Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Framework for Studying Persons

Abstract

As the scientific study of the individual person, personality psychology historically has struggled to provide the kind of broad conceptual framework capable of orienting theory and research around human individuality in cultural context. This article presents a new integrative framework for studying persons that brings together recent advances in the field of personality with the emerging social science emphasis on the narrative study of lives, while situating personality inquiry within the cultural context of contemporary modernity and the unique problems of the modern self. The frame-work builds on a clear distinction between the and the features of personality in the modem world and the delineation of three relatively independent levels on which modern persons may be described. In personality, the I may be viewed as the process of selfing, of narrating experience to create a modern self whereas the Me may be viewed as the self that the I constructs. Personality traits, like those included w...