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Personality coherence is an individual difference capturing the extent to which a person’s psychological characteristics are coordinated, unified, and integrated. The present research addressed the extent to which coherence indicators inter-correlate and predict relevant outcomes over and above the effects of the Big Five among midlife adults ( N = 446). Coherence indicators loaded onto four components: actor coherence, which captured the extent to which people were consistent in their interpersonal values, traits, and behavior; agent coherence, which captured the extent to which people’s goals were coordinated and need-congruent; author coherence, which captured the extent to which people’s self-defining stories were well composed and theme laden; and controlled coherence, which captured the extent to which people experienced their goals as pressured or compelled and as leading them to need-detracting futures. Although actor coherence correlated with both agent and author coherence, agent and author coherence were not correlated. Nevertheless, the actor-, agent-, and author-coherence composites each predicted at least one of the outcome variables (i.e., well-being, autonomy, and ego development) over and above the Big Five. The present findings suggest that the coherence of personality constitutes an individual difference domain of consequence beyond the established content dimensions of personality.

The concept of personality coherence refers to the extent of psychological unity and wholeness embodied within each individual. In the present research, we examined the extent to which the narrative, functional, and organismic conceptualizations of personality coherence interrelate, as well as their associations with psychological abilities and personal adjustment. College students ( N = 391) narrated accounts of three personal memories; listed five personal strivings that they subsequently compared and evaluated; completed performance measures of their intelligence, wisdom, and creativity; and rated their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Individuals who coherently organized their autobiographical memories were protected against feeling pressured or compelled in their personal strivings and against being steered toward need-detracting futures. Narrative indicators of coherence were otherwise independent of the functional and organismic indicators, although all indicators of personality coherence correlated with personal adjustment. Wisdom and creativity predicted narrative coherence, which partially mediated the associations they demonstrated with eudaimonic well-being.

Interest in wisdom in the cognitive sciences, psychology, and education has been paralleled by conceptual confusions about its nature and assessment. To clarify these issues and promote consensus in the field, wisdom researchers met in Toronto in July of 2019, resolving disputes through discussion. Guided by a survey of scientists who study wisdom-related constructs, we established a common wisdom model, observing that empirical approaches to wisdom converge on the morally-grounded application of metacognition to reasoning and problem-solving. After outlining the function of relevant metacognitive and moral processes, we critically evaluate existing empirical approaches to measurement and offer recommendations for best practices. In the subsequent sections, we use the common wisdom model to selectively review evidence about the role of individual differences for development and manifestation of wisdom, approaches to wisdom development and training, as well as cultural, subcultural, and social-contextual differences. We conclude by discussing wisdom’s conceptual overlap with a host of other constructs and outline unresolved conceptual and methodological challenges.

People’s abilities to integrate temporally distant identities are known to be facilitated by the fulfillment of basic psychological needs. However, the neural systems that support the integrative functions of need fulfillment are not well understood. Neuroimaging studies indicate that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) differentiates remembered past, perceived present, and imagined future identities, possibly on the basis of the self-relevance attributed to specific identity representations. Using optical neuroimaging, we examined the relationship between need fulfillment and activity within the MPFC when young adults (N = 110) made trait judgments about their past, present, and future identities. Participants reporting higher need fulfillment evidenced similarly high levels of activity in the right-MPFC across the conditions; in contrast, those reporting lower need fulfillment evidenced markedly reduced activity when judging past and future identities. Results thus suggest that, among people who experience higher need fulfillment, the MPFC processes temporally distant identities in a similarly self-relevant manner. These findings provide a new type of evidence of the relationship between need fulfillment and identity integration and provide future studies with a point of entry for further examining the neural basis of identity integration.