Allport's Life and Allport's Psychology

ABSTRACT This article addresses some of the relations between Gordon Allport's life and his psychological theories, focusing on two themes: (a) Allport's junior-year prize-winning recounting of Harvard's “Rinehart” legend–the changes and distortions he introduced in his version of the core legend suggest altruistic sublimation of motives for power and prestige; and (b) Allport's relationship with “Jenny,” the mother of “Ross,” his college roommate (he twice published her letters to him as Letters from Jenny.). I suggest that the need to differentiate himself from Ross was one contributing factor to such Allportian theoretical notions as the functional autonomy of motives and the sharp differentiation between “normal” and “abnormal.”     

Gordon Allport and the Legend of "Rinehart"

Gordon Allport's prize-winning junior-year essay on the Harvard “Rinehart” legend contains several features that are different from all other versions of the legend, most notably in the motives attributed to Rinehart and the responses of the students to him. These changes, it is argued, reflect the influence of Allport's own personality and values, as manifested in his adult life and academic career.     

On the Integration of Nomothetic and Idiographic Research Methods in the Study of Personal Meaning

ABSTRACT This study presents the technique of self-investigation as a research tool for the study of personal meaning from the perspective of the general and the particular After reviewing the nomothesis-idiography debate, I argue that personality psychology can benefit from a combination of nomothetic and idiographic research methodologies This creates a need for new theoretical frameworks that incorporate both nomo-concepts, enabling the study of people in general and idio-concepts, enabling the psychologist to understand the particular world of the individual Allport's term “value” is reformulated as the idio-concept “valuation,” which refers to personal meaning in an individual's history The term “affect,” as a central component in the process of valuation, is treated as a nomo-concept The relation between the two concepts is demonstrated by studying specific concerns in the history of an individual as recurrent expressions of general winner and loser experiences     

Gender and values: What is the impact on decision making?

In this study we investigated C. Gilligan's [(1982), In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press] suggestion that women and men, due to socialization, develop differently in terms of moral development [L. Kohlberg (1969), “Stage and Consequence: The Cognitive Development Approach to Socialization,” In D. G. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research, Chicago: Rand McNally]. We also considered whether men and women differ in terms of a related construct, values of equity and equality [K. A. Rasinski (1987), “What's Fair Is Fair or Is It? Value Differences Underlying Public Views About Social Justice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 53, pp. 201–211]. It is our expectation that gender influences overall orientation in terms of the two sets of values, and that differences in values lead decision makers to weigh decision issues and to make final decisions differently. Results suggest that there are some gender-related differences in value systems, weights of decision issues, and final decisions.     

JOHN MILBANK's THEOLOGY OF THE "GIFT" AND CALVIN's THEOLOGY OF GRACE: A CRITICAL COMPARISON1

In his theology of the Gift, John Milbank advocates a theology of “reciprocity” between God and humanity, involving “active” rather than “passive” reception of the divine gift. Calvin and other Reformation theologians are criticized by Milbank as demeaning the role of the human partner by advocating “passivity” in the reception of grace. This essay compares Milbank's theology of the Gift with Calvin's theology of grace, showing how Calvin overcomes the schematic options of “passivity” or “reciprocity” in the divine‐human relation, all the while holding much more in common with Milbank's concerns about sanctification and participation than has generally been recognized.     

人格心理学的学科架构初探

人格心理学作为心理学体系中的重要分支之一,自创立以来却一直缺乏一个完整统一的学科架构。这种状况极大地限制了该学科的发展。文章回顾了人格心理学的起源和发展,探讨了学科发展的趋势,呈现了当下几种主要的学科架构。在综合比较的基础上,对其中有代表性的Clonlinger人格“描述—动力—发展”的“3D”模型进行了修正：（1）增加了人格理论;（2）把第一个“D”由“人格描述”改为“人格表现”;（3）对原有“3D”的内容进行补充和完善。得出了对人格心理学学科架构的“3D”修正模型：即理论加“3D”     

The Case(s) of Gordon Allport

ABSTRACT Gordon Allport has frequently been criticized for advocating the use of idiographic studies but undertaking only one such study himself. This article describes Allport's work on the case of Marion Taylor, an unpublished study that clearly contributed to his later work on the case method. The unfinished Taylor case materials suggest that Ada Allport was an important collaborator in Allport's work with individual cases. The case of Taylor is compared with the later case of Jenny Masterson using Allport's rules for the preparation of case studies in order to shed light on Allport's ambivalence regarding case studies.     

