On Social-cognitive and Dialogical Models of Personality: Theoretical and Empirical Steps toward an Integrative View

Social-cognitive and dialogical perspectives are two of the primary ways of conceptualizing persons in contemporary psychology. The present paper endeavors, in two ways, to advance a dialogue between these theoretical viewpoints. At the level of theory, we explore issues for which social-cognitive and dialogical analyses may be mutually complementary. Regarding empirical research, we report novel analyses of a dataset involving idiographic measures of self-knowledge and self-efficacy appraisals. Results of this analysis indicate that variations in the complexity of dialogues in which people describe their personal attributes predict item-to-item statistical variance on a multidomain self-efficacy measure. We conclude with a discussion of how methodological advances may help to link the knowledge structures studied in social-cognitive theory to the discursive processes studied by narrative and dialogical theorists. Throughout its history, psychology has been home to multiple theoretical perspectives on human nature and individual differences (Cervone & Pervin, 2008). Some differ so deeply that they have little to say to one another. Others, however, offer insights and empirical tools that may prove to be complementary. On Social-Cognitive and Dialogical Perspectives Two contemporary views of the person that have particularly promising synergistic potential are social-cognitive and dialogical perspectives (cf. Cervone & Lott, 2007; Hermans, 1996). They share three critical features. Both address processes of meaning construction; social-cognitive and dialogical theorists agree that, to understand individuals’ experiences, one must explore the meanings that people assign to the occurrences of their lives. Secondly, they both address social context; they recognize that meaning construction occurs in socially, culturally, and historically situated contexts, and a psychology of the individual thus must address both individuals and the contexts in which they live (cf. Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007; Shoda, Cervone, & Downey, 2007). Thirdly, both are sensitive to idiosyncrasy and the need for idiographically-tailored assessments of the individual (cf. Cervone, 2004; Hermans, 1988). AUTHORS’ NOTE. Please address correspondence regarding this article to Daniel Cervone, Department of Psychology (mc 285), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 606077137, USA. Email: [email protected]