rivals and descendants, who offered more per-
sonalized pronouncements based on elements of the client's own phys-
ical structure: The chiromancer read the lines on one's palm; the
physiognomist, facial features; the phrenologist, skull conformation.
More recently, psychologists have sought to discern people's character
by interpreting records of their self-expression, such as samples of
handwriting, projective test responses, and nonverbal behavior. Today's
methods of personality measurement arose from this venerable tradi-
tion. Many of them still contain remnants of the occult (the word comes
from the Latin occultus, past participle of a verb meaning to cover up,
to hide) that need to be dispelled.
When personality measurement began to emerge as a subdiscipline
of psychology in the 1920s and 1930s, much of it took place in psychiat-
269
270 RAYMOND N. WOLFE
ric institutions. As Szasz (1968, 1977) and others have pointed out, an
adversarial relationship exists between patients and clinicians in such
settings; assessment in this context is primarily a ritual adjunct to
pejorative labeling.* It therefore behooved the early clinical psycholo-
gists to swathe this part of their craft in mystery. They did so by
developing instruments that were bewildering to laypersons. Projec-
tive tests were well suited to this purpose and soon became a basic tool
of the clinical trade.
Objective inventories, some of them consisting of hundreds of
statements presented for endorsement, tended to be similarly bewil-
dering. The person taking such tests could not be very sure of what
was being measured or how; this was thought to be a desirable state of
affairs from the psychologist's standpoint. Confronted by a great many
statements diverse in content, and ignorant of how one's endorsements
were to be scored, weighted, combined, and mapped onto a personality
profile, the test taker would be hard put to dissimulate systematically
in responding. Even so, psychologists thought that further safeguards
against strategic self-presentation were necessary; procedures in-
tended to detect lying, self-contradiction, and random responding were
devised and incorporated into many scales.
Adversarial logic was not confined to the psychiatric hospital and
the mental hygiene clinic. Psychologists in university and industrial
settings mistrusted their subjects too. Many of the instruments devel-
oped for use with college samples were constructed in the same way as
clinical tests, with subscales designed to spot deliberate or undeliberate
fakery on the part of respondents. Scales that assessed only a single
construct contained buffer items to partly conceal the purpose of the
test by misleading the test taker about what was presumably being
measured. It was taken for granted that an appreciable proportion of
subjects either could not or would not give truthful reports about
themselves. t
Partly because of its origins in clinical psychology, then, early per-
sonality measurement resembled espionage. It was a cat-and-mouse-
like endeavor, with the psychologist seeking clever ways to penetrate
the subject's supposedly elaborate and shifting psychic defenses. The
question always in the background (and often at the focus of attention,
as in the extensive work on response styles) was How can students of
*Anderson (1981) describes the polity's need for experts who are willing to assume the
responsibility of identifying surplus individuals and populations. Szasz (1977, chap. 14)
describes the distinction between technical and ceremonial uses of assessment.
t For an interesting discussion of deception in modern psychology, see Scheibe (1978).
COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT 271
VERIDICALITY
* Interspersal of items measuring various traits has been a common practice in the con-
struction of global inventories. By itself, this does not amount to a serious defect because
sets of dependable items tend to yield dependable variables whether they are inter-
spersed or not; such sets of items tend to cohere predictability, more or less regardless
of the field of items in which they are embedded. Interspersion is thus to some extent
defensible; but because it is a potential source of confusion to the test taker, the common-
sense approach forbids it.
t Although "transparency'' of items has been regarded as a defect (e.g., Epstein, 1984,
p. 312), it is necessary and desirable from a commonsense standpoint. Aiming to enlist the
subject as a reporter of his own characteristics and seeking to achieve this end by
facilitating accurate self-report, straightforward assessment seeks to maximize clarity
and directness without insulting the respondent's intelligence. The work of Knowles
(1988) demonstrates that the responses of college students, at least, become more reliable
as it becomes clearer to the subject exactly what it is that he's being asked to report
about himself; this implies that higher-quality responses are obtained when the trait
being measured is known than when it is unspecified or concealed or disguised.
COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT 275
DEVISING ITEMS
PRELIMINARY ASSUMPTIONS
*These points echo two of the essential principles of scale development laid down by
Jackson (1970, p. 63).
276 RAYMOND N. WOLFE
*Item writing can be done as a convivial activity or both solitarily and in groups. Brain-
storming sessions can facilitate this phase of the work; when they are part of the process,
productivity is doubtless affected by group dynamics as well.
COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT 277
After items are written and edited into presentable form with re-
spect to their surface characteristics, their meaning characteristics
should be evaluated independently by judges using Angleitner and co-
workers criteria, or some variation thereof. This step can identify
statements that need to be altered because they are equivocal or other-
wise suspect. Improvements in clarity cost less, of course, if they can
be achieved early in the sequence. The wisdom of eliminating prospec-
tive items at this stage is questionable, although some deselection here
may be justified if a great many items are available. (Where possible,
one ought to avoid imposing unnecessarily on subjects.) Because psy-
chometric criteria provide the most defensible grounds for item elimi-
nation, however, most decisions to retain or not are best left until a
later stage. ltemmetric facts are associated with and in a sense under-
lie psychometric facts (for documentation, see Angleitner et al., 1986;
Holden et al., 1985) but should not be used in lieu of them. A depend-
able psychometric technology for item selection exists; test builders
can and should rely on it.
