The nature of professional and relational self-aspects at the goal and narrative levels of personality.

The self-concept is constituted by a series of context-specific self-aspects. Researchers have considered the manner in which personality traits vary across these self-aspects. Here, we examined self-aspects corresponding to professional and relational contexts at the goal and narrative levels of personality. In each of two studies, participants provided lists of goals and recounted self-defining narratives, corresponding to the aforementioned contexts. Goals and narratives were coded for themes of agency and communion. At both descriptive levels, agency more characterized the professional self-aspect and communion, the relational self-aspect. A consideration of context-specific goals and narratives informs understanding regarding the nature of the self in its multifaceted form.

What do we know when we know a person across contexts? Examining self-concept differentiation at the three levels of personality.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research examining self-concept differentiation (SCD) has been characterized by (a) a focus on behavioral traits and (b) the conflation of mean-level and inter-contextual differentiation. In two studies, we considered non-conflated measures of SCD at the three levels of personality description in relation to adjustment. METHOD: In Study 1, participants completed measures of adjustment, rated their behavioral tendencies (dispositional traits), produced a list of goals (characteristic adaptations), and recalled a self-defining memory (life narratives), from within professional and personal domains. In Study 2, the procedure was modified: Participants reporting either low or high levels of adjustment subsequently rated their behavioral traits, provided a list of goals, or produced a self-defining memory, from five contexts. RESULTS: In Study 1, adjustment related positively to SCD at the level of characteristic adaptations but negatively to SCD at the level of life narratives. In Study 2, well-adjusted participants exhibited a greater degree of SCD at the level of characteristic adaptations but a greater degree of thematic consistency at the level of life narratives, relative to those low in adjustment. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the dynamic nature of SCD across levels of personality and align with the notion that differentiation represents virtue and vice.