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Floyd Henry Allport was an American psychologist who is considered by many the father of social psychology. Floyd Henry Allport played a key role in bringing about the acceptance of social psychology as a legitimate field of behavioral science. His disertation and textbook impacted the future of the social psychology field. He was particularly interested in public opinion, attitudes, morale, rumors, and behavior and focused on exploration of these topics through laboratory experimentation and survey research

Background

Born: August 22, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Died: October 15, 1978 in Los Altos, California

Family

• “To both my parents I owe a profound debt of gratitude for their fine influence upon my life. From both of them I derived a deep and lasting sense of curiosity and interest in nature.”

He described his father as “a man of considerable energy, engaged in many ventures besides the practice of his profession of medicine, and deeply devoted to the care of his family and the Gospel of "hard work."

Allport had an older brother named Gordon Allport who was 18 months older than he was.

Education

Allport graduated from Glenville High school and went to Harvard and got an A.B degree in 1914 with the 1913 class. A few years later he returned to Harvard for graduate work in anthropology and then psychology. His grad work was interrupted when he entered WWI, and once that was over he went back to his graduate studies. Allport wrote his doctoral thesis in 1919 and received his Ph.D from Harvard.

In 1922, he went to University of North Carolina for 2 years where he was an associated professor. While at North Carolina, in 1923, he finished his first textbook and titled is Social Psychology. The following is an exerpt taken from his book:

• "In this book I strongly rejected the notion that there was some kind of "super" mental entity or "group mind" at work in such collective phenomena. I rejected also, later, the tendency to speak of groups themselves as per se entities or agencies. The effects of group or crowd influence, as well as organization, I attributed to the behavior solely of individuals. It was not, however, the behavior of individuals acting alone, but behavior that was natural to individuals when acting under conditions that were specifically social."

Transferring a final time in 1924, Allport was appointed to the faculty of Syracuse University as a professor of social and political psychology. He stayed in the position until he retired in 1957 and this was the university where he did a majority of his research.

Personal life

Allport was married to Ethel Margaret Hudson for 20 years and they had 3 children, Edward, Dorthy, and Floyd. They then they divorced and in 1938 Allport married Helene Hartley who was a professor of education and English at Syracuse University.

Awards

He was the recipient of one of the research awards of the American Psychological Association and he was a recipient of a research award from Sigma Xi (Syracuse Chapter) in 1957.

Allport was the recipient of the American Psychological Associations Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1965.

Allport was proud to be awarded the gold medal of the American Psychological foundation in 1968.

Organizations

• Council of Directors of the American Psychological Association (Member).

• Association on the Social Science REsearch Council (Representative).
• Society for the Psychological Study of Social Science (Chairman).

• President Hoover's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership.

• Survey Research Center (Consultant)

• Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (Acting Editor).

• Associated Artisits of Syracuse (President).

• American Psychological Association

• Phi Beta Kappa

• American Association for the Advancement of Science

• American sociological Association

• Western Psychological Association

• Psychonomic Society

• General System Research

Publications from Allport

• 1920 The Influence of the Group Upon Association and Thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology 3:159–182.

• 1924 Social Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

• 1925 Allport, Floyd H.; and Hartman, D. A. The Measurement and Motivation of Atypical Opinion in a Certain Group. American Political Science Review 19:735–760.

• 1927 “Group” and “Institution” as Concepts in a Natural Science of Social Phenomena. American Sociological Society Publications 22:83–99.

• 1931 Allport, Floyd H.; and Hartman, D. A. The Prediction of Cultural Change. Pages 307–350 in S. A. Rice (editor), Methods in Social Science. Univ. of Chicago Press.

• 1931 Katz, Daniel; and Allport, Floyd H. Students’ Attitudes: A Report of the Syracuse University Reaction Study. Syracuse, N.Y.: Craftsman Press.

• 1932 Allport, Floyd H.; Dickens, Milton C.; and Schanck, Richard L. Psychology in Relation to Social and Political Problems. Pages199–252 in Paul S. Achilles (editor), Psychology at Work. New York and London: McGraw-Hill.

• 1933 Institutional Behavior. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.

• 1934 The J-curve Hypothesis of Con-forming Behavior. Journal of Social Psychology 5:141–183. → The article includes summaries in French and German.

• 1937 Toward a Science of Public Opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly 1:7–23.

• 1952 Morse, Nancy C.; and Allport, Floyd H. The Causation of Anti-Semitism: An Investigation of Seven Hypotheses. Journal of Psychology 34:197–233.

