Personality -9 Flashcards
What is the cognitive view of personality
A persons thoughts observations and knowledge influences personality and behaviour
Describe George kellys personal construct theory
Behaviour depends on how we process and understand information
The theory is based on how we perceive interpret and understand the world with aim to predict and control people and events
What is the cognitive view of interpreting people
Attend to different aspects
Construe own interpretations
use these to predict behaviour
What was kellys theory and example of
Constructive alternativism - multiple ways for a person to view the world
How we each perceive interpret and conceptualise influences our behaviour
What does Kelly say about the way we view the world
We have a construct then make a prediction out this to the test then find the result
These stages influence the nature of our future behaviour
What are constructs
The basis of the theory is the construct
A war of perceiving or interpreting people events and the world
How do we make constructs
Some events people and objects are similar or different - we look for these similarities or differences - base our predictions on the similarities or differences of the events we observe
The more similar it is to something we know the better our ability to predict what will happen
Why do we need constructs
Order and regularity in our lives, otherwise life would be chaotic
We also use our constructs to predict the future
What type of constructs do people use
For personality - the same terms words and characteristics that we use to describe people
We have a construct of what personality is and an apply it to a new person
If it fits our prediction of behaviour may be good
If it does not fit - change construct or don’t learn
To form constructs we need …
3 elements
2 elements must be perceived as similar to each other
Third element must be perceived as different from these two
Similarity pole and contrast pole of the construct
In the construct of happiness what is there
2 aspects of happiness
1 of cruelty
Why are constructs bi polar
They need an opposite emotion to compare this to
Developing constructs - what if people can’t’ see anything or anyone as being the opposite
It’s is said to be submerged and it is preverbal
A verbal construct can be expressed in words
A preverbal construct has no words to express it
What does a construct system consist of
Consists of all an individuals constructs arranged in a meaningful hierarchical order
How is the construct system organised
Organised in a hiercahial way
Broad constructs - superordinate
Narrow constructs - subordinate
Relationship between these constructs predict behaviour and personality
How does the construct system explain there are different personalities
Different personalities due to having different constructs or constructs in a different order
It is this relation or order that influences how you make sense of the world
People attempt to predict and co trol their environment by using their individual system of constructs
What are the two types of construct
Core constructs - most basic and meaningful to a persons functioning
Peripheral constructs - less basic and can be altered without serious modification of the overall structure
In relation to constructs to understand a person you must
Must know something about that the constructs a person uses and how they are organised in relation to one another
How do we examine a persons constructs
The role construct repertory technique
Tells you the constructs a person uses to perceive and interpret
It does this by asking people to consider how similar and different things are
What 2 steps are need for constructing a rep grid
The developement of a list of persons based on a role title list
The developement of constructs based on the comparisons of triads of persons
Role title list of people Triad Comparison 2 alike 1 different Select another triad and repeat Stop when produced all constructs you can
How can we measure how cognitively simple or complex a person you are
Complex - many constructs
Simple - few constructs
What did biers find in 1966 about complex people
Complex people were more accurate in predicting the behaviour of other than simple people
What does being a complex or simple person determine
Determines how you handle inconsistent information about people
Why do we modify our constructs
So that they will lead to more accurate predictions
Fine tune and learn so that make better predictions in the future
How do these conflicts influence our behaviour
We want to put our constructs to the test , we choose our behaviour to offer the greatest chance to put them to the test, it motivates behaviour .
We predict the future and make a bet by anticipating a future event
Explain orientated toward the future
It is the future which tantalises man not the past
Always reach out to the future of through the window of the present
We do things now to have effects in the future
