The following text is © 1997Robert Wozniak. All hyperlinked text links to footnotes located at the bottom of the document.
Floyd Henry Allport and theSocial Psychology
Bryn Mawr College
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1890, Floyd H. Allport (1890-1971) was the second in a family of four children-all boys.[1]His father, a physician/entrepreneur, combined a general medical practice with a variety of business endeavors (founding a cooperative drug company, building and renting apartments, and the construction and supervision of hospitals). His mother, who had been a school teacher, was a devout Methodist; and the Allport home was remembered as a "peaceful but sheltered place with kindness exhibited on every hand."[2]
During Allport's childhood, the family moved from Wisconsin to Ohio, first to Streetsboro, then to Hudson, and eventually to Glenville (Cleveland). After graduating from Glenville High, Allport traveled to Cambridge to enroll at Harvard. With the exception of approximately two years between completion of undergraduate and inception of graduate study and a brief stint in the Field Artillery during World War I, Allport remained at Harvard until 1922, taking his A.B. degree in 1914, his Ph.D. in 1919, and serving as an Instructor in psychology from 1919 to 1922.
Harvard psychology, in these years, was still housed in the combined philosophy-psychology department. Until his sudden death on the podium at Radcliffe, Hugo MŸnsterberg (1863-1916) was a significant presence within the department, and it was he who advised Allport to focus his dissertation research on a comparison of the performance of individuals acting alone to that of their acting in groups. William McDougall (1871-1938), who arrived in 1920 to fill the chair left vacant after MŸnsterberg's death, was, as Allport put it, "uncongenial to my line of thinking since...[he] seemed to me to lack a suitable criterion and basis in physical reality."[3] Indeed, it may have been Allport or someone quite like him that McDougall had in mind when he described his reception at Harvard in the following terms:
"I found Behaviorism ascendant and rampant. I found that though my Social Psychology had enjoyed before the war a much larger vogue than I had realized, it and I were now back-numbers, relics of a bygone and superseded age... Another difficulty which I had not foreseen was that the numerous graduate students...with very few exceptions...had been taught some form of mechanistic psychology, with the consequence that they looked upon me and my outlandish theories with suspicion..."[4]
If behaviorism was rampant among Harvard graduate students in 1920, one important source of the prevalent attitude must surely have been the lingering influence of Edwin Bissell Holt (1873-1946).[5]Although Holt had resigned his faculty position in 1918 to "retire" to an island in Maine, his influence among Harvard students, undergraduate and graduate, had been great.[6] Indeed, of those on the Harvard faculty known to have influenced Allport during his student years, Holt was possibly the most significant.[7]
[8] that developed the relational view of consciousness articulated by William James (1842-1910) in his famous paper, Does consciousness exist?"[9] From 1909 to 1915, he continued to develop this conception in two directions.
Holt had taken his own undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard and remained there, first as an instructor, then as an assistant professor of psychology, until his resignation. By 1909, he had already completed the manuscript for a book,The Concept of Consciousness,Becoming interested in psychopathology, Holt attended the famous "Freud Conference" at Clark University in 1909[10] and began to experiment with a response set reanalysis of Freud's critical concept of the 'wish.' At the same time, he began to generalize his relational theory of consciousness to behavior conceived as a relation between the body and the environment. In 1915, these developments converged in a version of "behaviorism" described in a book bearing the rather unlikely title,The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics.[11]
Although detailed discussion of Holt's ideas would be out of place in this context,[12] several key aspects of his "behaviorism" should be identified as exerting a considerable influence on the young Floyd Allport.[13] First and foremost, there was Holt's thoroughgoing objectivism. "It is not that we have two contrasted worlds, the 'objective' and the 'subjective,'" he writes, "there is but one world, the objective, and that which we have hitherto not understood, have dubbed therefore the 'subjective,' are the subtler workings of integrated objective mechanisms."[14] Indeed, as preached by Holt and reinforced by the laboratory practices then prevailing in the Harvard department,[15] the psychology encountered by graduate students of Allport's era was almost exclusively an objective science.
