Gordon Allport

Lore & Background

Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, the youngest of four sons of John Edward and Nellie Edith Allport. His father was a country doctor who ran a makeshift hospital in the family home, and Allport assisted with patients and medical tasks. His mother, a former school teacher, promoted intellectual development and religion. As a teenager, he managed a printing business and edited his high school newspaper, graduating second in his class in 1915. He earned a scholarship to Harvard University, where his older brother Floyd Henry Allport was studying psychology.

Allport earned his A.B. in Philosophy and Economics in 1919, then traveled to Europe and visited Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He did graduate work at the University of Berlin and University of Hamburg, taught at Robert College in Istanbul, and returned to Harvard to study psychology on a fellowship. He earned his master's degree in 1921 and Ph.D. in 1922. After teaching at Dartmouth College from 1926 to 1930, he returned to Harvard, remaining there for the rest of his career. He married Ada Lufkin Gould, a clinical psychologist, and they had one son who became a pediatrician.

Allport helped establish personality as a research field in American psychology from 1921 to 1937. He served on the faculty committee that founded Harvard's Sociology Department in 1931 and helped develop an introductory course for the new Social Relations Department in the late 1940s. He was editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, a director of a UNESCO commission, and was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1939. He died of lung cancer on October 9, 1967, at Harvard's infirmary.

Reader's Guide

Gordon Allport's significance lies in his pioneering role in establishing personality psychology as a distinct field of study. He rejected both psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches, developing instead an eclectic trait theory that emphasized the uniqueness of each individual. His work on values scales and his broad conceptualization of topics such as rumor, prejudice, religion, and traits had a profound and lasting influence. Allport's impact also came through his teaching at Harvard, where he mentored many students who became important psychologists, including Jerome S. Bruner, Stanley Milgram, and Thomas Pettigrew. A 2002 survey ranked him as the 11th most-cited psychologist of the 20th century. His book The Nature of Prejudice, published in 1954, was based on his work with refugees during World War II. Allport's legacy includes his opposition to classifying people into a small number of trait dimensions, arguing instead for the distinctiveness of each person's personality.

Did You Know?

• Allport visited Sigmund Freud in Vienna after earning his A.B. degree.
• His father, John Edward Allport, was criticized in a Collier's Magazine exposé for diagnosing and treating morphine addicts by mail.
• Allport was the second youngest person ever elected President of the American Psychological Association.
• He developed a list of 4,500 trait-like words from the dictionary as part of his early work on personality traits.