• 1954 The Structuring of Events: Outline of a General Theory With Applications to Psychology. Psychological Review 61:281–303.

• 1955 Theories of Perception and the Concept of Structure. New York: Wiley.

• 1962 A Structuronomic Conception of Behavior; Individual and Collective: 1. Structural Theory and the Master Problem of Social Psychology. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 64:3–30.

Research/Studies in detail

The influence of the group upon association and thought

In this study, Allport described what we know as social facilitation. Allport completed 6 seperate experiments that looked at how individuals performed in socially isolated conditions and compared results to how those individuals completed the same task when in a group. Allport found that individuals actually perform better when in a group setting as opposed to completing the same/similar task when they were alone.

Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement

In this paper, Allport outlined the dimensions of the personality assessments that he used while studying personality. Allport also provided information of how they arrived at these classifications, and brief examples of what the manifestations of the traits will be in the actual person. The traits were: Intellegence, temperament (emotional breadth and strength), self expression.(extro-introversion, ascendance-submission, expansion-reclusion, compensation, insight and self-evaluation), and sociality.

The Structuring of Events: Outline of a General Theory With Applications to Psychology

Allport starts this paper off by reviewing how was use quanititative statements while trying to understand behavior, he uses a more mechanistic description of an event. Allport then shows how when you add something other than a qualititaive statement, it is much more clear as to what the circumstance is. In the end, Allport stresses that looking at the structure of the behavior coupled with nonquantitative concepts. Allport came up with an equation that combined both structural kinematics/geometry (nonquantitative) and strucural energics (quantitative).

The Observation of Societal Behaviors of Individuals

Allport focuses on the methodology of involving specific social stimulus that may or may not be presented. Allport described 3 ways in which societal behaviors may be analyzed 1) co-acting 2) reciprocal 3) co-reciprocal. He questions the definition of time, space, degrees of qualities because they represent large scale behaviors and not individual traits or differences. Allport believes this method and the results will offer promise of a contribution of practical as well as theoretical value in human relationships.

Social Forces

Social Forces was published December 1927. In the nature of institutions section Allport questions the term "institutions". There are two different examples he gives. Institutions can be given a group entitativity and a figure, or they can be simply human behavior broken down into sections. The institutions have three factions. A system is brought from the past, watching and sorting the system, and then the accumulated tools used to sort and or observe the system. He makes the point that institutions are not valid to blame or say they can cause things. They may be used as a description, but he wants it pointed out that they can be a hinderance to the sociological method.

Behavior and Experiment in Social Psychology

Social stimuli are the main factors in any experimental social psychological setting. The point is to identify the difference in the types of stimuli. The social stimuli lead to the recognition and proof of "social intelligence". A social group's affect of an individual attitude can be notable. Social stimuli then lead to competition, specific attention, quickness, worse quality, and physical movement. The final conclusion leads to the focus of the individual as the key component towards learning anything about the group.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology

This was published in 1921. They list reasons for the combination of Abnormal and Social Psychology. New concepts and behavior terminology led to a separate unique classification. Different specific commonalities were becoming apparent and being tied in relation. The concepts were even being taught but had not been merged to detailed organizational identities. A section of psychology that studies the deepest forms primary human behavior. Social insufficiency was another combination interest. Allport and Prince wanted more factions paired with abnormal psychology and science. The inclusion of social psychology was defined and supported.

Conclusion

Floyd Allport has been considered by many to be the founder of social psychology and many of his ideas have had a lasting impact on psychology. This comes from him being the first to write a dissertation in the U.S. on Social Psychology called "the social influence: an experimental study of the effect of the group upon individual mental processes", how he co-authored the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, and the research he conducted. His textbook, Social Psychology, was and still is, one of his finest contributions to the field of social psychology. In it he called for much stricter research design, after which he developed the methodology that added a greater focus on experimental and objective reactions of individuals. Allport also showed how easy it was to transform certain psychoanalytical accounts can be transformed into a more behavior oriented language to explain how we develop certain habits. Another important focus Allport was studying individuals versus groups where he coined the terms social facilitation, conformity and producing tendency, which we still use today. Another aspect in which Allport has had lasting influence is in the debate of how much social pscyhology deals with personality. Along with his brother, Gordon, Floyd had worked tremendously during the 1930's to couple personality with social psychology. It was during this time when a criticisim of Floyd's insistence that personality be coupled with social psychology that it was only just a novel idea. However, upon deeper investigation, it was based on work prior to Allports coupling of personality and social psychology.

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