Still, the importance of itemmetric analysis as a first step can
hardly be disputed. Straightforward assessment demands that a test
item must not bewilder the subject; careful examination of an item's
surface and meaning characteristics provides a good safeguard against
such bewilderment.
central tendency and dispersion. Any item that yields either a sharply
peaked distribution or an asymmetrical distribution is at once suspect;
nevertheless, all items should be retained for further analysis. It is
quite likely that items showing little dispersion of response and/or ap-
preciable skewness will fare poorly in other analyses. Items exhibiting
either of these features can be suspected of eliciting style-determined
rather than content-determined responses (Jackson, 1970, p. 73) and
will not correlate highly with total scale score (Angleitner et al.,
1986, p. 96).
Estimates of homogeneity are calculated next. These include inter-
item and item-total correlations, Kuder-Richardson reliability, and coef-
ficient alpha. To justify the tester's procedure of adding together the
subject's responses to different items, it is necessary that these re-
sponses exhibit a high level of homogeneity across items: 1.00 is the
ideal. Classical measurement theory specifies interchangeability of
items as a necessary condition for additivity. In practice, however, it
turns out that the content of pairs of items that intercorrelate above .5
is often markedly redundant. Students of personality should therefore
be willing to accept sets of items with interitem correlations in the
range of .2 to .4, which "would seem to offer an acceptable balance
between bandwidth and fidelity" (Briggs & Cheek, 1986, p. 115). Al-
though there is room for debate as to what constitutes an optimal level
of correlations among items, it is obvious that negative interitem corre-
lations or very low positive interitem correlations raise major questions
about the meaning of a total score that is the sum of responses to such
diverse items.
One can increase Kuder-Richardson reliability and the value of co-
efficient alpha by lengthening the scale with parallel items (i.e. items
that merely restate the content of items that already cohere). Some
psychologists may have resorted to this expedient in order to be able
to report higher reliability values.
Can the desired level of internal consistency be obtained through
more legitimate efforts? For a scale to be properly content-saturated
(Jackson, 1970), all of its items have to show purity by exhibiting high
loadings on the factor the scale is supposed to measure and zero load-
ings on factors the scale is not supposed to measure; in other words,
every item must pass the tests of convergent and discriminant validity.
Jackson's (1967) development of the Personality Research Form follows
the steps dictated by this rationale. He started with a fairly detailed
theory-Murray's (1938) theory of psychogenic needs-and sought to
develop a separate scale for each of the 20 needs; these constitute an
excellent base from which to establish the necessary discriminant valid-
280 RAYMOND N. WOLFE
ity. More than 100 candidate items were written for each scale. After
sustained efforts at refinement, he arrived at finished scales, most of
which exhibited both types of validity.
I would like to think that useful instruments can be devised with-
out undertaking so Herculean a task. However, there is no getting
around the fact that several scales need to be developed simultaneously
(or, alternatively, that other established scales have to be used along
with those being developed) if discriminant validity is to be considered
systematically from the beginning.
Test builders with aims more modest than Jackson's can avail
themselves of many techniques for sifting prospective items. Beyond
interitem correlations and other well-known estimates of internal con-
sistency stands a large array of factor analytic methods, many of which
offer the kind of information needed in deciding to retain, eliminate, or
alter prospective items. These should be exploited, but it needs to be
done thoughtfully. The danger is that in using techniques so efficient,
so streamlined, one may forget that it is necessary to touch base from
time to time with fresh batches of empirical reality in the form of data
from new and different groups of subjects (with N=200 or more in each
group to assure stability of the correlation matrix).
Having calculated coefficient alpha for a set or subset of more than
enough prospective items, for example, one may winnow through the
set by recalculating alpha repeatedly, each time with a different sus-
pect item removed. If the value of alpha goes up when a given item is
removed, that item is a good candidate for discarding. When all the
items thus identified are discarded, coefficient alpha for the remaining
items is acceptably high. Another example: One has an abundance of
items that could conceivably form a set of clusters compatible with
theory. One then goes fishing for this particular structure through suc-
cessive approximation, conducting one factor analysis after another and
eliminating one or more items at each step. After several such analy-
ses, one may arrive at the desired structure. In both of these examples,
the investigator capitalizes on idiosyncracies of the data set at hand,
thereby decreasing the likelihood of successful cross-validation.
It is, of course, absolutely necessary that stable factor structures
be demonstrated sooner or later. This is always a difficult challenge,
but it is somewhat easier to meet when test builders are following the
commonsense procedure. After two or three careful revisions followed
by new data collections, the items and scales start to become known
quantities. Their action becomes fairly predictable; the likelihood of
unpleasant surprises (e.g., shrinkage on cross-validation, occurrence of
unexpected or uninterpretable factor structures) diminishes rapidly.
COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT 281
The next question is, given a set of items each of which exhibits all
of these optimal properties, can they be assembled into a scale that
faithfully represents the construct? Jackson (1970) invites attention to
content bias as a potential problem: It is quite possible that items in-
tended to measure one or another facet or manifestation of the con-
struct will have been eliminated disproportionately. In such a case, the
test builder must backtrack, perhaps to the stage of preparing brand-
new items, and work again through the itemmetric-psychometric se-
quence. At some point, the test builder is loath to retrace these steps
one more time and decides to present the scale as "finished" (all this
means is that the test builder has chosen-to use Kafka's classic oxy-
moron-to temporarily abandon the effort to improve it further). The
finished scale, then, may misrepresent the construct in some important
way or ways. It is in this respect that the psychological adage "The
measure is the theory" is importantly true (see Rocklin & Revelle,
1981, for an example).