The Impact of Women in Advertisements on Attitudes Toward Women

The present study extends existing research showing a link between images of women in advertisements and sexual attitudes. We examined also the impact of seeing sex image and progressive advertisements on attitudes toward feminism and the women's movement. Ninety-two undergraduate academic and technology white middle-class students were assigned to one of two conditions: rating either sex image or progressive advertisements. All participants then completed four subscales of M. R. Burt's [(1980) “Cultural Myths and Supports for Rape,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 38, pp. 217-230] Sexual Attitudes Survey and R. E. Fassinger's [(1994) “Development and Testing of the Attitudes Toward Feminism and the Women's Movement (FWM) Scale,” Psychology of Women Quarterly, Vol. 18, pp. 389-402] Feminism and Women's Movement Scale. Major findings include replication of previous data showing a relation between viewing sex image advertisements and reporting attitudes supportive of sexual aggression. Those seeing sex image advertisements also showed lower acceptance of feminism. It is suggested that continuous presentation of such advertisements undermines women's striving for equality.     

“The Lost Foundation”: Kristeva's Semiotic Chora and Its Ambiguous Legacy

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re‐inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of “the beginning before the Beginning.” The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the “demonic” and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: (1) that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and (2) that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the “demonic” lies less “beyond us” than “in‐between.”     

The artificial dispute over Implicit Personality Theory: An answer to Jackson, Strieker, and Mirels

In their evaluation of Tzeng and Tzeng's (1982) concerns over the level of sophistication currently evident in the study of Implicit Personality Theory (IPT), Jackson and Strieker (1982) and Mirels (1982a) reaffirm their disputed positions at the opposing extremes of the myth-vs.-fact continuum of IPT. The present paper re-examines major measurement and statistical issues in the empirical study of IPT that are still unacknowledged by either Jackson and Strieker, or Mirels, or both. It is demonstrated that their dispute is artificial and can be accounted for by their lack of measuremental sophistication and their statistical partialities. Researchers are cautioned to consider more than “mechanical computability” and “statistical adoptability” in conducting and/or judging similar empirical studies.     

Updating Allport's and Batson's Framework of Religious Orientations: A Reevaluation from the Perspective of Self‐Determination Theory and Wulff's Social Cognitive Model

We theoretically and empirically evaluate Allport's intrinsic‐extrinsic and Batson's quest religious orientations through the lens of self‐determination theory (SDT) and Wulff's social‐cognitive model. Confirming our theoretical analysis, we find that Allport's intrinsic‐extrinsic dichotomy fails to correspond empirically to the differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation within SDT. Whereas Allport's intrinsic religious orientation was positively related to internalized extrinsic motivation, his two extrinsic (i.e., personal and social) religious orientations were not systematically related to any of the discerned motives within SDT. Furthermore, Batson's quest orientation was unrelated to any of the SDT concepts but was positively related to symbolic disbelief. The present findings suggest that Allport's motivational orientations model needs both refinement and relabeling to better fit with recent theoretical evolutions in the field of motivational psychology.     

Systematic innovation and social philosophy

Corbett's “Europe and the Social Order”; makes two claims: that industrial societies are marked by “systematic innovation”; and that, as a consequence, our inherited social doctrines are obsolete and must be replaced. The first claim is true, but the second is false: it is not the case that social doctrines are “consistent”; only with certain kinds of social order: we cannot therefore say that innovating societies either preclude or compel any particular social doctrines. They do not invalidate a priori doctrine, though they undermine belief in it. It is therefore less important to attack such doctrine than to study innovation empirically.     

Gender stereotypes are not accurate: A replication of Martin (1987) using diagnostic vs. self-report and behavioral criteria

Women and men (58 females and 42 males) reported whether they possess each of several stereotypic and neutral traits (self-report criterion) and recorded the percentage of each gender they believed display each trait (diagnostic). Observations of subjects (57 males and 49 females) discussing controversial topics yielded the behavioral criterion. (Approximately 81% of the total sample was European-American, 8% African-American, 2% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and the remainder of “other” ethnicity.) Gender differences were larger and more inaccurate in stereotypes (diagnostic) than in “reality” (self-report criterion), but behavioral criterion results were mixed. Difficulties in specifying criteria for “actual differences,” including behavioral criteria, and recent work related to C. L. Martin's [(1987) “A Ratio Measure of Gender Stereotyping,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 52, pp. 489–499] paradigm (and results) are considered. Implications of results for the importance of replication and for research on accuracy of stereotypes are also discussed.     

Theology as Conversational Event: Karl Barth, the Ending of "Dialogue" and the Beginning of "Conversation"

This essay deals with a commonly voiced concern with Barth's theology as expressed in the form that his theology illegitimately secures itself from critique, polices its narrow location assiduously and only lets in a few carefully vetted others when convinced that they can be useful. In contrast, through exploring John Milbank's distinction between dialogue and conversation it becomes possible to critique James Barr's and Clark Pinnock's understandings of “conversation” in a way that serves to hear Barth, and what it entails for theology to be “conversational”, significantly differently. Indeed, it will be maintained that “conversation” is an appropriate metaphor to apply to what Barth was doing with his theology.     

