Personality psychology studies how psychological systems work together and, consequently, can act as a resource for unification in the broader discipline of psychology. Yet personality’s current field-wide organisation promotes a fragmented view of the person, seen through such competing theories such as the psychodynamic, trait, and humanistic. There exists an alternative, systems framework for personality, that focuses on four topics: Identifying personality, personality’s parts, its organization, and its development. (Mayer, 2005: 1)

The cognition agency is a theoretical development that configures cognition with traits, and initially explains how agency cognition is dependent on a set of formative traits. When referring to cognition, we are interested in it’s the nature and outcome of the immanent and adventitious social processes that impact agency. Social cognition is an important aspect of personality psychology, and before developing our trait theory for the cognition agency, it is useful to consider a background of piecemeal theory that has developed in the field, which will incidentally further demonstrate the historical lack of integration in the field. Since this chapter centres on cognition, it is appropriate to define its nature.

Sociohistory refers to: social event history that occurs in the past or future using appropriate formal theory; is concerned with the microcosms of social interaction; describes and explains practical situations; and with sufficient information, can predict either long-term large-scale or short-term small-scale sociocultural events (Yolles & Frieden, 2006). Sociohistorical inquiry involves wicked problems: those having a variety of dynamic event states and essential variables with values and relationships that may be hidden and therefore unknown or indeterminable (Churchman, 1967). Sociohistory is therefore perspective relative. To be convincing it thus requires multiple perspectives from a plurality of participating inquirers (Reiss & Sprenger, 2014).

Sociohistory is a social event history that occurs in the past or future using appropriate formal theory; is concerned with the microcosms of social interaction; describes and explains practical situations; and with sufficient information, can predict either long-term large-scale or short-term small-scale sociocultural events. Sociohistorical inquiry involves wicked problems: those having a variety of dynamic event states and essential variables with values and relationships that may be unknown or indeterminable. Sociohistory is therefore perspective relative. To be convincing it thus requires multiple perspectives from a plurality of participating inquirers

Here, we seek to explore this fragmentation through a literature review, seeking commonalities using ontological principles that will create a coherent schema for multiple identities. There are at least three significant distinct theories on identity that one can find in the literature: identity theory, social identity theory, and self-identity theory.

This chapter is the antithesis of the final overview chapter of this book. The purpose of an underview is to provide some basics from which the theoretical framework that we adopt can be explained. Derivation of this framework will be provided in following chapters. The chapter will initially look as various philosophical attributes of the thesis explaining its position of critical realism, moving on to considerations of meta-theory and how Agency Theory connects. It will then look at the evolutionary development of Mindset Agency Theory. Culture is a component of the latter, and some propositions for this will be provided. The chapter will finally explore Agency Theory modelling and Mindset Agency Theory.

In this chapter a cybernetic psychosocial view will be adopted to theoretically explore plural agencies (defined through their population of agents) with a common culture, a collective mind, and behaviour. Within the context of cognitive information process theory, the collective mind is an information system that operates through a set of logical mental rules and strategies (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; Bowlby, 1980; Novak, 1993; Wang, 2007). This has relevance to cognitive learning theory (e.g., Miller & Dollard, 1941; Miller et al., 1960; Piaget, 1950; Vygotsky, 1978; Argyris & Schön, 1978; Bandura, 1986, 1988; Nobre, 2003; Argote & Todorova, 2007), where ‘learning is seen in terms of the acquisition or reorganisation of the cognitive structures through which humans process and store information’ (Good & Brophy, 1990: 187).

Let us be reminded that there is a distinction between agency orientation and its personality orientation, the former including sociocultural traits. Here interest will centre on personality traits in a little more depth.

This chapter is concerned with the creation of affect Mindset theory. It has already been said that personality theory, both for cognition and affect, is historically fragmented, even if a start has been made towards defragmentation (e.g., Kaschel & Kuhl, 2004; Mischel & Shoda, 1995). We continuing on this path by following theory from Swann et al. (1987) by developing an affect–cognition interactive model that arises through configuration within the framework of cybernetic Cultural Agency Theory. Here, affect and cognition are sub-agencies of personality that interact operatively, where affect/cognition traits are respectively influenced by cognition/affect process of internalisation. We shall develop a trait model for the affect personality that might be called Affect Mindset Theory, symmetrical with the pre-existing Cognition Mindset Theory (Yolles & Fink, 2014, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). In developing the approach, we have found that it is possible to configure existing suitable temperament theory.

This book delivers a general living system theory of personality psychology for complex agencies. It has defined and explored the formative traits, accumulated into Mindsets, that are able to explain agency behaviour. These traits are both agency and personality formative, the personality being subject to sociocultural traits that create an immanent agency context that may overlay personality orientations. Through Agency Theory they can be used to explain the rise of the dark personality ‘local’ traits like Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy, as well as other forms of pathology, and can also be used to explain identities and their pathologies and distortions. Since traits are value based, they are therefore stable, but they are always subject to a potential for change, that is they are essentially dynamic. While attention to the trait dynamics has centred on the cultural trait due to the extensive work in this area by Pitrim Sorokin (1939), all traits are susceptible to their own dynamics. It is therefore tempting to consider a theory referring to the internal dynamics of agency personality psychology systems might be best described by the term psychodynamics.

Personality is a complex component of agency composed of interactive affect and cognition, resulting in patterns of behaviour. This occurs for the individual as well as for the social collective, like the organisation (Fink & Yolles, 2015). As we have already indicated throughout this book, there is still fragmentation in personality psychology (e.g., L’Abate, 2005). For Carver (2005: 320), ‘there is potential for confusion in comparing …[theories of personality] across literatures, due to differences in use of terms’. This is supported by Boeree (2006), who indicates that field of personality offers a plurality of theories, rather than a science of personality; this results in a confusing complexity of non-relatable terms. Such views apply not only to cognition theories of personality, but affect theories too. Historically, Leventhal (1980: 140) has noted that the concept of emotion is poorly defined, and research is fragmented and unintegrated, a situation is not much better more recently in relation to theories of emotion regulation.

This part of the book has developed methodology able to use Mindset Agency Theory as an analytic took to explore agency pathologies. It has delivered two cases studies, one applied to the president of the United State Donald Trump, and the other to the past Prime Minster of the United Kingdom, Theresa May.