Degree of correspondence between scale and construct is the cen-
tral question of content validity. The answer to it is usually arrived at
through inspection and informed opinion; statistical analysis of re-
sponses is less decisive on this matter than on the other elements of a
scale's adequacy. With consensus to the effect that the scale does fairly
represent the construct, this requirement is met. If consensus is not
sought, or is sought but not obtained, either of two scenarios is likely
to ensue. In the first, multitrait-multimethod analyses call attention to
the disparity and lead to attempts at revising the scale in order to
improve the match.
In the second, the measure can threaten to supplant or become the
theory. This is particularly likely when the test builder and the theorist
are the same person. Given the considerable investment of effort that
test construction entails, the psychologist may well be motivated to
282 RAYMOND N. WOLFE
*Later on, as empirical results begin to accumulate, the psychologist may be tempted to
let data lead the theory more powerfully than they ought to. This temptation needs to be
resisted because, like the method of resolving mismatch in the second scenario, it is
conducive to a sterile state of affairs in which methodology takes complete precedence
over theory. If this imbalance of power is permitted to prevail, future historians of
psychology will find it easy to sum up twentieth-century developments in personality
research: "Advances occurred in the area of measurement, as psychologists progressed
from reifying traits to reifying trait-method combinations."
COMMONSENSE APPROACH TO PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT 283
CONCLUSIONS
personality scales by numerous authors and lists their items. They av-
erage eight items in length and for the most part are straightforward,
with simple response formats and short, face-valid, clearly stated items.
It is encouraging to see this set of instruments; such an array could
probably not have been found 20 or 30 years ago, much less presented
and recommended for use.
For scientific-as opposed to ceremonial-purposes, the common-
sense approach tends to be superior to other techniques of measurement.
From a practical standpoint, it minimizes demands on the test taker,
and thus, in principle at least, should enlarge the lists of populations
and subjects who will provide usable protocols in studies of personality.
It has some limitations as well. It tends to be sheerly descriptive;
its advantages over other methods of assessment are probably minimal
for traits that lack observable behavioral referents (and perhaps for traits
that are not familiar to laypersons); its efficiency is questionable in
certain applied settings and with subjects whose reading skills are poor.
The study of personality had progressed to the point where ad-
versarial logic is no longer the order of the day. And psychologists can
now avoid deceiving themselves in at least two important respects:
mistaking method variance for trait variance and being content to
know that a scale works (i.e., exhibits predictive validity) without
knowing why it works. Multitrait-multimethod analysis enables psy-
chologists to tell the one kind of variance from the other. Devising and
using scales that measure one and only one construct (as Briggs &
Cheek, 1986, urge) helps to counteract psychologists' willingness to be
satisfied when a total score on a factorially complex instrument pro-
duces a significant validity coefficient, despite the fact that they have
no idea as to whether a particular subset of items is actually doing the
explanatory work.
Not long ago, many psychologists were disillusioned about person-
ality measurement (Jackson, 1970, pp. 61-62). Today, its prospects look
good; although we are by no means all the way out of the woods, there
has been some real progress. The commonsense approach has played an
important part in it and now needs to be exploited more fully.
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PART FIVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER TWENTY
An Optimistic Forecast
ROBERT HOGAN
293
294 ROBERT HOGAN
(Baumeister & Tice, 1988; Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; DePaulo et al.,
1987; Funder, 1991; Ickes, 1982; Kenrick, 1989; Snyder, 1981).
Fifth, it is encouraging to note the emergence of a group of young
personality psychologists in the United States who are seeking to solve
some of the fundamental problems identified in the original Allport and
Stagner texts (e.g., Buss, 1991; Cheek, 1982; John, 1990; McCrae, 1990;
Moskowitz, 1986).
Sixth, Allport's prescriptions for personality research provide the
framework for ambitious programs of ongoing work in England (e.g.,
Emler, 1990; Fumham, 1992) and in Germany (e.g., Angleitner et al.,
1990), where Allport traveled in the 1920s and first formulated many of
his ideas about personality.
Seventh, clinical psychology was once the traditional ally of per-
sonality psychology, but clinical psychology seems to have gone
through a paradigm shift; psychodynamics has been replaced by cogni-
tive psychology. Along with this shift, many clinicians seem to have lost
interest in personality and personality assessment as traditionally un-
derstood. The loss of this important market for personality research
has happily been offset by a burgeoning new market in industrial
and organizational (110) psychology. Over the past six or seven years,
1/0 psychology has discovered personality and personality measure-
ment (e.g., Barrick & Mount, 1991; Guion, 1987; Hough et al., 1990;
Staw & Ross, 1985; Weiss & Adler, 1984). This development is consis-
tent with Stagner's early interest in using personality to understand
labor-management problems and other issues in industrial psychology.
Eighth, research on the biological origins of personality is attract-
ing widespread interest in the scientific community. Perhaps the best-
known example of this is the research at the University of Minnesota
that examines the personality similarities of identical twins reared
apart (Tellegen et al., 1988). This research allows us to estimate the
heritability of the components of personality with greater precision
than before. Using models taken from the study of plant genetics,
molecular biologists are beginning to study the genetic origins of per-
sonality traits in dogs (e.g., shyness, aggressiveness), and it is only a
matter of time before we will be able to use these methods to study the
origins of individual differences in human personality.
