Personality dynamics, meaning, and idiosyncrasy: Identifying cross-situational coherence by assessing personality architecture

We employed ideographically-tailored methods for assessing intra-individual personality architecture and identifying patterns of cross-situational coherence in response. Building on a knowledge-and-appraisal model of personality architecture (KAPA), we assessed (a) schematic self-knowledge, (b) beliefs about the situational relevance of schematic attributes, and (c) appraisals of self-efficacy for performance in specific contexts. Results reveal that people display high (low) appraisals of self-efficacy across idiographically-identified sets of situations that, in their subjective belief systems, are related meaningfully to positive (negative) personal qualities that they possess. Response time analyses reveal that appraisals are made more quickly in situations in which positively valenced self-schemas are most likely to be activated. We relate our work to Mischel’s [Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley] call for a dynamic psychology of personality that attends to the idiosyncrasies of the individual.