Gordon Willard Allport: A Tribute

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

Nonetheless, many of Gordon's initial proposals for addressing basic problems now exist in our literature with new labels and enlarged meanings. Gordon only loosely sketched out his innovative ideas. Later work accepted the problem and expanded the ideas. Consider the much derided concept of functional autonomy. The notion that motives can become independent of their origins was widely considered heretical in 1937. Slowly, psychology came to accept the phenomenon if not the formulation. Today social psychologists typically reconceptualize the process in interactionist terms. Motives, established and functional in one situation, help lead individuals to new situations where the same motives persist but assume new functions.

Similarly, Allport's conception of personality traits has often been criticized. What critics attack is the mistaken notion that Gordon held a static view of traits as pervasive, cross-situational consistencies in behavior. But Zuroff (1986) has persuasively shown that Gordon advanced a far more dynamic conception of traits. In fact, he was, in Zuroff's (1986, p. 993) words, "an interactionist in the sense that he recognized behavior is determined by the person and situation."

Indeed, to reread Allport's work today is to see how he broke early ground for many ideas now fully developed and accepted. Thus, he provided in his 1937 volume what many would now call a social constructionist interpretation of identity. And his insistence on multiple indicators and methods offered an initial statement of Campbell and Fiske's (1959) multitrait-multimethod approach.

A Consistent, Forceful Perspective

Above all, Gordon's contributions to psychology flowed from a consistent and forceful perspective presented in graceful prose. One reviewer of his 1937 Personality book wrote, "One has all the way through it a distinct feeling that 'This is Allport''' (Hollingworth, 1938, p. 103). This pointed observation holds true for all his writing.

Gordon's perspective remained consistent but not static throughout his career. I always admired his comprehensive knowledge of the psychological literature, a knowledge that accrued from his long years as a meticulous editor. Quite literally, a large proportion of North America's personality and social psychological literature of his time had crossed his editor's desk. His mastery of the literature also reflected his open-ended view of theory, a view more Popperian than the strict Vienna circle positivism that held sway throughout most of his career.

Yet Gordon held to his perspective forcefully. Those of us who witnessed the annual debates in the personality seminar between Harry Murray and Gordon could never doubt that both men held strongly to their contrasting perspectives. And Gordon's writing conveyed this forcefulness. Blunt prose and forthright critiques characterized his style. As one disgruntled reviewer of an Allport book put it. "There is something in it to irritate almost everyone" (Adelson, 1956, p. 68).