ABSTRACT
For over a decade I have been working on the development of a unified theory of personality that I refer to as Cognitive-experiential Self-theory (e.g., Epstein, 1973, 1976, 1979a, 1980, 1981, 1983a, 1985, in press a, in press b; Epstein & Erskine, 1983). The theory integrates various aspects of different theories of personality, including psychoanalytic theories, behavioral theories, phenomenological theories, existential theories, and cognitive theories, at least insofar as they can be combined without doing violence to the coherence of the overall theory. As my aim is to construct a complete theory, it became an interesting challenge to determine how well it could account for phenomena referred to by constructs that do not appear in my own theory. Values is one such construct. Although values occupy a position of central importance in social psychology, they are not often referred to in personality theories. This state of affairs suggests either an important omission in most personality theories, my own included, or that the phenomena that social psychologists use values to explain are explained otherwise by personality theorists. An examination of values from the perspective of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory has the potential of both extending the theory and contributing something of significance to an understanding of values.
