Self-concept integration and its relationship with resilience and well-being

Abstract

The overall purpose of the study was to evaluate if three forms of self-concept integration (i.e., authenticity, consistency, and valence/evaluative integration) relate to resilience and well-being. Additionally, the study investigated if self-concept integration moderates the relationship between stress and both resilience and well-being. Authenticity is the degree to which an individual believes the roles within one’s self-concept are fully self-endorsed, willfully enacted, and reflecting who one actually is; consistency (i.e., low self-concept differentiation) is the measure of the tendency to see oneself as similar across different roles; valence integration (i.e., evaluative integration) is the amount an individual’s positive and negative self-attributes are intermingled among roles. This study was completed online via SurveyMonkey, where participants rated five social roles and completed measures of stress, resilience, life satisfaction, and depression. Correlational analyses revealed significant positive associations between all three forms of integration and more resilience, more life satisfaction, and less depression. Regressions with simultaneous entry of the three forms of integration showed that authenticity and valence integration were both predictive of resilience and well-being when participants had perceived importance of their negative roles, whereas authenticity and consistency were both predictive of resilience and well-being when participants had perceived importance of their positive roles. There were no significant findings for self-concept integration moderating the relationship between stress and resilience/well-being. Together, with previous findings on integrative self-structure, these results suggest the importance of unifying the roles to which one ascribes, in order to have a sense of unity and render increased resilience and well-being.