Gordon Willard Allport: A Tribute

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

In 1924, Gordon became a Harvard instructor in social ethics under Richard Clarke Cabot. Two years later he temporarily severed his connection with Harvard to accept an assistant professorship in psychology at Dartmouth. Yet even during his brief four years at Hanover, he returned repeatedly to Harvard to teach in summer school. In 1930 he came back to Harvard to stay.

His contributions to the University were many. In 1924, Gordon taught what was probably the first personality course given in a North American college. In 1931, he served on the faculty committee that established Harvard's sociology department. In the late 1940s, he fashioned an introductory course for the new social relations department into a rigorous and popular undergraduate class. More than 300 PhDs recall Gordon best for his 18-year service as the chair of the Committee on Higher Degrees of the social relations department. "He knew all the rules," admired one graduate student, "but he never internalized them."

Gordon occasionally spoke briefly at morning chapel in Memorial Church. But a corrective note for the record is in order here. He was an Episcopalian who gave several famous lectures at divinity schools and conducted research on the relationship between religious beliefs and intergroup prejudice. From these facts, a Swedish theological student somehow concluded a few years ago that Gordon was a deeply devout man who had suffered extreme religious persecution at "godless Harvard"! The student wrote me to confirm his theory. With considerable detail, I tried to correct this interpretation: devout yes, but never "persecuted." The writer never answered me, but the misconception later reappeared in Canada from yet another biographer.

Allport's Unique Contributions

Gordon's unique contributions to psychology are best described by three interwoven features of his work. First, he offered a broadly eclectic balance of the many sides of the discipline, holding to William James's contention that there were "multiple avenues to the truth." Second, he had an uncanny ability to formulate the central problems for the future and to propose original approaches to them. And finally, his entire body of scholarly work presents a consistent, seamless, and forceful perspective. Let me illustrate each of these points.

Broadly Eclectic Balance

Gordon sought an eclectic balance for both methods and theory. His two famous volumes on personality--Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (Allport, 1937) and Pattern and Growth in Personality (Allport, 1961)--illustrate this dominant feature of his work (Pettigrew, 1990). He urged, for example, the use of both ideographic (individual) and nomothetic (universal) methods. Because he thought the discipline relied too heavily on nomothetic approaches, he sought greater use of ideographic techniques. In an age of indirection, Gordon insisted, "If you want to know something about a person, why not first ask him?" (Allport, 1953). Considered scandalously naive when he introduced it, his position helped to right the balance in assessment.