Self and Others: Studies in Social Personality and Autobiography

Abstract

This chapter is concerned primarily with the content and organization of habitual self. The significant components of this content are the characteristics that a person perceives as relatively enduring aspects of self and other. These characteristics include perceived physical traits and attractiveness, personality traits, attitudes, competencies, and so on. This overview of the antecedents of social personality, although necessarily brief, is not intended simply as a historical exegesis. The resurgence of interest in self in social psychology is reflected in the chapter. It provides a new zeitgeist for reclaiming the conceptual links to an American past in which the study of self in personality and in social psychology was unified in a mutually enlightening way. A new set-theoretical model is described in the chapter for representing the organization of the socius of an individual; new data-analytic tools are described that are tailored to this model. The chapter discusses recent empirical applications of this set-theoretical model, using both laboratory data and naturalistic materials, particularly autobiography. These empirical applications, although idiographically based, are detailed information for fleshing out nomothetic principles about the content and organization of the socius.