However, the existence and nature of traits as causally efficacious is now the major area of contention among the two dominant approaches in personality psychology, i.e., trait theories, and social-cognitive theories. The best way to understand the contrast between the two types of theories is to understand them as two different theoretical perspectives on explaining the phenomenon of the coherence of personality. The variety of contemporary trait theories adopt traits as their basic units of analysis. Traits refer to personality variables that correspond to coherent patterns of social behavior. Social cognitive theories are most clearly defined by the units of analysis through which they conceptualize personality functioning and differences among individuals.
Personality is understood by reference to basic cognitive and affective processes.
Thus, they are social-cognitive processes. The social-cognitivists strive to understand how multiple mechanisms operate, in concert, as coherent psychological systems. Coherence in personality functioning is viewed as an emergent property of interactions among multiple psychological mechanisms. But trait commonly takes on an additional meaning, where it refers to an internal psychological structure or system that is responsible for consistencies in action across sets of behaviors and situations. This naturally leads to the second task.