Integrating dispositions and processing dynamics within a unified theory of personality: The cognitive-affective personality system

Abstract

Proposes that a comprehensive theory of personality needs to identify stable qualities and behavior patterns that characterize different individuals and types. It also needs to clarify the intraindividual dynamics and psychological processes and structures that underlie these patterns and that regulate their experiential and behavioral manifestations as individuals interact with different types of psychological situations. Advances in theory and research in the last few decades have led to the development of at least the framework for such a unifying theory of personality (D. Cervone and Y. Shoda (Eds., 1999; W. Mischel and Shoda, 1995, 1998; Shoda and Mischel, 1998) and that is the focus of the present chapter. Its main goal is to show that personality dispositions and the psychological processes that underlie thm are two aspects of the same personality system and there fore need to be integrated within a unifying theory rathern than split into alternative or even competing fields. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved) (from the chapter)