Finally, well-constructed personality measures often predict occu-
pational performance about as well as cognitive tests do, but they tend
not to have adverse impact (i.e., minority groups' scores are usually
about the same as those of majority group members). Thoughtful ob-
servers of the U. S. Department of Justice note a trend in federal
legislation that will soon compel employers to focus more attention on
296 ROBERT HOGAN
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551-556.
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AN OPTIMISTIC FORECAST 297
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Author Index
Abramson, L.Y. 180, 185 Amelang, M. 244, 246-248, Bandura, A. 112, 141, 143
Adelson, J. 187, 193 274, 285, 288 Barclay, A.M. 101
Adler, S. 295, 297 Anderson, J.W. 54 Bargh, J.A. 257, 264, 266
Adorno, T.W. 30, 37 Anderson, M.L. 270, 288 Barlow, D.H. 124, 128
Ahlawat, K.S 277, 287 Angel, E. 101 Barrick, M.R. 223, 233,
Ainlay, S.C. 140, 143 Angleitner, A. 215, 218, 295, 296
Albright, J.S. 186, 204 232, 233, 248, 276, Barzun,J. 110,115
Aldrich, D.B. 154 277, 278, 279, 288, Bates, E. 235
295, 296 Baumeister, R.F. 15, 17,
Alexander, I.E. 15, 17,
Anonymous 17, 19, 147, 180,181,186,295,296
126, 127
162 Baumgarten, F. 216, 233
Alker, H.A. 87, 100
Argyle, M. 184, 185, 201,
Allen, A. 238, 240-248 Beers, C.W. 168, 174
202, 204
Allen, B.P. 218, 232 Bellezza, A.G. 186
Antonovsky, A. 142, 143
Alloy, L.B. 180, 185 Bern, D.J. 87, 92, 100, 137,
Armstrong, D.M. 263, 265
Allport, F.H. 26, 49-51, 54, 143, 238, 240-248
Aronoff, J. 101, 115, 193,
188,189,193,271,288 Berkowitz, L. 186, 204, 214
194
Allport, G.W. 3--19, 23--37, Berman, H.J. 173, 174
Aronson, E. 214, 267
39-55, 57--65, 69--73, Bernieri, F. 249
Asch, S.E. 75, 83, 209,
75-82,83,86-87,92, 213,262,265 Bernstein, M. 268
100, 112-115, 119--121, Ashton, S.G. 271, 288 Bertocci, P.A. 59--60, 63, 64
124, 127, 131-143, Atkinson, J.W. 190, 194 Betts, G.H. 9, 19
147-162, 165-174, Atkinson, R.C. 214 Bhaskar, R. 253, 265
177-185, 187-190, 193, Atwood, G. 54, 125, 128 Birch, D. 190, 194
197-204,207,208,213, Blalock, H.M. 266
215-219,225,227-232, Baer, R. 180, 186 Blarney, K. 145
237-242,245,247,252, Bagb~ E.9, 19,25,37 Blank, A.L. 204
253, 263, 265, 271, Bailor, E.M. 32 Blankstein, K.R. 258, 266
286,287,288,293,296 Baldwin, A.L. 148, 151, Block, J. 80, 83, 124, 128,
Allport, R. 45, 54 162, 166, 174 213, 221, 223, 227,
Alpert-Gillis, L.J. 112-115 Baltes, P. 144 229, 233, 264, 265,
Alston, W.P. 193 Banaji, M.R. 186 294,297
299
300 AUTHOR INDEX
Block, J.H. 227, 233 Cantor, N. 15, 16, 80, 83, Crapanzano, V. 135, 144,
Booher, E. 30-31 186, 191, 192, 194, 173, 174
Borgatta, E.F. 81, 83 214,233-235,264,268, Cronbach, L.J. 210, 212,
Boring, E.G. 32-33 295-297 214
Borkenau, P. 16, 18, 244, Cantril, H. 60, 64 Cross, C. 144
246-248,274,285,288 Carlson, R. 82, 83, 124, Cummings, L.L. 297
Bowers, K.S. 87, 100, 237, 125, 128, 208, 214 Cutler, B.L. 290
248 Carpenter, B.N. 289
Bragman, L.J. 168, 174 Carver, M.S. 189, 194 Dailey, C.A. 124, 128
Cason, H. 28 D'Andrade, R.G. 262, 267
Brehm, J.W. 180, 186
Cather, W. 169, 174 Davidson, P.O. 124, 128
Briggs, S.R. 15, 18, 19,
Cattell, J. McK., 26, 37 Davis, J.H. 267
194, 223, 227, 230,
Cattell, R.B. 220, 224, 226, Davis, T. 204
231, 233, 235, 289,
233 Deaux, K. 167, 170, 174
275, 279, 287, 288,
Champagne, B. 77, 83 DeBoy, T. 249
289, 214
Chaplin, W.F. 218, 233, DeCharms, R.C. 90, 100
Brim, O.G., Jr. 144
244,245,247,248 Deci, E.L. 90, 100
Brookings, J.B. 258, 265
Chapman, J.P. 285,288 Deichmann, A.K. 268
Brown, C.E. 258,265 Chapman, L.J. 285, 288
