Finals Flashcards
Psychology of Personal Constructs
George Alexander Kelly
Perhaps the most appropriate term is “metatheory,” or a
theory about theories.
Psychology of personal constructs
According to Kelly, all people (including those who build
personality theories) anticipate events by the meanings or
interpretations they place on those events.
These meanings or interpretations are called
Constructs
Ask questions, formulate hypotheses, test them, draw conclusions, and
try to predict future events.
Steps in a scientific study
Make observations, construe relationships among events, formulate
theories, generate hypotheses, test those that are plausible, and reach
conclusions from their experiments.
In quest for life’s meaning
Open for reformulation through imagination and foresight.
Person as a scientist
Kelly believed that the person, not the facts, holds the key to an individual’s future. Facts and events do not dictate conclusions; rather, they carry meanings for us to discover.
Constructive alternativism
We are all constantly faced with alternatives, which we can explore
if we choose, but in any case, we must assume responsibility for
how we construe our worlds.
Constructive alternativism
It is one’s way of seeing how things (or people) are alike and
yet different from other things (or people).
Personal Constructs
People’s behaviors (thoughts and actions) are directed by the
way they see the future.
Basic Postulate
3 basic Postulate
Person’s processes
Channelized
Ways of anticipating events
Refers to a living, changing, moving human being.
Person’s Processes
To suggest that people move with a direction
through a network of pathways or channels.
Channelized
which suggests that people guide
their actions according to their predictions of the future
Ways of anticipating events
- Similarities Among Events
- No two events are exactly alike, yet we construe similar events so
that they are perceived as being the same. - E.g : One sunrise is never identical to another, but our construct dawn
conveys our recognition of some similarity or some replication of
events. Although two dawns are never exactly alike, they may be
similar enough for us to construe them as the same event
Construction Corollary
- differences aming people
-No two people put an experience together in exactly the same
way.
● E.g. Even identical twins living in nearly identical environments do
not construe events exactly the same. For example, part of Twin
A’s environment includes Twin B, an experience not shared by Twin
B.
Individuality corollary
- relationships among construct
- Different people organize similar events in a manner that minimizes
incompatibilities and inconsistencies.
● E.g.An individual construed intelligence and health as good and
stupidity and illness as bad. Furthermore, someone’s views of
independence and dependence (like her constructs of good and bad)
would have had a multitude of subordinate constructs.
Organization corollary
- dichotomy of constructs
- states that people must be able to see
similarities between events, but they must also contrast those events
with their opposite pole.
● E.g. How are intelligence and independence alike? Their common
element has no meaning without contrasting it to an opposite.
Intelligence and independence have no overlapping element. By contrasting intelligence with stupidity and independence with dependence, you see how they are alike and how they can be
organized under the construct “good” as opposed to “bad.”
Dichotomy corollary
- choice between dichotomized
- people make choices on the basis of how they
anticipate events, and those choices are between dichotomous
alternatives.
● E.g.Purchasing a new car was too expensive compared to the
relatively inexpensive used car. Each choice is between
alternatives in a dichotomized construct, and with each choice.
Choice corollary
- Range of convenience
- assumes that personal constructs are finite and not relevant to everything
- E.g.Independence carries with it the notion of dependence.An
individual’s freedom to remain in school, freedom to continue her job,
and freedom to move quickly from place to place without relying on
others all fall within her independence/dependence range of
convenience. However, Arlene’s construct of independence excludes all irrelevancies such as up/down, light/dark, or wet/dry; that is, it is
convenient only for a finite range of events.
Range corollary
- experience and learning
- restructuring of events which allows us
to learn from our experiences.
● Experience consists of the successive construing of events. The
events themselves do not constitute experience—it is the meaning
we attach to them that changes our lives.
Experience corollary
- adaptation to experience
- assumes that the extent to which
people revise their constructs is related to the degree of permeability of their existing constructs.
● A construct is permeable if new elements can be added to it. Thus,
all people modulate or adjust their personal constructs.
Modulation corollary
- Incompatible Constructs
- allows for the incompatibility of specific elements
- E.g. A man might be protective of his wife, yet encourage her to be
more independent. Protection and independence may be
incompatible with each other on one level, but on a larger level, both
are subsumed under the construct of love. Thus, the man’s actions
to protect his wife and to encourage her to be more independent
are consistent with a larger, superordinate construct.
Fragmentation corollary
- similarities among people
- E.g. Two people might arrive at similar political views although they
come from disparate backgrounds.
Commonality corollary
