for a behavior. The drive then becomes autonomous and distinct from the motive, whether the motive was instinct or something else. The idea that drives can become independent of the original motives for a given behavior is known as "functional autonomy." Allport gives the example of a man who seeks to perfect his task or craft. His original motive may be a sense of inferiority engrained in his childhood, but his diligence in his work and the motive it acquires, later on, is a need to excel in his chosen profession, which becomes the man's drive. 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). Learning brings new systems of interests into existence just as it does new abilities and skills. At each stage of development, these interests are always contemporary; whatever drives, drives now. Bibliography Studies in expressive movement (with Vernon, P. E.) (1933) New York: Macmillan. Attitudes, in A Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. C. Murchison, (1935). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 789–844. Personality: A psychological interpretation. (1937) New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. The Individual and His Religion: A Psychological Interpretation. Oxford, England: Macmillan, 1950. Letters from Jenny. (1965) New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. (1955). New Haven: Yale University Press. The Nature of Prejudice. (1954; 1979). Reading, MA : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. The Nature of Personality: Selected Papers. (1950; 1975). Westport, CN : Greenwood Press. The Person in Psychology (1968). Boston: Beacon Press The Psychologist's Frame of Reference (1940). Classics in the History of Psychology -- Allport (1940) Pattern and Growth in Personality. (1961). Harcourt College Pub. Personality & social encounter. (1960). Boston: Beacon Press. Psychology of Rumor [with Leo Postman] (1947). See also Allport's scale - a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society devised by Gordon Allport in 1954. List of science and religion scholars Contact hypothesis Labels of Primary Potency Notes References Matlin, MW., (1995) Psychology. Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Further reading Ian Nicholson, Inventing Personality: Gordon Allport and the Science of Selfhood, American Psychological Association, 2003, Hocutt, Max (2004). Review - Inventing Personality. Metapsychology Online Reviews Nicholson, I. (2000). "'A coherent datum of perception': Gordon Allport, Floyd Allport and the politics of personality." Journal of the History of