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Personality coherence: moderating self--other profile agreement and profile consensus
1Department of Psychology, Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27599-8115, USA.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|September 12, 2000
Summary
Temporal stability in personality responses enhances personality coherence. This study found that consistent response patterns, not traditional consistency measures, predict higher self-other agreement and consensus, impacting personality structure understanding.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Personality Science
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Traditional research on personality moderators focused on relative consistency.
- The Big Five personality traits provide a framework for understanding personality structure.
- Personality coherence refers to the consistency and integration of an individual's personality.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate moderator variables in personality coherence.
- To compare traditional moderator variables with temporal stability of response patterns.
- To assess the impact of these moderators on self-other agreement and informant consensus.
Main Methods:
- Utilized Goldberg's adjectives for the Big Five personality traits.
- Examined traditional moderators: interitem variability, construct similarity, and scalability.
- Introduced and assessed temporal stability of response patterns as a novel moderator.
- Measured personality coherence via self-other profile agreement and informant profile consensus across two studies.
Main Results:
- Individuals with temporally stable response patterns exhibited higher personality coherence.
- Temporal stability significantly predicted self-other agreement and informant consensus.
- Traditional moderator variables (interitem variability, construct similarity, scalability) did not moderate coherence measures.
- Normatively based moderators showed no significant effect on self-other agreement or informant consensus.
Conclusions:
- Temporal stability of response patterns is a crucial moderator of personality coherence.
- Personality coherence is better understood through response stability than traditional consistency measures.
- Findings suggest a re-evaluation of moderator variables in personality research and implications for personality structure.
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