The dialectical self-concept ii: Cross-role and within-role consistency, well-being, self-certainty, and authenticity

Abstract

Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention.I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept certainty, and felt authenticity.Participants completed measures of the above outcomes, a measure of dialectical thinking, and a self-description measure for both the global self-concept and within two roles (e.g., friend), from which I derived both cross-role and within-role consistency scores.Dialectical thinking predicted lower scores on both types of consistency, and in general dialecticism moderated the relationship between self-concept consistency and both subjective well-being and self-concept certainty.Dialecticism also moderated the relationship between cross-role consistency and authenticity, and the relationship between authenticity and subjective well-being.I conclude by discussing directions for future research.© The Author(s) 2011.