Gordon Allport

Allport had a profound and lasting influence on the field of psychology. Part of his influence stemmed from his knack for exploring and broadly conceptualizing important topics (e.g., rumor, prejudice, religion, traits). Another part of his influence resulted from the deep and lasting impression he made on his students during his long teaching career, many of whom went on to have important careers in psychology.

Among his many students at Harvard University were Jerome S. Bruner, Anthony Greenwald, Stanley Milgram, Leo Postman, Thomas Pettigrew, and M. Brewster Smith. His brother, Floyd Henry Allport, was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (in Syracuse, New York) from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Allport as the 11th most-cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Biography

Allport grew up in a religious family of Christian missionaries. He was born in Montezuma, Indiana, and was the youngest of four sons of John Edward and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport. When Gordon Allport was six years old, the family had already moved many times and finally settled in Ohio. His early education was in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio.

John Allport was a country doctor and had his clinic and hospital in the family home. Allport's father turned their home into a makeshift hospital, with patients as well as nurses residing there. Gordon Allport and his brothers grew up surrounded by their father's patients, nurses, and medical equipment, and he and his brothers often assisted their father in the clinic. Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training" (p. 172). During this time, Allport's father was encapsulated in a blurb in Samuel Hopkins Adams' exposé in Collier's Magazine on fraudulent medicinal cures, later reprinted as the book The Great American Fraud: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery. While much of the book focuses on large scale, heavily advertised patent medicines available at the turn of the century, the author states Allport "would never have embodied this article were it not for the efforts of certain physicians of Cleveland." Allport was criticized for diagnosing and treating morphine addicts via mail simply on the basis of letters and no in-person appointments. Upon receiving Adams' letter detailing his concocted affliction, Allport replied back via mail, diagnosing Adams as a morphine addict and sending doses of the "Dr. J. Edward Allport System," designed to cure morphine addicts. Analysis of the medicine revealed its active ingredient to be nothing more than additional morphine, packed with a bottle of pink whiskey "to mix with the morphin[sp] when it gets low." Adams referred to Allport as a "[quack] who pretend[s] to be a physician," is "no less scoundrelly," and "is even more dangerous" than other fraudulent addiction cure peddlers mentioned earlier in the book.

Allport's mother was a former school teacher, who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion.

Biographers describe Allport as a reserved and diligent young boy who lived a fairly isolated childhood. As a teenager, Allport developed and managed his own printing business on the side while serving as an editor of his high school newspaper. In 1915, he graduated second in his class at Glenville High School at the age of eighteen, which earned him a scholarship that allowed him to attend Harvard University. One of his older brothers, Floyd Henry Allport, was working on his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard.

Allport earned his A.B. degree in 1919 in Philosophy and Economics (not psychology). The following year, he traved to Europe and visited Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He did graduate work at the University of Berlin and the University of Hamburg before traveling to Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey, to teach. He then returned to Harvard to become an instructor in social ethics before studying psychology on a fellowship in 1920. His first publication, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport. Allport earned his master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert Langfeld, and then his Ph.D. in 1922, along the way taking a class with Hugo Münsterberg before the latter's death in 1916.

Harvard then awarded Allport a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. He spent the first Sheldon year studying with the new Gestalt School in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany; and then the second year at Cambridge University.

In 1921 through 1937, Allport helped establish personality as a psychological research type within American psychology. He returned to Harvard as an instructor in psychology from 1924 to 1926 where he began teaching his course "Personality: Its Psychological and Social Aspects" in 1924. During this time, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, who was a clinical psychologist. Together they had one child, a boy, who later became a pediatrician. After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years (1926 to 1930), Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career.

Allport was a member of the faculty at Harvard University from 1930 to 1967. In 1931, he served on the faculty committee that established Harvard's Sociology Department. In the late 1940s, he helped to develop an introductory course for the new Social Relations Department. At that time, he was also editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Allport was also a Director of the Commission for the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1933.

By 1937, Allport began to act as a spokesman for personality psychology. He appeared on radio talk shows and wrote literature reviews, articles, and a textbook. He was elected President of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1939, being the second youngest person to hold that office. In 1941, he served on the board of directors of the newly formed National Opinion Research Center at the University of Denver. In 1943, he was elected President of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA). In 1944, he served as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. In 1950, Allport published his third book titled The Individual and His Religion. His fourth book, The Nature of Prejudice, was published in 1954, based on his work with refugees during World War II. His fifth book, published in 1955, was titled Becoming: Basic Considerations for Psychology of Personality. In 1963, Allport was awarded the Gold Medal Award from the American Psychological Foundation. In the following year, he received the APA's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He was also made an honorary member of the British Psychological Society and similar groups in Austria, France, and Germany. Gordon Allport died on October 9, 1967, at the Stillman Infirmary of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of lung cancer, just one month shy of his 70th birthday.