Scand. J . Psychol., 1974,15, 1-3

Gordon Allport on the definition of personality

University of Bergen, Norway FRED VOLLMER

Abstract.-Allport objects to operational definitions of personality because, by equating personality with ob- servable phenomena, they reduce personality to some- thing subjective. His view on the reality of phenomena is, however, but one of several possible. The plea for an operational definition of personality may equally well be based on the phenomenological assumption that to exist means, for man, to appear in the world for someone, and what appears for someone does not have to be thought of as existing in that someone’s a ind . To be studied empiri- cally, personality must be knowable, and it must be de- fined in terms of how it is known. Postulating an internal structure behind or within the phenomena known as per- sonality, adds no meaning to the concept.

Allport (1937) introduced a distinction between bio- social and biophysical definitions of personality which has come to be well known and often quoted (e.g., Hall & Lindzey, 1957, 1970). More recently (Allport, 1961) it was modified into a tripartite schema in which (1) external-effect and ( 2 ) opera- tional definitions correspond to the earlier biosocial category, and (3) internal-structure definitions cor- respond to the biophysical. Allport himself ad- vocates the latter type of definition.

The distinguishing characteristic of external- effect definitions, according to Allport, is that an individual’s personality is equated with the way he is perceived, thought of, judged, known, or re- sponded to by others, his social stimulus value, the way he appears for someone. Typical for opera- tional definitions and a positivistic view of per- sonality is a specification of what observable phe- nomena (appearing under what conditions, identifi- able by which properties, measurable by which procedures) are to be subsumed under the concept.

Allport’s objection to both external-effect and operational definitions is that they imply equating person A’s personality with some other person B’s perception, experience, idea or knowledge, thus reducing A’s personality to B’s state of mind and bereaving A’s personality independent exist-

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ence. If, he points out, A ’ s personality is how he in some way is known to others, and if the others have different and conflicting knowledge of his personality (which often may be the case), then A must have many personalities. The solitary hermit, on the other hand, who is not known to anybody, must lack personality. As both these consequences are absurd, personality must be defined as a ieality (an “internal structure”-“something inside our skins”) existing in itself and with a nature of its own, independent of how it may appear for others, or whether it appears at all for others.

Since external-effect and operational definitions in principle are the same and have the same short- comings, according to Allport, the following discus- sion will be confined to operational definitions. Given that a psychologist does believe that per- sonality is an observable phenomenon, and hence that defining it must include specification of how personality appears and is to be known, is it neces- sary to conclude-as Allport does-that the psy- chologist will be studying his own subjective states of mind and not something having independent existence?

Such a conclusion would indeed seem strange to common sense. In everyday life we do not believe that the people and things we observe are not real and exist only as states of our mind-that just because we see them, they are creations of our own. On the contrary, what I am witness to, sitting here by the window and looking down on the street, appears perfectly objective to me, as existing in- dependent of me and not something I could con- fuse with subjective states of my own such as dreams, feelings, wishes or thoughts. Leaving com- mon sense aside, however, three philosophical viewpoints on the ontological status of phenomena seem possible.

According to one view, phenomena are the sec- ondary appearances to human consciousness of a

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basic reality beyond the reach of human knowledge. The phenomena of everyday life are effects of in- teraction between parts of this primary reality, which has independent existence and is more real than its secondary manifestations, which have only relative existence.

A second view regards phenomena as mental events existing in and by virtue of consciousness or minds, and having in no sense independent ex- istence, neither in an absolute reality beyond the senses, nor as phenomena in the world.

According to the third view (phenomenology), the phenomena of everyday life are reality. Things and people are the way they appear in the world, and there is no reality beyond phenomena.

It (the phenomenon) does not point over its shoulder to a true being which would be, for it, absolute. What it is, it is absolutely, for it reveals itself as it is. The phenomenon can be studied and described as such, for it is absolutely indicative of itself (Sartre, 1957, p. xlvi).

Nor are phenomena in consciousness, according to phenomenology, they are before consciousness, outside consciousness, in the world. To say that things are the way they appear for someone, is not to equate them with that someone’s state of mind.

Reality is a solid tissue. It does not await our judg- ments to annex to itself the most surprising phenomena, nor to reject our most likely fancies . . . The world is not an object the law of whose constitution I possess (Merleau-Ponty, 1956, p. 62).

Let us understand indeed that our theory of the phe- nomenon has replaced the reality of the thing by the ob- jectivity of the phenomenon. The reality of that cup is that it is there and that it is not me . . . the series of its appearances is bound by a principle which does not depend on my whim (Sartre, 1957, p. xlvii).

