This paper reports two studies that explore complementary aspects of personality coherence. Study 1 addressed cross-situational coherence in contextualized psychological response. Idiographically-tailored methods assessed individuals’ (i) beliefs about their personal attributes, (ii) subjective “mappings” of these attributes to everyday circumstances, and (iii) self-reported contextualized action tendencies. A novel index of idiographic–nomothetic relations gauged the degree to which the idiographic methods yield unique information. Participants’ mappings commonly deviated from the structure of nomothetic trait categories; people often grouped together contextualized action tendencies traditionally associated with different trait categories. The idiographic mappings predicted cross-situational coherence in action tendencies. Study 2 asked whether the contextualization of personal qualities would be evident when people merely are asked to describe their personal attributes in natural language. Participants wrote narratives describing positive and negative qualities. Narratives were coded for the presence of three linguistic features: conditional statements, probabilistic statements, and personality trait inconsistencies. All three occurred frequently. Furthermore, they co-occurred; among participants who described trait-inconsistent attributes, the large majority spontaneously cited conditions in which these attributes are manifested. People who recognize that they possess inconsistent personal qualities may nonetheless attain a coherent understanding of themselves by spontaneously developing a contextually-embedded sense of self.
Comparisons of literary experts and novices indicate that experts engage in interpretive processes to "get the point" during their reading of literary texts but novices do not. In two studies the reading and interpretive processes of literary novices (undergraduates with no formal training in literature study) were elicited through think-alouds during reading and a post-reading interview task. Twenty undergraduates read one of two short stories in each of two studies (n ¼ 80). Both studies used the same methodology, except that the instructions for Study 2 emphasized the importance of interpretation when reading literary short stories. Results indicate that literary novices noticed cues to interpretive meaning during reading but were more likely to provide literary interpretations (symbolic and thematic) during the interview task as compared with when reading (Study 1 and 2) and when the instructions emphasized interpretation (Study 2 as compared with Study 1). In both studies there were positive relationships between elaborative processing during reading and (1) providing interpretations during reading and thinking aloud and (2) producing prompted interpretations during the post-reading interview task. The present studies provide evidence that literary novices can and do generate literary interpretations, albeit less sophisticated than those experts would likely generate. Further, elaborative processing during reading was positively related to interpretations. Implications for instruction to enhance literary interpretations are discussed.
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