Allport had a profound and lasting influence on the field of psychology, even though his work is cited much less often than that of other well-known figures.

[2] Part of his influence stemmed from his knack for exploring and broadly conceptualizing important topics (e.g. rumor, prejudice, religion, traits).

Among his many students were Jerome S. Bruner, Anthony Greenwald, Stanley Milgram, Leo Postman, Thomas Pettigrew, and M. Brewster Smith.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Allport as the 11th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

[4] He was born in Montezuma, Indiana, and was the youngest of four sons of John Edward and Nellie Edith (Wise) Allport.

[5] Allport reported that "Tending office, washing bottles, and dealing with patients were important aspects of my early training" (p. 172).

[6] During this time, Allport's father was encapsulated in a blurb in Samuel Hopkins Adams' exposé in Collier's Magazine on fraudulent medicinal cures, later reprinted as the book The Great American Fraud: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery.

While much of the book focuses on large scale, heavily advertised patent medicines available at the turn of the century, the author states Allport "would never have embodied this article were it not for the efforts of certain physicians of Cleveland."

Allport was criticized for diagnosing and treating morphine addicts via mail simply on the basis of letters and no in-person appointments.

Adams referred to Allport as a "[quack] who pretend[s] to be a physician," is "no less scoundrelly," and "is even more dangerous" than other fraudulent addiction cure peddlers mentioned earlier in the book.

[7] Allport's mother was a former school teacher, who forcefully promoted her values of intellectual development and religion.

[6] Biographers describe Allport as a reserved and diligent young boy who lived a fairly isolated childhood.

As a teenager, Allport developed and managed his own printing business while serving as an editor of his high school newspaper.

In 1915, he graduated second in his class at Glenville High School at the age of eighteen which earned him a scholarship that allowed him to attend Harvard University.

His first publication, Personality Traits: Their Classification and Measurement in 1921, was co-authored with his older brother, Floyd Henry Allport.

Allport earned his master's degree in 1921, studying under Herbert Langfeld, and then his Ph.D. in 1922, along the way taking a class with Hugo Münsterberg before the latter's death in 1916.

[9] After going to teach introductory courses on social psychology and personality at Dartmouth College for four years, Allport returned to Harvard and remained there for the rest of his career.

His fourth book, The Nature of Prejudice, was published in 1954, based on his work with refugees during World War II.

Gordon Allport died on October 9, 1967, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of lung cancer, just one month shy of his 70th birthday.

Allport viewed a healthy person to create problems by making future goals that can be seen as unattainable in many cases.

When gone through all stages, you appear to use several or even all in daily tasks and experiences [17] Allport hypothesized the idea of internal and external forces that influence an individual's behavior.

Allport says that the theory: ... avoids the absurdity of regarding the energy of life now, in the present, as somehow consisting of early archaic forms (instincts, prepotent reflexes, or the never-changing Id).