[16] It is one, as we shall see, that is also to be found in Allport.
Second, Holt sharply distinguished the study of behavior from the physiology of reflex arcs by stressing the fact that behavior is a "synthetic novelty" that emerges out of the systematic integration of simple reflexes and that, as integration becomes increasingly complex, behavior becomes less and less a function of the actual, proximal stimuli (e.g., light hitting the retina) and more and more a function of the properties of objects in the environment. For a psychology of behavior, in other words, central mechanisms of reflex integration are of much greater importance than the peripheral mechanisms operating in receptors and effectors. For early behaviorism, much of which had been influenced by John B. Watson's (1878-1958) somewhat uncritical adoption of the peripheralist views of Jacques Loeb (1859-1924), this was an unusual position.Third, in reinterpreting Freud's concept of "wish" in behavior terms, Holt had employed a notion, that of response "attitude" or "set" which would later become a cornerstone of Allport's analysis of complex social psychological phenomena. Wish, Holt argued, "includes...whatever would be called impulse, tendency, desire, purpose, attitude... it is acourse of actionwhich some mechanism of the body is set to carry out, whether it actually does so or does not." Indeed, since for Holt it mattered little from a conceptual point of view whether the body is set to respond or actually does respond, behavior and wish could be construed as "one and the same thing...a course of action which the living body executes or is prepared to execute with regard to some object or some fact of its environment."[17]
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Holt defined his behaviorism in such a way that consciousness, albeit a consciousness radically redefined, might be retained. Consciousness, in Holt's view, is not a substance, a thing apart from either the objects in the environment or the operation of the nervous system. Rather, consciousness, like behavior, with which it is coterminous, is a relation between the body and its environing objects. It is a relation of awareness, one that arises in the functional dependence of behavior on the environment. As awareness, it cannot be ignored. Neither, however, should it be reified as a factor in the determination of behavior. It is, in effect, epiphenomenal or, as Holt puts it..."a mere irrelevance, a surface embroidery on action...the surface foam of a sea where the real currents are well beneath the surface."[18] It is in just this sense that Allport construes "consciousness" when he later comes to define psychology as "the science which studies behavior and consciousness."[19]
Another source of early Harvard behaviorism, of course, as it was of behaviorism everywhere, was the work of John B. Watson. At Harvard, during the years Allport spent as a student, comparative psychology was taught by Robert M. Yerkes. Although Yerkes was eventually to break with Watson, their relations during this period were quite cordial. In correspondence, Watson confided to Yerkes that he had hopes of remodeling mainstream psychology along behavior lines and Yerkes responded with measured support for Watson's program.[20] After its publication in 1914, Yerkes adopted Watson'sBehavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology[21] as the text for his animal behavior course.
[22] it is almost inconceivable that, in 1919, as a junior member of the Harvard faculty, Allport would not have turned for inspiration to Watson's newly publishedPsychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.[23]
Between personal contact with Holt and indirect access to Watson at first through Yerkes and then through his text, Harvard students had, for the period, an unusually rich exposure to behaviorism. Although we have as direct evidence of Watson's influence on Allport only Allport's brief note to the effect that "from among the currents and undercurrents of psychology of that day, I seized onto behaviorism and [only later] came...to see the excesses of Watsonian thinking,"Nor is it surprising, therefore, that in Watson's pioneering text, we find a number of ideas that later appear, largely unmodified, in Allport's work. These include, among others, the general taxonomy of fundamental modes of response (hereditary, acquired, emotional), the classification of acquired habit as implicit or explicit, the notion that acquired habits are elaborated on a basic set of hereditary reflexes present in the newborn, and the joint use of conditioning and trial-and-error mechanisms to characterize the process of habit formation.
