The nature of professional and relational self-aspects at the goal and narrative levels of personality.

The self-concept is constituted by a series of context-specific self-aspects. Researchers have considered the manner in which personality traits vary across these self-aspects. Here, we examined self-aspects corresponding to professional and relational contexts at the goal and narrative levels of personality. In each of two studies, participants provided lists of goals and recounted self-defining narratives, corresponding to the aforementioned contexts. Goals and narratives were coded for themes of agency and communion. At both descriptive levels, agency more characterized the professional self-aspect and communion, the relational self-aspect. A consideration of context-specific goals and narratives informs understanding regarding the nature of the self in its multifaceted form.