American personality psychologist, father of experimental social psychology, proposer of the concept of "Social Facilitation", and one of the representative figures of American psychologists. In 1939, he was elected as president of the American Psychological Society. In 1964, he won the Outstanding Science Contribution Award from the American Psychological Society.
main work
Alport 's first book "Social Psychology" (1924), based on experiments and research, discusses topics such as group experiments, personality evaluation, and the application of psychology in many fields. His research also involves examining social behavior in areas of religion, politics, industry and community outside the laboratory environment. Its behaviorist approach directly conflicts with Mai Dugu's instinct theory.
Orport's most famous contribution to social psychology is the J-curve hypothesis consistent with behavior, in which the standards of institutions and personality are not consistent. He took the lead in studying the development of attitudes. This is a very popular area. He attacked fictional groups such as “group spirit” and the fallacy of giving the entire group their own personality and attribution .
In the book "Concept of Perception and Theory and Structure" (1955), Alport examines the theory of perception and proposes his own theory of structure. The theory holds that social structures have no anatomical or physiological basis, but are composed of cycles of events that in turn allow people to complete and maintain this cycle themselves.
Olport's other works include: "Personality: Interpretation of Psychology" (1937), "The Essence of Personality" (1950), "Basic Research on Personality Psychology" (1955), " Personality Patterns and Growth " (1961).
Research Methods
Alport worked with his colleagues to develop a questionnaire for measuring dominance-compliance relationship, namely A-S response research; designed a questionnaire for measuring the relative intensity of interest, namely value research. The former was compiled in 1928 and adopted a multi-selective form to measure the behavioral tendency of individuals to dominate or obey in daily relationships. The latter was first published in 1931 and used an overlapping selection method to measure the value aspects of the society in an individual's life (theoretical, economic, artistic, social, political and religious) to evaluate individual personality tendencies.
Character evaluation
Alport is a pioneer of personality psychology . He attaches importance to the individuality of personality, and his trait theory directly explores personality issues based on the characteristics of individuals' own behavior, which makes it possible for psychologists to place various variables of the research object into operating procedures, solving the dilemma of long-term description and explanation of personality research in psychology. This discussion allows him to use objective observation, subjective questionnaire and other methods to have a certain objectivity, directly understand and study the behavioral characteristics of individuals themselves quantitatively, so as to distinguish between personality differences. His paper-pen tests on dominance-compliance and value types are still widely used today. He also created an independent theory of motivational function and was the first to get rid of the pathological orientation of psychoanalytics and attempt to establish a normal personality theory.
Alport's personality theory has also been criticized. This is often accused of being unscientific. All sciences must seek universal laws and use general generalization methods, while Alport's personality theory emphasizes specific individual research and explores individual examples. It is not easy to conduct empirical research.
It has also been criticized for separating the connection between humans and animals, children and adults, normal people and abnormal people. He was also accused of paying too much attention to conscious psychology at the cost of losing subconscious psychology and excessive attention to internal reasons for behavior at the cost of losing external reasons.
The most fiercely criticized key is "functional autonomy". "Property Autonomy" denies the relationship between early experience and personality development, believing that motivation is only related to reality but not to the past. This statement is an exaggeration. Some people criticized this personality theory.
Overall, it was not possible to give a specific explanation of the dynamics of personality, but only the structure of personality was described in detail.
and Freud
Alport's interest mainly lies in the part of consciousness, rather than the deep subconscious that is difficult to determine. He often talked about his only meeting with Freud, which led him to learn that Freud's psychology ignored some very important facts when grasping the content of the subconscious. This not only had a profound impact on the creation of his later theory. Moreover, it has made him disgusted with psychoanalysis throughout his academic career.
