The Dialectical Self-Concept II

Abstract

Although there is growing evidence that dialectical thinkers express more inconsistency within the global self-concept, whether this holds true for inconsistency across roles and within specific roles has received little attention. I examine whether dialectical thinking is associated with less cross-role and within-role consistency and whether dialecticism moderates the relationship between self-consistency and subjective well-being, self-concept certainty, and felt authenticity. Participants completed measures of the above outcomes, a measure of dialectical thinking, and a self-description measure for both the global self-concept and within two roles (e.g., friend), from which I derived both cross-role and within-role consistency scores. Dialectical thinking predicted lower scores on both types of consistency, and in general dialecticism moderated the relationship between self-concept consistency and both subjective well-being and self-concept certainty. Dialecticism also moderated the relationship between cross-role consistency and authenticity, and the relationship between authenticity and subjective well-being. I conclude by discussing directions for future research.