Brown, J. 180, 186, 256, Dennett, D.C. 260, 266
Chassan, J.B. 124, 128 DePaulo, B.M. 16, 17,
268 Cheek, J.M. 205, 235, 244, 199-201,204,211,214,
Brown, P. 109, 115 246, 248, 275, 279, 295, 296
Brown, W. 9, 19 287,288,295,296 DeSoto, C.B. 262, 266
Bruner, J. 166, 174, 175, Chew, B.R. 186
Devine, P. 258, 266
294,297 Christal, R.C. 220, 235
DeWaele, J.P. 172, 174
Buehler, C. 166, 169, 175 Christie, R. 167
Dewey, J. 62, 168, 175
Bugental, D.E. 203, 204 Chiriboga, D. 137, 143
Diener, E. 187, 188, 194
Bull, V. 266 Churchland, P.M. 260, 261,
Dienstbier, R.A. 128
Bunch, M. 28 265,266
Digman, J.M. 216, 220,
Burisch, M. 282, 283, 286, Cohler, B.J. 15-17, 162
221, 224, 228, 233,
288 Cole, J.K. 205
294, 296
Burke, P.A. 246, 248 Collings, W.A. 233
Dobroth, K.M. 210, 214,
Burt, G. 244, 248 Colvin, C.R. 210, 213, 214
277, 285, 289
Burton, A. 128 Conant, J.B. 89
Dollard, J. 73, 83, 139,
Connell, J.P. 112-115
Buss, A.H. 83, 89, 276, 145, 166, 174
Conway, B.E. 268
286,288 Donley, R.W. 169, 174
Cook, M. 202, 204
Buss, D.M. 77, 83, 188, Drought, N. 34, 38
Cook, T.D. 289
191, 193, 194, 214, Dunnette, M.D. 296
Cooper, J. 186
225,230,233-235,264, Dworkin, R.H. 248
Costa, P.T., Jr. 47, 55, 76,
265, 295, 296
83, 216, 222-224, 227,
Buss, F.T. 28 Eaton, N.K. 296
231, 235, 252, 267,
284, 289 Eber, H. W. 233
Cabot, R. 4 Costello, C.G. 124, 128 Einhorn, H.J. 257-266
Cacioppo, J.T. 283, 288 Cox, J .R. 258, 266 Eissler, K.R. 54
Calkins, M. 60 Craik, K.H. 3, 19, 20, 36, Ekehammar, B. 87, 93, 100
Cameron, N. 28 37, 77, 81, 83, 131, Ekman, P. 202-205
Campbell, A. 184, 186 144, 191, 193, 194, Elde~ G.,J~ 140,144
Campbell, D.T. 271, 276, 208, 225, 230, 232, Ellenberger, H.F. 101
288 233,263,264,265 Ellsworth, P.C. 202, 205
AUTHOR INDEX 301
Elms, A.C. 15, 16, 44, 55, Funder, D.C. 15, 17, 204, Harlow, H. 28
112, 156, 158, 162 205,209-214,262,266, Harre, R. 172, 174
Emler, N.P. 295,296 267, 277,285, 289, Harris, R.E. 128
Emmons, R.A. 15, 17, 74, 294-297 Harrison, A.A. 167, 175
83, 140, 144, 187, 188, Furnham, A. 74, 84,260, Hartshorne, H. 18, 19,
190,192-194,229,233, 266,234,295,296 237,238,249
297 Hastie, 262, 266
Endler, N.S. 93, 100, 233 Gage, N.L. 210, 214 Healy, J.M. 173, 175
Epstein, S. 87, 100, 141, Garcia, T. 249 Heelas, P. 19
144, 238, 248, 274, Gergen, K. 142, 144
Heider, F. 74, 83
283,288 Gergen, M. 142, 144
Helson, R. 15, 16
Ergas, Y. 174 Gerow, J.R. 34,37 Henderson, M. 260, 266
Erikson, E.H. 51-52, 55, Gianetto, R.M. 204 Henmon, V.A.C. 29
112, 125, 128, 178, Gilbert, D.T. 258,266
Hensley, W.E. 283, 289
182, 183, 186 Giles, H. 205
Herdt, H. 84
Evans, R.I. 40-42, 55, 139, Ginsburg, G.P. 174
Hermann, M.G. 172, 175
144, 157, 162 Goffman, E. 200, 205
Hersen, M. 124, 128
Everett, J.E. 221, 233 Goldberg, A. 145
Higgins, E.T. 196, 257,
Exline, R.V. 202, 205 Goldberg, L.R. 15, 216,
264,266
Exner, J.E. 196 218,221,224,231-234,
Hilgard, E.R. 15, 103, 115
Eysenck, H.J. 224, 226, 271, 244, 245, 247,
Hinkle, S. 186
227, 233, 234 248, 288, 289
Hinz, V.B. 258, 266
Goleman, D. 73, 83
Faber, M.D. 42, 55 Hirschberg, N. 263, 267
Gordon, R.G. 9, 19
Farr, R.M. 12, 19 Hogan,J.224,226,234
Gorsuch, R.L. 230, 235,
Fazio, R.H. 249 285,289 Hogan, R.T. 15, 18, 19,
Fehr, B.J. 202, 205 Gough, H.G. 222, 234 137, 144, 162, 194,
Fekken, G.C. 277, 289 Gould, S.J. 286,289 195, 214, 224, 226,
Feldman, R.S. 204 234,273,284,289
Greene, D. 90, 101
Feldstein, S. 205 Greenwald, A.G. 15, 16, Hogarth, R.M. 257,266
Fenigstein, A. 276, 288 54, 140, 145, 180, 181, Holden, R.R. 276, 278, 289
Fenton, M. 186 186,256,266 Holt, R.R. 132, 134, 136,
Feyerabend, P. 254, 266 Greenwood, J.D. 253,266 144
Fincham, F.D. 264, 266 Gregory, R.L. 209, 214 Hooker, C.A. 253, 267
