The Coherence of Personality: Social-Cognitive Bases of Consistency, Variability, and Organization

This volume reveals how social-cognitive structures and processes serve as a basis of personality coherence--the unique patterns of experience and action that make each of us who we are. In doing so, the volume demonstrates how a personality theory can be built on psychology's broader foundation of knowledge about cognitive and affective systems and the interactions between persons and the sociocultural environment. Presenting novel theoretical developments from leaders in personality, social, cultural, and developmental psychology, chapters show how personality coherence arises from the ways people assign meaning to social information, gain causal agency over their lives through self-knowledge and self-reflective processes, and organize multiple life events within a framework of goals and life tasks. The book stands as the most definitive presentation to date of the social-cognitive theories of personality.