Chapter 12 Allport: Psychology of the Individual 361individuals see themselves objectively. They are able to perceive the incongruities
and absurdities in life and have no need to pretend or to put on airs.
The final criterion of maturity is a unifying philosophy of life. Healthy peo-
ple have a clear view of the purpose of life. Without this view, their insight would
be empty and barren, and their humor would be trivial and cynical. The unifying
philosophy of life may or may not be religious, but Allport (1954, 1963), on a
personal level, seemed to have felt that a mature religious orientation is a crucial
ingredient in the lives of most mature individuals. Although many churchgoing
people have an immature religious philosophy and narrow racial and ethnic preju-
dices, deeply religious people are relatively free of these prejudices. The person
with a mature religious attitude and a unifying philosophy of life has a well-
developed conscience and, quite likely, a strong desire to serve others.
Structure of Personality
The structure of personality refers to its basic units or building blocks. To Freud,
the basic units were instincts; to Eysenck (see Chapter 14), they were biologically
determined factors. To Allport, the most important structures are those that permit
the description of the person in terms of individual characteristics, and he called
these individual characteristics personal dispositions.
Personal Dispositions
Throughout most of his career, Allport was careful to distinguish between com-
mon traits and individual traits. Common traits are general characteristics held
in common by many people. They can be inferred from factor analytic studies such
as those conducted by Eysenck and the authors of the Five-Factor Trait Theory (see
Chapter 13), or they can be revealed by various personality inventories. Common
traits provide the means by which people within a given culture can be compared
to one another.
Whereas common traits are important for studies that make comparisons
among people, personal dispositions are of even greater importance because they
permit researchers to study a single individual. Allport (1961) defined a personal
disposition as “a generalized neuropsychic structure (peculiar to the individual),
with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate
and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior” (p. 373).
The most important distinction between a personal disposition and a common trait
is indicated by the parenthetical phrase “peculiar to the individual.” Personal dis-
positions are individual; common traits are shared by several people.
To identify personal dispositions, Allport and Henry Odbert (1936) counted
nearly 18,000 (17,953, to be exact) personally descriptive words in the 1925 edition
of Webster’s New International Dictionary, about a fourth of which described
personality characteristics. Some of these terms, usually referred to as traits,
describe relatively stable characteristics such as “sociable” or “introverted”; others,
usually referred to as states, describe temporary characteristics such as “happy” or
“angry”; others described evaluative characteristics such as “unpleasant” or “won-
derful”; and still others referred to physical characteristics such as “tall” or “obese.”