Fiske, D.W. 87, 100, 220, Griggs, F. 258, 266 Hoover, C.W. 204, 214, 296
234,271,276,288 Guilford, J.P. 220, 234 Hough, L.M. 295, 296
Fiske, S.T. 251, 256, 266 Guion, R. 295, 296 Houts, A.C. 284, 289
Fletcher, G.J.O. 16, 18, Howard, G.S. 253, 254, 267
254-267,277,288 Ha, Y.W. 257,267 Howe, H.E. 128
Flett, G.L. 258, 266 Habermas, J. 135, 144 Hull, C. 28
Frank, S. 297 Haig, B. 254, 257, 260, 266 Hunter, J.D. 143
Franz, C. 145 Hairfield, J.G. 204 Husband, R. 28
Freeman, M. 135, 144 Hall, C.S. 103, 105, 107, Hyland, M.E. 189, 195
Frenkel-Brnnswik, E. 37, 109, 111, 115, 148, 162
166, 175 Hamilton, M.M. 266 Ickes, W. 187, 195, 296
Frese, M. 189, 195 Hampson, S.E. 231, 232, Irwin, M.E. 289
Freud, S. 92, 95, 100, 201, 234, 282, 289 Items, 170, 175
205 Hanna, R. 167, 170, 174 Izard, C.E., 202, 204, 205
Friedman, H. 201, 205 Hansson, R.O. 289
Friesen, W.V. 202-205 Hanushek, E.A. 245, 249 Jaccard, J.J. 238, 249
302 AUTHOR INDEX
Jackson, D.N. 69, 83, 244, Kihlstrom, J.F. 80, 83, 178, Leary, M.R. 283, 289, 199,
246,247,249,272, 186, 191, 192, 194, 205,206
275,279,280-282,286, 295--297 Lennox, R.D. 290
287,289 Kim, M.P. 170, 175 Leonard, W.E. 168, 169,
Jackson, H.J. 245, 249 King, L.A. 190, 194 175
Jackson, J.M. 232 Kirkendol, S.E. 201, 204 Leplin,J.267
James, W. 24, 25, 37, 62, Klages, L. 216 Lepper, M.R. 90, 101, 257,
79, 83, 88, 141, 144 Klayrnan,J. 257,267 267
Jandorf, E.M. 64 Klein, G. 140, 141, 142, 144 Levinson, D.J. 37
Jemmott, J.B. 190, 195 Klein, S.B. 186 Levy, L.H. 109-U5
Jensen, F. 5, 19 Klinger, E. 191, 195 Lewin, K. 16, 19, 25, 60,
Jessor, R. 271, 276, 289 Kluckhohn, C.M. 225, 235 64, 73,83
Jessor, S.L. 276, 289 Knowles, E.S. 274, 289, 296 Le-Xuan-Hy, G.M. 268
John, O.P. 16, 17, 19, 215, Koestner, R. 195, 249 Lewis, M. 78, 83
216,218,220-224,226, Koffka, K. 60, 64 Lief, A. 60, 64
228, 229, 231, 233, Kohlberg, L. 112 Liker, J. 144
234, 236, 276, 288, Kohnstamm, E. 235 Linder, D.E. 180, 186
289,295,296 Kohut, H. 140, 141, 142, Lindzey, G. 15, 37, 103,
Johnson, R.C. 271, 277, 290 144, 145 105, 107, 109, 115,
Johnston, R.E. 203, 205 Kolligian, J. 191, 195 271, 288, 148, 162,
Jones, D.K. 84 Korchin, S. 15 214,267
Jones, E.E. 186, 209, 214, Krahe, B. 260, 267 Lippa, R. 200, 205
294,296 Kratochwil, T.R. 124, 128 Little, B. 137, 140, 145,
Jones, R.A. 124, 128, 166, Kraut, R.E. 203, 205, 248 191, 195, 229, 235
172, 175 Krout, M. 30 Lock, A. 19
Jones, W.H. 19, 175, 205, Kruglanski, A.W. 90, 100, Loehlin, J.C. 115
194, 195, 214 204,205 Lohr, F.J. 276, 288
Jung, C.G. 95, 101 Krull, D.S. 258, 266 London, H. 196
Kuhn, T.S. 254, 267 Lott, C.L. 268
Love, L.R. 204
Kagan, J. 140, 144
Lachman, S.J. 37 Ludwig, L.M. 202, 205
Kamp, J.D. 296
Lambert, W.W. 81, 83 Lundeen, E.J. 289
Kao, C.F. 288 Lamiell, J.T. 125, 128 Lykken, D.T. 297
Karniol, R. 101 Landis, C. 203, 205 Lynch, M. 144
Karwoski, T.F. 32 Lange, C. 266
Kasmer, J.A. 275, 290 Langer, E. 180, 186, 202, MacFarlane, S. 195
Kegan, R. 140, 144 205 Machotka, P. 15
Kelly, G.A. 76, 83, 96, 101, Langston, C. 15, 16, 191, Maddi, S.R. 15--17, 47, 55,
124,128,229,235 194 92-99, 101, 108, 109,
Kemp, J. 249 Lanier, K. 204 113, 115
Kendon, A. 201, 204 Larsen, R.J. 194 Magnusson, D. 93, 100,
Kenny, D.A. 204, 210, 214, Lasch, C. 140, 145 233,243,249
296 Lashley, K. 32--33 Maher, B.A. 233
Kenrick, D.T. 191, 195, Lassiter, G.D. 204 Maher, W.B. 233
246, 249, 262, 267, Lau, R.R. 257, 267 Malorzo, L. 289
294-296, 297 LaVoie, L. 210, 214 Manicas, P. T. 253, 267
Ketron, J.L. 268 Layton, L. 145 Manosevitz, M. 115
Kiefer, H.D. 193 Lazarsfeld, P. 168, 175 Marcia, J.E. 182, 186
Kiell, N. 168, 175 Lazarus, R.S. 83 Maresca, B.C. 249