DIONYSIUS AND SOME LATE MEDIEVAL MYSTICAL THEOLOGIANS OF NORTHERN EUROPE

Though the authority of Dionysius as a virtually apostolic theological source remains unchallenged in the late Middle Ages, ownership of his inheritance is much disputed, in connection with two issues of “mystical theology” principally. The first controversy (broadly between “Intellectualist” and “affectivist” readings of Dionysius' Mystical Theology) concerns whether the soul, united to God by grace, is made one with God principally by knowledge or by love. The second controversy is well exemplified by the disagreement between Jean Gerson and Denys the Carthusian as to whether Ruusbroec's account of the nature of that union of the soul with God amounts to a heretical extinction of the identity of the created soul. But both Gerson's critique of Ruusbroec and Denys the Carthusian's rebuttal of it are equally superficial, and the theologies of Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa show why: Eckhart and Cusa retained, while Gerson and Denys had lost, their grip on the “dialectics” of “sameness” and “difference” expounded in Mystical Theology.     

中文语境下的“心理”和“心理学”

“心”或“心理”等词语在汉语中有相当长的历史,对这些词语的理解反映了中国人关于“心理”的认识。中文的“心”往往不是指一种身体器官而是指人的思想、意念、情感、性情等,故“心理学”这三个汉字有极大的包容性。任何学科都摆脱不了社会文化的作用,中国心理学亦曾受到意识形态、科学主义和大众常识等方面的影响。近年中国学者对心理学自身的问题进行了反思。从某种意义上说,中国人对“心理”和“心理学”的理解或许有助于心理学的整合,并与其他国家的心理学一道发展出真正的人类心理学     

Towards a literary account of mental health from James' Principles of Psychology

The field of mental health tends to treat its literary metaphors as literal realities with the concomitant loss of vague “feelings of tendency” in “unusual experiences”. I develop this argument through the prism of William James’ (1890) “The Principles of Psychology”. In the first part of the paper, I reflect upon the relevance of James' “The Psychologist's Fallacy” to a literary account of mental health. In the second part of the paper, I develop the argument that “connotations” and “feelings of tendency” are central to resolving some of the more difficult challenges of this fallacy. I proceed to do this in James' spirit of generating imaginative metaphors to understand experience. Curiously, however, mental health presents a strange paradox in William James’ (1890) Principles of Psychology. He constructs an elaborate conception of the “empirical self” and “stream of thought” but chooses not to use these to understand unusual experiences – largely relying instead on the concept of a “secondary self.” In this article, I attempt to make more use of James' central division between the “stream of thought” and the “empirical self” to understand unusual experiences. I suggest that they can be usefully understood using the loose metaphor of a “binary star” where the “secondary self” can be seen as an “accretion disk” around one of the stars. Understood as literary rather the literal, this metaphor is quite different to more unitary models of self-breakdown in mental health, particularly in its separation of “self” from “the stream of thought” and I suggest it has the potential to start a re-imagination of the academic discourse around mental health.     

The effect of romantic and nonromantic films on perception of female friendly and seductive behavior

Two experiments investigating gender differences in perception of nonverbal seductive and friendly cues were conducted using standardized videotaped interactions. Results of the first experiment indicated no gender differences in perceptions, contradicting previous results obtained by Abbey (“Sex Differences in Attributions for Friendly Behavior: Do Males Misperceive Females' Friendliness?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1982, 42, 830–838), who used a nonstandardized interaction. Results of the second experiment indicated that exposure to romantic and nonromantic scenarios in the media may produce contrast effects primarily affecting male interpretation of female nonverbal cues.     

ON "THE GIFT" IN TANNER's THEOLOGY: A PATRISTIC PARABLE

Kathryn Tanner's theology of “the gift” is examined and contrasted with that of John Milbank. To clarify the relation between spiritual and material gifts implied in Tanner's thought, as well as the role of “nature”, the author revisits patristic commentaries on the Lord's Prayer regarding “the gift” of daily bread. Differing interpretations by Origen and Gregory of Nyssa resemble differences obtaining between Tanner and Milbank; Maximus the Confessor's harmonizing reading may provide a way beyond the present impasse and illumine the importance of nature for further discussions of “the gift” in Anglo‐American theology.     

The Structure of Female Subgroups: An Exploration of Ambivalent Stereotypes

The present research concerns the stereotypes associated with subgroups of women. Previous researchers have considered the ambivalent nature of stereotypes, particularly along the dimensions of warmth and competence (Glick, Diebold, Bailey-Werner, & Zhu, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23:1323–1334, 1997). In Study 1, we looked at the degree to which the superordinate social category of “women” is differentiated into distinct subgroups and whether warmth and competence are the primary dimensions of this differentiation. In Study 2, we assessed the degree to which businesswomen and homemakers are automatically associated with warmth and competence. Results showed that men and women differ in the valence associated with specific subgroups, and it is this valence, rather than stereotype content, that is automatically associated with these female subgroups.