Toward a Unified Science of Personality Coherence

Gordon W. Allport (1937) considered the coherence of personality to be a matter of degree and, as such, an individual difference. Although considered by some to be the "central, unique charge" of personality psychology (Cervone & Shoda, 1999, p. 3), the study of personality coherence has been dispersed across different theoretical communities. We review how personality coherence has been defined and measured within the following five contemporary theoretical communities: the multivariate community (who focus upon the individual's profile of global trait dispositions), the social-cognitive community (who focus upon the individual's contextualized self-structures), the personological community (who focus upon the individual's unique and ongoing life story), the cybernetic community (who focus upon the individual's goal hierarchy), and the organismic community (who focus upon the individual's sense of self). We conclude by reflecting upon the extent to which the five perspectives converge upon an underlying self-epistemic function.Keywords: personality coherence, personality theories, self-insight, self-knowledgeResumeGordon W. Allport (1937) croyait que la coherence de la personnalite se mesurait en degres et, ainsi, qu'elle constituait une caracteristique individuelle. Bien qu'elle soit consideree par certains comme etant la « charge centrale, unique » de la psychologie de la personnalite (Cervone & Shoda, 1999, p. 3), plusieurs communautes theoriques se sont consacrees a l'etude de la coherence de la personnalite. Dans cet article, nous passons en revue de quelles facons cinq grands courants de pensee definissent et evaluent la coherence de la personnalite : la communaute de l'analyse multivariee (axee sur le profil individuel de l'ensemble des dispositions caracterielles), la communaute sociocognitive (axee sur les structures individuelles contextualisees); la communaute de la personnologie (axee sur le recit de vie unique de l'individu), la communaute de la cybernetique (axee sur la hierarchie des buts de l'individu), et la communaute organismique ( axee sur le sens de soi de l'individu). L'article se termine par une reflexion pour determiner dans quelle mesure les cinq perspectives convergent vers une fonction autoepistemique sous-jacente.Mots-cles : coherence de la personnalite, theories de la personnalite, analyse de soi, connaissance de soi.The only approach that may safely be excluded is the rhapsodic. Here we find theories that do little more than assert personality to be an "Indivisible Whole," "a total integrated pattern of behavior," an Unteilbarkeit,anin sich geschlossene Ganzheit. This rapturous literature of wholeness does not explore the unity that it apotheosizes; it merely contemplates and admires. Personality, it says, is like a symphony. Granted; but does not the comprehension of symphonic unity come only through an understanding of the articulate weaving of motifs, movements, bridge-passages, modulations, contrasts, and codas? Nothing but empty and vague adjectives can be used to characterize the work as a whole. If a totality is not articulated, it is likely to be an incomprehensible blur; it can be extolled, but not understood. What is more fatal, the rhapsodic approach seriously oversimplifies the whole problem, underestimating the conflicts and discords in every life. Unity, at best, is a matter of degree. (Allport, 1937, pp. 343-344)A central quality to personhood is the unity and wholeness that individuals both experience and demonstrate (albeit, perhaps, to varying degrees) in spite of the varieties and inconsistencies that regularly manifest in the cognition, emotion, and action of each individual. The capacity of each individual to some extent embody a range of contradictory qualities reflects the phenomenon known to personality researchers today as personality coherence, defined as the lawful organisation of psychological attributes within the individual (Allport, 1937, 1955, 1961). …