13 - Dialogicality and personality traits

Summary

In this chapter, using a correlation approach, the authors comment on selected personality correlates of the internal dialogical activity, which seems to challenge dialogical self theory (DST). According to the five-factor theory of personality, the core components of the personality system are basic tendencies, characteristic adaptations and self-concept. The author explores how dialogicality is related to each of the three levels of personality. Provided that people differ in the intensity of dialogicality, and that these differences can be empirically assessed, they construct a scale to measure the general intensity of inner dialogues according to the individual differences approach. The authors define internal dialogical activity as engagement in dialogues with imagined figures, the simulation of social dialogical relationships in one's own thoughts, and the mutual confrontation of the points of view representing different I-positions relevant to personal and/or social identity.