AUTHOR INDEX 303
Ross, M. 89, 101, 254,257, Shweder, R.A. 82, 84, 262, Taylor, R.B. 266
267 268 Taylor, S.E. 180, 186, 251,
Roth, J. 137, 145 Siegman, A. W. 205 256,266,268
Rothbart, M.K. 227, 232, Sills, D.L. 213 Taylor, W.S. 46
235 Simonton, D.K. 112, 115, Tellegen, A. 221, 224, 227,
Rothstein, M. 101 124, 128 235, 243, 244, 249,
Rotter, J.B. 124, 129 Singer, J.L. 191, 195 295,297
Rubin, D. 140, 145 Sirgy, M.J. 140, 145 Tetlock, P.E. 170, 172, 175,
Runyan, W.M. 19, 125, Skinner, B.F. 29, 34-35, 37 258,268
126, 128, 137, 138, Smelser, N.J. 14, 20 Thayer, W.M. 9, 20
145,294,297 Smelser, W. T. 14, 20 Thomas, W.l. 169, 175
Rushton, J.P. 244, 249 Smith, K. 186 Thompson, J.B. 145
Ryckman, R.M. 148, 163 Smith, M.B. 12, 15, 16, 20, Thorpe, L.P. 9, 20
Ryle, G. 226, 235, 263, 267 37, 54, 57, 64, 65, 166, Tice, D.M. 180, 182, 186,
175 295,296
Sabini, J. 189, 195 Snyder, M. 187, 195, 297 Tindale, J.E. 267
Saeed, L. 167, 175 Sorrentino, R.M. 195 Tomaka, J.W. 283, 290
Sanford, R.N. 15, 37 Spence, K.W. 29 Tomkins, S.S. 76, 77, 84,
Sarbin, T.R. 59, 64, 144, Squires, P.C. 168, 175 124, 128, 129
294,297 Stagner, R. 3-20, 23~, Triplett, R.G. 64, 65
Satoris, J.M. 249 69-73, 75-81, 84, 106, Trope, Y. 256, 268
Saucier, G. 232 114, 115, 133, 145, Tuma, A.H. 235
Saunders, D.R. 243, 249 188, 193, 195, 293 Tupes,E.C.220, 235
Scharfstein, B. 125, 128 Staw, B.M. 295, 297
Scheibe, K.E. 79, 84, 144, Stepansky, P. 145 Uleman, J.S. 263, 267
270,290 Stern, W. 31, 35, 139, 145
Sternberg, R.J. 260, 268 Valentine, P.F. 9, 20
Scheier, M.F. 189, 194,
Stewart, A. 137, 145, 162, Vallacher, R. 140, 146, 189,
276, 288
190, 196 195
Scherer, K.R. 199, 206
Stigler, J.W. 84 Van Heck, G. 234
Schlenker, B.R. 79, 80, 84,
Stolorow, R.D. 125, 128 Vernon, P.E. 26, 37, 271, 288
181, 199, 200, 204,
205,207 Stone, J.l. 204
Stone, P.J. 54, 163 Wachtel, P.L. 237, 249
Schwartzman, A.E. 112, Waggenspach, B.M. 283,
Stones, M.J. 244, 249
115 289
Stringfield, D.O. 246, 249
Scott, W.A. 271, 277, 290 Waller, N.G. 221, 235
Strube, M.J. 256, 268, 283,
Scroggs, J.R. 148, 163 Walsh, W.B. 14, 20
290
Sears, R.R. 169, 175 Watson, D. 249
Suedfeld, P. 172, 175
Sechrest, L. 187, 195 Webb, W. 204,214,296
Sullivan, 135, 136, 145
Secord, P.F. 253, 267 Wegner, D. 140, 146, 189,
Sushinsky, L.W. 90, 101
Segal, N.L. 297 195
Swann, W.B. 184, 186
Semin, G.R. 260, 267 Swede, S.W. 170, 175 Weinberger, J. 191, 195
Shadish, W.R., Jr. 289 Szasz, T.S. 271, 272, 290 Weiner, B. 196
Shapiro, J.J. 182, 186 Weintraub, K.J. 137, 146
Shapiro, M.B. 124, 128 Taft, R. 210, 214 Weiss, D.S. 262, 268
Shaver, P. 205 Takemoto-Chock, N .K. Weiss, H.M. 295, 297
Sheldon, W.H. 28 220,221,224,233 Welch, L.K. 290
Sherif, M. 60, 64 Tatsuoka, M.M. 233 Wheeler, L. 205
Showers, C. 264, 268 Taylor, C. 135, 145 White, R.W. 124, 129, 134,
Shuttleworth, F.K. 18, 19 Taylor, E. 54 166, 175
AUTHOR INDEX 305
307
308 SU&JECT INDEX
The Quest of Nellie Wise Allpart Situational variability, 85, 87-88, 104, 237,
(Allport), 158--159 238, 241-242, 243-244, 294; see also
Cross-situational consistency
Reactance, 184 Sixteen Personality Factors Question-
Reactance theory, 180 naire, 220
Realist theory, 252-255, 264 Social cognition, 74-76
Regression analysis, 244-245 in commonsense psychology, 251-252,
Regularity theory of causality, 255 255-259
Relational learning, 29 Social Cognition (Fiske & Taylor), 252
Relative consistency, 243-244 Social judgment, 254
REP test, 124, 229 Social learning theory, 104, 112
Roles, 217 Social motives, 190
Rorschach test, 36, 121, 128 Social psychology, 81, 85, 86, 89, 103,
"Ross," 147, 148, 14~150, 152-153, 154, 294-295
