620 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
People who are action-  oriented  have a high 
capacity to self-  regulate their thoughts, feel -
ings, and behaviors in such a way that their 
goal-  relevant intentions lead to actions that 
promote progress in goal pursuit. People 
who are state-  oriented  tend to focus either 
on their current states or on future states but 
do not routinely engage in the assessment of 
gaps between the two and strategies for nar -
rowing those gaps. As a result, their goal- 
relevant intentions do not routinely translate 
into actions that move them toward their 
goals. In general, action-  oriented people are 
more likely to shield themselves from in -
tentions inconsistent with active goals, and 
therefore tend to be more focused and de -
cisive with respect to their goals than their 
state-  oriented counterparts.
Concluding Remarks
In this chapter we have explored the inter -
connection of self-  regulation and personal -
ity, which is increasingly apparent as models 
of personality become more process oriented 
and research on self-  regulation increasingly 
attends to individual differences that charac -
terize variability between people and across 
situations in self-  regulatory processes. As 
concepts from each of these major litera -
tures have infiltrated the other, the poten -
tial for models that fully integrate the two, 
with each benefiting from the strengths of 
the other, has become apparent. Indeed, 
what might be termed “second-  generation” 
personality models such as the CAPS and 
CB5T are impressive attempts at character -
izing personality processes in self-  regulatory 
terms.
Whether the seeming convergence of 
models of self-  regulation and personality 
continues until neither is explained without 
ample reference to the other remains to seen. 
Yet even without a full convergence and in -
tegration, the benefits to researchers work -
ing either on self-  regulation or personality 
of exploring links between the two is clear 
(McCabe & Fleeson, 2016). Comprehensive 
models of personality structure such as the 
Big Five provide terminology and assessment 
strategies for characterizing general similari -
ties and differences between people. Beyond 
simple description, however, they do not ad -dress fundamental questions, such as how 
personality is expressed and maintained, 
and, critically, how  personality influences 
consequential behaviors, such as those to 
which models of self-  regulation frequently 
are applied. Additional research exploring 
links between personality at different levels 
of the structural hierarchy and specific stag -
es of self-  regulation would provide an em -
pirical basis for moving those models from 
descriptive to explanatory. Comprehensive 
models of self-  regulation detail the cogni -
tive, affective, and motivational processes at 
play in autonomous goal pursuit. Yet those 
models do not account for dispositional 
tendencies that surely facilitate or compli -
cate goal pursuit. Moreover, they typically 
assume that the processes involved in self- 
regulation and the order in which they un -
fold in episodes of goal pursuit are invariant 
across people. Although that assumption 
may prove correct when put to empirical 
scrutiny, it seems possible, even likely, that 
people who are equally poor or adept at self- 
regulation vary in the processes, stages, or 
order of stages that characterize their man -
agement of goal pursuit. Personality traits 
below the domain level in structural models, 
as well as traits that cut across domains and 
facets in those models, are rich sources of 
information for embellishing basic models 
of self-  regulation to account for adaptive 
and maladaptive deviations from the basic 
processes they propose. There is much to 
be gained from research by scholars of self- 
regulation or personality exploring the em -
pirical connections between self-  regulation 
and personality in the context of meaningful 
goal pursuit.
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