SOCIAL-COGNITIVE MECHANISMS AND PERSONALITY COHERENCE - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, SITUATIONAL BELIEFS, AND CROSS-SITUATIONAL COHERENCE IN PERCEIVED SELF-EFFICACY

This article presents a social-cognitive analysis of cross-situational coherence in personality functioning. Social-cognitive analyses are c ontrasted with those of trait approaches in personality psychology. Ra ther than attributing coherence to high-level constructs that correspo nd directly to observed patterns of social behavior, social-cognitive theory pursues a ''bottom-up'' analytic strategy in which coherence de rives from interactions among multiple underlying causal mechanisms, n o one of which corresponds directly to a broad set of responses. Resea rch investigating social and self-knowledge underlying cross-situation al coherence in a central social-cognitive mechanism, perceived self-e fficacy, is presented. Idiographic analyses revealed that individuals' schematic self-knowledge and situational beliefs give rise to pattern s of high and low self-efficacy appraisal across diverse, idiosyncrati c sets of situations that do not, in general, correspond to traditiona l high-level trait categories. Bottom-up analyses in personality psych ology are related to other disciplines' analyses of organization in co mplex, adaptive systems.