In believing, then, that a definition of personality should specify how personality appears and is to be known, one is not necessarily holding the view that personality is not real and does not exist ob- jectively outside of one’s perception and con- ceptualization. The plea for an operational defini- tion may equally well be based on the belief that to exist means for man, in essence, to reveal himself in the world in some way.

Truth does not “dwell” only in the “interior man” for there is no interior man. Man is before himself in the world and it is in the world that he knows himself (Mer- IeauPonty, 1956, p. 62).

If Allport’s issue with operational definitions is an unwillingness to regard A’s personality as some-

one else’s state of mind, then Allport is not attack- ing operational definitions in general, but only those which-in addition, and contingently-assume that the phenomena specified as falling under the concept of personality do not have objective ex- istence. Allport’s own position seems to be that phenomena are not objective and real, but this is only one of several possible philosophical assump- tions about the ontological status of phenomena. To assert that proponents of operational definitions are reducing personality to something not real, is presenting a far from self-evident philosphical in- terpretation as a truth-an interpretation which may not be held by adherents of operational def- initions.

Some passages in Allport’s (1961) discussion would indicate that personality may be identified with observable phenomena as they appear when viewed from a special perspective-from that of the subject, and that what is wrong is to equate A’s personality with the way he appears to some- one else: “. . . a personality has its own exist- ence, it is not to be confused with . . . the per- ceptions that other people have of it” (p. 25). The passage, “May it not rather be that one judge may have a correct impression of us, and others a wrong impression?” (p. 24), also seems to imply that some certain appearances, seen by some certain privileged persons, truly are A’s personality. Yet, in his argument against operational definitions, All- port’s objection is not that the wrong phenomena seen from a wrong perspective are equated with personality, but that the way something appears is confused with how it really is-in itself and besides appearances. It would be absurd to as- sume, however, that what appears as A’s personal- ity for some special person is real, and exists ob- jectively outside in the world, whereas what ap- pears as A’s personality for other individuals is merely a subjective state of consciousness.

According to Allport, a consequence of equating A’s personality with the way he appears for some other person, B, is that A does not exist if not ob- served by B. The assumption behind this line of reasoning is clearly that what B sees (what appears for B) is something in B’s mind, and that if a cer- tain something is not in B’s mind, it does not exist. If Allport thus believes that phenomena are sub- jective, existing only in the minds of those who look at them and ceasing to exist when not looked at, and if he uses this assumption in arguing against

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Definition of personality 3

identifying A’s personality with how A is known to B, then he cannot at the same time be arguing for equating A’s personality with the way A appears for himself or for some special other person. For if A were sitting alone in his bathtub-absorbed

able phenomena, as they appear in the world, adds no meaning to the concept of personality.

REFERENCES - in the doings of Hercule Poirot-and in no way observing himself, he would, according to Allport, not exist.

What Allport, then, must think is basically wrong with operational definitions, is that they identify personality with phenomena; and phenomena, seen from whatever viewpoint, do not exist objectively. What is needed, in his view, is a conceptualization of personality as a reality behind appearances, something truly existing inside the individual, in- dependent of subjective appearances in human minds. Personality is “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical sys- tems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought . . . All the systems that comprise per- sonality are to be regarded as determining tend- encies. They exert a directive influence upon all the adjustive and expressive acts by which the personality comes to be known” (Allport, 1961, pp. 28-29). Characteristic behavior and thought (adjustive and expressive acts) are the outside manifestations or observable appearances (“by which the personality comes to be known”) of an internal structure.

The reason why Allport finds it necessary to equate personality with systems inside the person, and not with characteristic acts in the world, is that the latter are thought to be the way personality appears (“comes to be known”), and as such do not have objective existence, whereas the internal structure exists independently and therefore is what personality really is. To repeat, however: con- sidering that which may actually be seen, as not real-merely as the appearance in human knowl- edge of something transcendental and more real- is but one possible philosophical view on the onto- logical status of phenomena, and a view quite far from how we understand things and people in everyday life.

It is a tautology that if there is to be an empirical study of personality, personality must be some- thing knowable, and it must be defined as such. We do not thereby necessarily identify personality with something not real. On the contrary, we may be- lieve to be studying the only things that are real, and that to postulate some entity behind observ-

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Postal address:

F. Vollmer Psykologisk institutt Postboks 25 5014 Bergen-U, Norway

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