[24] This seems likely to have been at least part of the reason for Allport's failure, in 1922, to retain his junior faculty status. As he later recalled it:
Unfortunately, by 1920 behaviorism at Harvard, increasingly out of favor with the more powerful philosophical forces then dominating the department, had begun to go into decline."the authorities at Harvard decided that a change was in order and they wanted particularly to bring Edwin G. Boring to the department. To make this possible, Langfeld was to be asked to go on half-time and I was to find a place elsewhere. McDougall was delegated to bring me the news. Langfeld rejected the suggestion and soon thereafter was appointed as Director of the Psychological Laboratory at Princeton, and I obtained a position as associate professor at the University of North Carolina."[25]
At North Carolina, in the congenial company of John Frederick Dashiell (1888-1975),[26]Allport began work on hisSocial Psychology. The writing went quickly and the manuscript was completed in 1923,[27]in time for Allport to benefit from critical reading provided by his brother, Gordon, Langfeld, and Dashiell. Upon publication in 1924, the book became an immediate success. It was favorably reviewed[28]and widely adopted as a text.[29] Indeed, in the years since, it has often been cited as the basis for Allport's claim to being considered "the father of experimental social psychology."[30] As Katz conveyed the received view in his obituary of Allport, "it was not until the appearance of Allport'sSocial Psychologyin 1924 that we had a text based heavily on experimental and research studies. This text made the field..."[31]
[32] and he does offer his text "as an attempt in the direction of supplying this need...[by] bring[ing] within the scope of this volume...thebehavior viewpointand theexperimental method."[33] But as we will see, this attempt was premature in the extreme; and Allport's own later evaluation of his text is probably closer to the truth:
Unfortunately, like much of the received historical tradition, this view is more myth than fact. True, in his preface to theSocial Psychology, Allport does stress the need "of bringing to the service of those interested in social relationships the more recent psychological investigation and theory;""I have assumed that the widespread attention which my textbookSocial Psychology...has received was due mainly to two novel features. First, it was an objectively conceived and somewhat systematic presentation of the subject from the psychological rather than the sociological point of view; and second, it suggested at least by implication the possibility of a new experimental science of social psychology."[34]
TheSocial Psychologyis divided into two large sections preceded by an introductory chapter. In his introduction, Allport emphasizes two foundational principles on which his analysis will rest. The first, which shows the strong influence of Harvard "behaviorism," involves the subject matter of psychology in general. Psychology, for Allport, studies behaviorandconsciousness. Neither taken by itself will provide a complete psychology. On the other hand, behavior and consciousness are not of equal scientific status. Behaviors, in Allport's view, are the more fundamental phenomena since they can serve as explanatory principles in the natural order of events. Consciousness, on the other hand, is an epiphenomenon. It plays no causal role in the determination of the organism's reactions. It can, however, serve as a source of valuable information concerning reactions that are not readily observable and should not, therefore, be ignored.
Allport's second founding principle involves the subject matter ofsocialpsychology. As a branch of psychology, social psychology limits itself to the study of the behavior and consciousness of individuals. While it is true that social psychology focuses especially on social situations (as individual's react to and serve as stimuli for others), it nonetheless grounds itself on the assumption that all social behavior can be explained in terms of the principles of individual psychological functioning. The notion promulgated by some that there are phenomena of collective behavior or group consciousness beyond the simple aggregations of states and reactions of individuals is illusory.
[35] To do this it is necessary first "to delve into the very fiber of the organism;"[36] and to this end, Allport offers a short description of the anatomy and physiology of receptors, effectors, and the central nervous system.
Following this introduction, Allport devotes five chapters to an analysis of principles of individual psychological functioning that underlie patterns both of social stimulation and response and of social consciousness. As Allport himself puts it, "our first task has been to study those aspects of the individual which are destined to direct and control his behavior within the social sphere." With one exception, this discussion, couched as it is in terms of stimulus-response arcs, is standard for the period. The exception, which undoubtedly also reflects the Harvard influence, is that Allport is much more centralist in his orientation than is typical for early behaviorism. Cortical function, he suggests, "underlies all solutions of human...social problems,...makes possible their preservation in language, customs, institutions, and inventions[,]...enables each new generation to profit by the experience of others...[and] establishes habits of response in the individual for social as well as for individual ends, inhibiting and modifying primitive self-seeking reflexes into activities which adjust the individual to the social as well as to the non-social environment. Socialized behavior [in other words]...is the supreme achievement of the cortex."[38] Here Allport presents his theory of prepotent reflexes and his account of the progressive modification of these reflexes "into great systems of adaptive habits both universal among mankind and peculiar to individuals."[39] Through this account, Allport attempts to show that simple and complex activities previously attributed to instincts are actually derived through the modification of prepotent reflexes. In effect, therefore, this chapter can be read as an extended critique of instinct theory.
