CHAPTER 13: GEORGE KELLY Flashcards
Where was George Alexander Kelly born?
On a farm near Perth, Kansas, on April 28, 1905 as the only child.
What happened to Kelly’s father?
He had been a Presbyterian minister, but because of poor health, he gave up the ministry and turned to farming.
What did Kelly’s early education consist of?
Attending a one-room schoolhouse and being tutored by his parents until the age of 13.
What happened to Kelly at the age of 13?
He was sent to Wichita, where he eventually attended four high schools.
What happened after Kelly’s graduation from high school?
He enrolled in the Friends University in Wichita, a Quaker school.
What happened to Kelly during University?
He moved to Park College in Markville, Missouri, where he earned his BA degree in physics and mathematics.
What interested Kelly in his first psychology class?
When the instructor discussed “stimulus-response” psychology.
Why did Kelly switch his major to educational sociology and a minor in labor relations?
His plan to have a career in engineering would not allow him to deal with social problems.
By the time Kelly obtained his PhD in psychology, what had Kelly already studied?
Physics, mathematics, sociology, education, labour relations, economics, speech pathology, cultural anthropology, and biometrics.
How was Kelly remembered by his students and colleagues?
As a warm, accepting person.
Fun fact: Kelly rose to invite an entire gathering to his house for dinner. Nearly 100 individuals accepted the offer.
How did Kelly “play it by ear?”
Kelly started as a clinical psychologist with no formal clinical training.
Kelly was confronted by people with problems, and because he had no clinical skills, had to improvise his own techniques.
What did Kelly believe in?
That a person’s present personality need not be tied to his or her past.
Phenomenologist
Phenomenologists believe that intact conscious experience should be psychology’s focus of attention.
The important thing to study is a person’s individual conscious experiences, without breaking them down into component parts of attempting to determine their origin.
Why was Kelly labeled as a phenomenologist?
He studied intact conscious experience.
He was only interested in such experience in relationship to objective reality.
Kelly was interested in how thought processes were used while interacting with the environment.
Why is Kelly’s theory labeled as cognitive?
It emphasizes mental events.
His theory stresses how people view and think about reality.
Why is Kelly’s theory considered as existential?
It emphasizes the present and the future.
It assumes that humans are free to choose their own destinies.
What does existentialism argue?
That humans are free and future oriented, that their subjective feelings and personal experience are extremely important, and that they are concerned with the meaning of life.
Why is Kelly’s theory humanistic?
Because it stresses the human capacity for improvement.
What did Kelly and the humanists believed in?
That humans sought, and were capable of, better personal, sociological, and international conditions.
Why did Kelly believe his theory was ‘too fluid to be pinned down by verbal labels?”
He rejected the notion that his theory was cognitive and speculated about writing “another short book to make it clear that I wanted no part of cognitive theory.”
How did Kelly see the humanistic movement?
As “fizzling out” due to its opposition to scientific experimentation.
What was a scientists’ main goal?
To reduce uncertainty.
What did Kelly believe about scientists?
Similar to scientists, all humans are attempting to clarify their lives by reducing uncertainty, and therefore the distinction between the scientist and the nonscientists if not a valid one because all humans are scientists.
Personal Construct
Used by individuals to construe or interpret, explain, give meaning to, or predict experiences.
Construct
An idea that a person uses when attempting to interpret his or her own personal experience.
A mini scientific theory, in that it makes predictions about reality.
Are constructs usually verbal labels?
Yes. A personal applies such verbal labels to environmental events and then tests it with subsequent experience with those events.
What does it mean by “we view two events as similar while a third is seen as different.”
Person A and person B may be seen as similar because they are both friendly, but person C is different because she is mean.
Construct System
Corresponds fairly closely to reality as largely a matter of trial and error.
Personality
Refers to the collection of constructs that constitute his or her construct system at any given time.
Constructive Alternativism
The ability to choose among several constructs when interacting with one’s environment.
Gives a person more freedom in interactions and a way to revise their constructs, and personality, if needed.
What is the fundamental postulate in Kelly’s theory?
“A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which they anticipate events.”
An individual’s activities (behaviour and thoughts) are guided in certain directions by the personal constructs used to predict future events.
What did Vaihinger and Adler believe with Kelly?
That subjective reality was a more important determine of behaviour than objective reality.
Construction Corollary
A person anticipates events by constructing their replications.
Example of Construction Corollary
A friendly person will tend to remain friendly; day follows night; it tends to be cold in winter; and the physical objects in one’s environment will tend to remain in place– for instance, the refrigerator probably will still be in the kitchen tomorrow.
No two events are exactly the same. It is on the basis of these themes that constructs are formed and that predications about the future are made.
Individuality Corollary
Persons differ from each other in their construction of events.
Example of Individuality Corollary
Not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder, so is everything else.
Reality is what we perceive it to be.
This is a restatement of Kelly’s notion of constructive alternatives, which says that we are free to construe events as we wish.
Organization Corollary
Each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs.
Example of Organization Corollary
Not only do individuals differ in the constructs they used to construct events, but they also differ in how they organize their constructs.
The construct extrovert-introvert subsumes such constructs as likes people–dislikes people and likes parties–dislikes parties.
Superordinate Construct
General construct that subsumes other constructs.
Subordinate Construct
Construct that are subsumed under a more general construct.
Dichotomy Corollary
A person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous constructs.
Example of Dichotomy Corollary
One might say that males and females are similar in that they are both humans. This, in turn, implies that some organisms are not humans, for example, apes.
For one person, one pole of a construct may be beautiful and the contrasting pole may be insensitive. For another person, beautiful might be contrasted with ugly. For still, another person, beautiful might be contrasted with unsexy.
Slot Movements
The abrupt shifting from the use of one pole of a construct to its opposite that is often precipitated by stress.
Choice Corollary
A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomized construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension and definition of his system.
Example of Choice Corollary
The person can either be safe or take a risk.
If one applies previously effective constructs to a new but similar experience, one is merely seeking further validation of one’s construct system.
Definition of a Construct System
Choice of a construct in construing a situation, that has already been successful in construing similar situations.
Such a choice has the effect of further validating one’s construct system.
Extension of a Construct System
Choice of a construct, in a construing situation, that has never been tried.
Such a choice has the potential effect of extending one’s construct system so that it is capable of assimilating a greater range of experience.
What happens when choosing the Definition or Extension Construct System?
One is torn between security and adventure.
One can make safe predictions or one can attempt to expand one’s construct system, thereby making an ever-increasing number of experiences understandable.
Range Corollary
A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only.
Range of Convenience
Finite range of events to which a particular construct is relevant.
