Dispositional Theory and Allport's Theory

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I have reviewed your problem and will provide you some explanation on the topic of dispositional theories and their relation/influence on interpersonal relationships. In specific, you have asked about Allport's Psychology of the Individual Theory and the Trait and Factor Theory. I will explain both in hopes to broaden your understanding of the terms.

Let's first look at the term...dispositional personality theories!

DISPOSITIONAL PERSONALITY THEORIES:

The term dispositional and trait are really the same things when you are asking about this...the term disposition and trait are the same in that they both mean how a person will behave. Also, you can think of a disposition or a trait as the characteristics of a person's behaviors. The simplest context that people talk about disposition is when they are talking about animals. Someone might say that a horse has a calm, relaxed disposition...or their Labrador dog has a very gentle disposition. What they mean is that by the behaviors the animals possess...we can say they have "X" disposition. When you talk about traits, the same can be said. If a person says their dog has a gentle disposition, they are referring to the gentle trait the dog exhibits. Really, the traits and term disposition are the same. If a person has X, Y, and Z traits, then they have XYZ disposition.

Again, this question is really asking you to look at Allport's theory and apply it to thinking about interpersonal relationships. So...let's talk about Allport's theory a bit.

ALLPORT'S THEORY:

There are all types of information in journals, the web, and text books that talk about Allport's theory of dispositional psychology. I will help you understand his theory by summarizing the main points - and then discuss how his theory can be applied to understand the influence of interpersonal relationships.

So when discussing Allport's disposition theory, Allport was a psychologist that really focused on people's unique sets of personality traits - he called those dispositions. What he did was divide them into three categories called cardinal, central, and secondary. Those three categories he further defined by looking at the types of traits those categories included. When Allport divided these categories, he basically said that the cardinal traits were dominant and that some people did not ...