Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIV. Dispositional Theories 13. Allport: Psychology of
the Individual(^390) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
only peripheral to a person’s sense of personhood and thus outside that person’s
proprium.
Motivation
Most people, Allport believed, are motivated by present drives rather than by past
events and are aware of what they are doing and have some understanding of why
they are doing it. He also contended that theories of motivation must consider the
differences between peripheral motives and propriate strivings.Peripheral motives
are those that reduce a need,whereas propriate strivings seek to maintain tension
and disequilibrium.Adult behavior is both reactive and proactive, and an adequate
theory of motivation must be able to explain both.
A Theory of Motivation
Allport believed that a useful theory of personality rests on the assumption that peo-
ple not only react to their environment but also shape their environment and cause it
to react to them. Personality is a growing system, allowing new elements to con-
stantly enter into and change the person.
Many older theories of personality, Allport (1960) believed, did not allow for
possibilities of growth. Psychoanalysis and the various learning theories are basi-
cally homeostatic, or reactive,theories because they see people as being motivated
primarily by needs to reduce tension and to return to a state of equilibrium.
An adequate theory
of personality, Allport
contended, must allow
for proactive behavior.
It must view people as
consciously acting on
their environment in a
manner that permits
growth toward psycho-
logical health. A compre-
hensive theory must not
only include an explana-
tion of reactive theories,
but must also include
those proactive theories
that stress change and
growth. In other words,
Allport argued for a
psychology that, on one
hand, studies behavioral
patterns and general laws
(the subject matter of tra-
ditional psychology) and,
on the other, growth and
individuality.
384 Part IV Dispositional Theories
Sometimes people are motivated to seek tension, not merely re-
duce it.