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Coherence of Personality

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

Synonyms

Integrative processes; Personality integration

Definition

Personality coherence refers to the lawful organization and patterning of psychological constructs within the individual (Allport 1937). Although researchers differ dramatically in how they study the phenomenon, Allport’s (1937) original definition continues to be cited and used (e.g., Fournier et al. 2015).

Introduction

The study of personality coherence has been suggested to define the core questions of personality psychology. As Cervone and Shoda noted in the opening of their edited volume on the subject: “Were it not for the coherence of personality functioning, there might be little need for a psychology of personality” (Cervone and Shoda 1999, p. 3). Although the topics studied by personality psychologists often overlap with the topics studied within other psychological fields, no other field of scientific inquiry has been tasked with the charge of explaining “the consistency and coherence of normal personality”...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Marc A. Fournier

  2. Institute for Positive Psychology & Education, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW, Australia

    Stefano I. Di Domenico

Authors
  1. Marc A. Fournier
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  2. Stefano I. Di Domenico
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marc A. Fournier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Christian Jordan

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Fournier, M.A., Di Domenico, S.I. (2016). Coherence of Personality. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1122-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1122-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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