Coherence and congruence: Two aspects of personality integration.

• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.68.3.531
• Publication Date: 2005-09-21T17:59:06Z
• Authors: Kennon M. Sheldon; Tim Kasser
• Keywords: Adult; Male; Motivation; 05 social sciences; Aspirations, Psychological; Personality Assessment; Self Concept; Personality Development; Humans; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; Internal-External Control

Coherence and congruence-based measures of personality integration were related to a variety of healthy personality characteristics. Functional coherence was defined as occurring when participants' "personal strivings" (R.A. Emmons, 1986) help bring about each other or help bring about higher level goals. Organismic congruence was defined as occurring when participants strive for self-determined reasons or when strivings help bring about intrinsic rather than extrinsic higher level goals. Study 1 found the integration measures were related to each other and to inventory measures of health and well-being. Study 2 showed that these goal integration measures were also related to role system integration and were prospective predictors of daily mood, vitality, and engagement in meaningful as opposed to distracting activities.