155, 157-161, 171 commonsense psychology in, 254, 255,
as double, 15~161 256, 25~264
Russian experiment, 14 teaching of, 98
Social Science Citation Index, 242
Scapegoating, 88 Social Science Research Council (SSRC),
Script theory, 124 167, 173
Secondary traits, 139 Social stimulus value, 24
Self, 6, 76, 141-142, 177-185, 188 Society for Personology, 125
action, 180, 182, 183-184 Society for Projective Techniques, 32
conceptual, 180, 181-183 Society for the Psychological Study of So-
inner, 79 cial Issues, 33, 36
natural, 180 Sociocultural factors, see Culture
organization of, 79-80 SSRC, see Social Science Research
outer, 79 Council
personality confused with, 178 State-state analysis, 137
possible, 179 Stasis and flow of behavior, 76, 81
public, 181 States, 217, 218, 219
unity of, 178--179 Stephenson's Q technique, 124
Self-attributed motives, 191 Structural-dynamic psychology, 147, 171
Self-concept, 178, 179 "The Study of Personality by the Intu-
defined, 181 itive Method" (Allport), 136
Self-consistency, 80 A Study of Values (Allport & Vernon),
Self-esteem, 140, 141, 179, 181, 183 135,288
Self-perception theory, 254 Stylistic dispositions, 188
Self-presentation, 167, 181, 270 Subjectivism, 140-141
Self-rated variability, 241-242, 246, 247 Suicide, 89
Semantic distortion hypothesis, 262 Summary constructs, 284
Serial program, 191 Summary view of traits, 225-228
Shame, 78--79 Superego, 63
Simple and sovereign theorizing, 86-87, 88 Surface characteristics, 276-277, 278
Simplicity, 255 Surgency, see Extraversion
Single-case analysis, 17, 11~127 Sutton-Boveri hypothesis, 264
inhibiting forces in, 121-123 Systems theory, 132-133
sustaining forces in, 123-125
"The Single Case in Clinical Psychologi- Thct, Push, and Principle (Thayer), 9
cal Research" (Shapiro), 124 TAT, see Thematic Apperception Test
SUBJECT INDEX 313
Teaching of personality, 98--99 Traits (cont.)
''Teleonomic Description in the Study of defined, 139, 239
Personality" (Allport), 188 enduring, 217
Teleonomic trend, 189 expressive, 71
Telic significance, 71 in FFM, 215, 217, 218, 219-221, 224,
Temporal stability, 281 225--228, 230-231
Temporary states, 217 individual, 242
Test scales, 275-276, 279--280, 281-284, motives and, 187, 188, 193
285, 286-287 Murray on, 134
breadth vs. length in, 282-284 overlapping, 230
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), 35, prototypical, 218, 219
36, 121, 190 secondary, 139
Theories of Learning (Hilgard), 103 Stagner on, 70-72, 75
Theories of Personality (Hall & Lindzey),
summary view of, 225--228
103 Trait variability, 244-245, 246, 247
Thurstone scale, 26, 34
Twin studies, 295
Time-series analysis, 124
Trait applicability, 243, 244, 245--246
Trait appropriateness, 246 Unifying power, 254, 257
Trait extremity, 244-245 Uniqueness, 50-51, 58-59, 70
Trait importance, 244, 246 Unity of personality, 11, 52-53
'Prait-NarY~.es: A Psycholexical Study
University of California, Berkeley, 127
(Odbert), 34 The Use of Personal DocurY~.ents in Psy-
Trait relevance, 244-245, 246, 247 chological Science (Allport), 39,
Traits, 75--76,77,82,104,213,254,295 165--166
Allport on, 6, 11-12, 70-72, 75, 95, 133,
134, 137, 139-140, 187, 188, 263 Values, 182
behavior prediction and, see Behavior Verstehende psychology, 120
prediction Verstehen psychology, 31, 35, 136
biophysical, 217 Veterans Administration, 122
cardinal, 139
causal view of, 225-228 Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, 29
central, 139 World War I, 159-161
common, 242 World War II, 121-122, 123
in commonsense psychology, 261, 263,
264,275,284,285--286 Zeitgeist, 142