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Fifty Years of Personality Psychology pp 215–236Cite as

Gordon Allport

Father and Critic of the Five-Factor Model

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Part of the book series: Perspectives on Individual Differences ((PIDF))

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, Gordon Allport’s views of personality, and of personality psychology as a science, have had a guiding and pervasive influence. In this chapter, we examine Allport’s role in bringing about one of the most significant empirical advances in the field. Allport and Odbert’s (1936) psycholexical study of English language personality descriptors laid the empirical and conceptual groundwork from which the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality eventually emerged. One might therefore consider Allport one of the fathers of the FFM. Like many fathers, however, he might not have approved wholeheartedly of his offspring.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, 94704, USA

    Oliver P. John & Richard W. Robins

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  1. Oliver P. John
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  2. Richard W. Robins
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, 94720, Berkeley, California, USA

    Kenneth H. Craik

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, 74104, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

    Robert Hogan

  3. Department of Psychology, State University of New York, 14454, Geneseo, New York, USA

    Raymond N. Wolfe

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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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John, O.P., Robins, R.W. (1993). Gordon Allport. In: Craik, K.H., Hogan, R., Wolfe, R.N. (eds) Fifty Years of Personality Psychology. Perspectives on Individual Differences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2311-0_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2311-0_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-2313-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-2311-0

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