Gordon Willard Allport: A Tribute

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1999 by Thomas F. Pettigrew

Thomas F. Pettigrew [*]

In tribute to Gordon Allport, this article discusses four interrelated topics. First, Allport's life at Harvard is briefly described. Next three interwoven features of his work are advanced to explain why his contributions to psychology are both unique and lasting. (1) His work offered a broadly eclectic balance of the many sides of psychology. (2) He repeatedly demonstrated the ability to formulate the discipline's central problems for the future and to propose innovative approaches to them. And (3) Allport's entire scholarly work presents a consistent, seamless and forceful perspective. These three points are then applied to his classic work The Nature of Prejudice. Though it was his most explicit attempt to influence public opinion, this famous volume also is balanced, ahead of its time, and elegantly written. It has organized the study of prejudice over the last half century. The article concludes with an explanation in personal terms for why those who knew him remember him so warmly 30 long years after h is death.

With this issue, we honor the centennial of a great psychologist and a fine human being. As a doctoral student and colleague of Gordon Allport, I am pleased to provide my personal reflections on his life and work. This article discusses four interrelated topics. First, Allport's life at Harvard is sketched. Next, I attempt to capture what made his psychological contributions both unique and lasting. Then I apply this perspective to an analysis of his classic work The Nature of Prejudice (Allport, 1954, 1958). Finally, I explain in personal terms why those of us who were fortunate to have had our lives touched by him remember him so fondly three long decades after his death.

A Life at Harvard

Back in 1915, Harvard's undergraduate admissions procedures were far simpler than those of today. Encouraged by his older brother, Floyd, Gordon left his Cleveland home and arrived in Cambridge a few weeks before school opened to take his entrance examinations. Fortunately, but not surprisingly, he passed. Thus began his half century affiliation with the university.

The Midwestern son of a Scottish American medical doctor, Gordon was awed by Harvard. Indeed, he never lost his awe. Later he wrote in an autobiographical chapter, "In the course of fifty years' association with Harvard I have never ceased to admire the unspoken expectation of excellence" (Allport, 1967). And I recall his deep satisfaction when Harvard's President Nathan Pusey, following the tradition of the time, came to his office on the third floor of William James Hall to ask him to continue his teaching past the then limit of 65 years of age.

Gordon's undergraduate career foretold the convergence of his adult interests in personality and social psychology, in science and social issues. He majored in both psychology and social ethics, and was impressed by his first teacher in psychology, Hugo Muensterberg. He spent much of his spare time in social service: conducting a boy's club in Boston, visiting for the Family Society, serving as a volunteer probation officer, registering homes for war workers, and aiding foreign students. This convergence of interests took institutional form later when he helped to establish both the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and Harvard's Department of Social Relations.

Upon graduation in 1919, Gordon seized the opportunity to be an early version of a Peace Corps volunteer. He taught English and sociology at Robert College in Constantinople (then part of Greece, now Istanbul, Turkey), He made a lasting impression upon his Greek students; 36 years later, on his return trip from South Africa, they surprised him with a reunion party in Athens. In addition to German, Gordon remained partially fluent in modem Greek throughout his life--and delighted in using it to order mysterious dishes for his friends at Greek restaurants.

Returning to Harvard in 1920, he completed his PhD in psychology in just two years. Gordon's dissertation title again reflected his dual commitment to science and social concerns: An Experimental Study of the Traits of Personality: With Special Reference to the Problem of Social Diagnosis. In addition, he somehow found time to assist his brother, who was then editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology--the start of more than four decades of association with the publication (Pettigrew, 1969).

Harvard then awarded him a coveted Sheldon Travelling Fellowship--"a second intellectual dawn," as he later described it. He spent the first year in Germany, where the new Gestalt school and its emphasis on cognition fascinated him. Indeed, he became a partial Gestaltist, partial because he could not accept the Gestaltists' assumptions about the hard-wiring of cognitive processes (Allport & Pettigrew, 1957; Pettigrew, 1979). He spent his second Sheldon year at Cambridge University, where the British psychologists of the day coolly received his reports on Gestalt developments. On his return home, he married Ada Lufkin Gould, a clinical psychologist herself.