Personality and social relations
Gordon W. Allport
1897–1967
A short biography
Working mainly at Harvard, Allport examined personality through current motives and context. His interests included individual differences, religion and prejudice. He resisted reducing people to one learning rule or to past conflicts alone.
What does this figure represent in psychology?
Trait approaches describe relatively consistent individual differences. His work on prejudice brought intergroup relations into focus. Measuring a trait does not imply identical behaviour in every setting; the effects of intergroup contact also depend on its conditions.
Key concepts
Trait: a relatively consistent disposition. Prejudice: a pre-existing evaluation of a person or group.
A question for the reader
How would you measure a trait separately from behaviour in one situation?
Selected works and publications
Links lead to original texts, institutional catalogues or publication records; not every link provides a free full text. Work titles are retained in their original or established language.
Reading in context
Historical influence does not establish every claim today. Read original works in their historical and methodological context.
Sources
Source check: 16 October 2026. Institutional biographies and accessible bibliographic records were consulted; some records were checked through indexed summaries. Complete works were not all read. Concept connections and questions were written for this collection.