Physiological description is then followed by psychological analysis. In two chapters, Allport presents what he conceives to be the fundamental psychological mechanisms-hereditary reflexes, acquired habits, thought, and emotional reactions. The first of these chapters is one of the two most important in the book.Given that one of Allport's goals is to bring "the behavior viewpoint"[40] to social psychology, this is not surprising. For more than a decade, the standard psychological introduction to social phenomena had been McDougall'sIntroduction to Social Psychology.[41] At Harvard, in fact, McDougall was required reading in Perry's course on Ethics;[42] and as a beginning student Allport must surely have encountered it there if not elsewhere. In his introduction to social phenomena, McDougall had placed a heavy emphasis on instinct, attributing to human beings social instincts ranging from acquisitiveness, constructiveness, and gregariousness to parenting, pugnacity, reproduction, and self-display. By the time Allport was working on the manuscript of his social psychology, the views of McDougall and other instinct theorists had become the target of a number of quite pointed attacks.[43] Through a habit-formation account of seemingly universal systems of social reaction, Allport could both bring behaviorism to social psychology and separate his text from that of McDougall-something he clearly wished to do.
[44] are endowed at birth with a set of prepotent avoidance (withdrawal, rejection, struggle) and approach (hunger, sensitive zone, sex reaction) reactions. "Each of these activities comprises, not a single reflex, but a large group of effector movements...It is evoked only by stimulation of an extremely simple type...[and] is crude in the manner in which it is carried out."[45]
Distinguishing inherited from learned behavior, Allport grants the importance of hereditary patterns, but argues against the post-natal maturation of the complex activities often alleged to be instinctive. Newborn human infants, he suggests,With development, however, the operation of two fundamental processes leads to the elaboration of prepotent reactions into habits of increasing complexity. One process, which relies on the mechanism of the conditioned reflex, involves afferent modification of prepotent reactions by which a variety of stimuli, many of which are social, come to substitute for the original, simple, eliciting stimulus and for one another. Habits, therefore, are gradually elicited by ever more varied and appropriate situations. The second process, which is based on the standard trial-and-error mechanism of habit formation (misadjustment followed by random activity, chance success, cessation of random activity, and eventual selection of the successful movement), leads to efferent modification of the prepotent reactions. Habits gradually become complex systems of variable reactions with the potential to adjust the organism to situational variations.
[46] "Incipient, subvocal, and inaudible word responses are," he thinks, "particularly suitable material for symbols...[inasmuch as] they require but an instant to execute, and involve neither the delay nor the danger of overt trials...Thought, therefore, is an abridged and highly efficient form of trial-and-chance success in the consummation of the prepotent reflexes."[47]
At its apex in human beings, efferent modification even leads to habits in which random activity in response to misadjustment need not be overt. Humans, Allport acknowledges, think. Using symbols, they represent to themselves possible courses of action before taking them. "A symbol," for Allport, "is a brief and labile response usually undetected in outward behavior, but capable of being substituted for overt responses...[and] used as abridged and 'internal' trials in the process of trial and error."From hereditary reactions, acquired habits, and thought, Allport turns to another fundamental psychological mechanism-emotion. Emotion, he argues, is a complex pattern of conscious experience consisting of a general affective core (pleasant or unpleasant depending on whether innervation is autonomic or sympathetic) and a specific set of distinctive qualities. Adapting a view originally and independently proposed by William James (1842-1910)[48] and Carl Lange (1849-1893),[49] Allport argues that variation in conscious emotional quality reflects variation in afferent impulses arising from those distinctive somatic patterns of response (e.g., facial expression, bodily movements) that are elicited by situations that arouse emotion.