In everyday life, people are asked to make decisions, express attitudes, and endorse beliefs, all of which can be either internally consistent or at odds with one another. People are also challenged when presented with new experiences, facts, or events that do not fit with their existing self-concepts or worldviews. In short, individuals are ever faced with the problem of how to coordinate and increase the congruence between their behaviors and cognitions, and of how to integrate new experiences within their existing web of self-knowledge. In this article, we review recent research concerning the integrative processes involved in unified self-functioning. We suggest that integrative processing of experience is conducive to wellness and effective functioning, and we contrast integrative processing with defensive and compartmentalized processing, which has many costs. More specifically, we review recent research highlighting the critical and synergistic roles of awareness, ownership, and nondefensiveness in the process of integration.
AbstractRecent research has provided new insights into the integrative process, which allows for unified self-functioning. In this article, we review recent work that has used a variety of behavioral, physiological, dual-process, and survey techniques to examine personality integration. On the basis of theoretical considerations and the growing body of findings, we highlight three subprocesses-namely, awareness, ownership/autonomy, and nondefensiveness-and summarize evidence linking these facets of integration to energy, wellness, and relational benefits. Finally, we review contextual factors, such as autonomy support and unconditional regard, that have been shown to be conducive to integration, and we suggest tools that may be used in future research on integration.