CHAPTER 15
KELLY: PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS
LECTURE
OUTLINE
I. Overview of Personal Construct Theory
Kelly’s
theory of personality can be seen as a metatheory, or a theory about theories.
It holds that people anticipate events by the meanings or interpretations that
they place on those events. Kelly called these interpretations personal constructs. His philosophical
position, called constructive
alternativism, assumes that alternative interpretations are always
available to people.
II. Biography of George Kelly
George Kelly was born on a
farm in south central Kansas in 1905, the only child of a former Presbyterian
minister and a former schoolteacher. During his school years and his early
professional career, he dabbled in a wide variety of subjects, but eventually
he took a Ph.D. in psychology from the State University of Iowa. He began his
academic career at Fort Hays State College in Kansas, a state plagued both by
dust storms and the Great Depression. After World War II, Kelly took a position
at Ohio State, where he remained until 1965 when he joined the faculty at
Brandeis University. He died two years later at age 61.
III. Kelly’s Philosophical Position
Kelly
believed that, although the universe is real, people construe events according
to their personal constructs, rather than reality.
A. Person
as Scientist
People generally
attempt to solve everyday problems in much the same fashion as scientists; that
is, they observe, ask questions, formulate hypotheses, infer conclusions, and
predict future events.
B. Scientist
as Person
Because
scientists are people, their pronouncements should be regarded with the same
skepticism as any other data. Every scientific theory can be viewed from an
alternate angle, and every competent scientist should be open to changing his
or her theory.
C. Constructive
Alternativism
Kelly believed
that all our interpretations of the world are subject to revision or
replacement, an assumption he called constructive alternativism. He further
stressed that, because people can construe their world from different angles,
observations that are valid at one time may be false at a later time.
IV. Personal Constructs
Kelly
believed that people look at their world through templates that they create and
then attempt to fit over the realities of the world. He called these templates
or transparent patterns personal constructs. Kelly believed that personal
constructs alone determine our behavior. A construct must have both a
comparison and a contrast, both of which must occur within the same context.
A. Basic
Postulate
Kelly
expressed his theory in one basic postulate and 11 supporting corollaries. The
basic postulate assumes that human behavior is shaped by the way that people
anticipate the future.
B. Supporting
Corollaries
The 11
supporting corollaries can all be inferred from this basic postulate.
1. Similarities
Among Events
Although
no two events are exactly alike, we construe similar events as if they were the
same. This is Kelly’s construction
corollary.
2. Differences
Among People
The individuality corollary states that,
because people have different experiences, they can construe the same event in
different ways.
3. Relationships
Among Constructs
The organization corollary assumes that
people organize their personal constructs in a hierarchical system, with some
constructs in a superordinate position and others subordinate to them.
4. Dichotomy of
Constructs
The dichotomy corollary assumes that people
construe events in an either/or manner, e.g., good or bad.
5. Choice Between
Dichotomies
People tend
to choose the alternative in a dichotomized construct that they see as
extending the range of their future choices. Kelly called this the choice corollary.
6. Range of
Convenience
The range corollary states that constructs
are limited to a particular range of convenience; that is, they are not
relevant to all situations.
7. Experience and
Learning
Kelly’s experience corollary suggests that
people continually revise their personal constructs as the result of their
experiences.
8. Adaptation to
Experience
Not all
new experiences lead people to revise their personal constructs. Only permeable
constructs lead to change; concrete constructs resist modification through
experience. This is Kelly’s modulation
corollary.
9. Incompatible
Constructs
The fragmentation corollary states that
people’s behavior can be inconsistent because their construct systems can
readily admit incompatible elements.
10. Similarities
Among People
To the
extent that we share experiences with other people, our personal constructs
tend to be similar to the construction systems of other people. This is Kelly’s
commonality corollary
11. Social Processes
The sociality corollary states that people
are able to communicate with other people because they can construe those
people’s constructions. With this corollary, Kelly introduced the concept of role, which refers to a pattern of
behavior that stems from people’s understanding of the constructs of others.
Each of us has a core role (which
gives us a sense of identity) and numerous peripheral
roles (which are less central to
our self-concept).
V. Applications of Personal Construct Theory
Kelly’s
many years of clinical experience enabled him to evolve concepts of abnormal
development and psychotherapy, and to develop a Role Construct Repertory
(Rep) Test.
A. Abnormal Development
Kelly
saw normal people as analogous to competent scientists who test reasonable
hypotheses, objectively view the results, and willingly change their theories
when the data warrant it. On the other hand, unhealthy people are like
incompetent scientists who test unreasonable hypotheses, reject or distort
legitimate results, and refuse to amend outdated theories. Kelly identified
four common elements in most human disturbances: threat, fear, anxiety, and
guilt.
1. Threat
People
experience threat when they perceive that the stability of their basic
constructs is likely to be shaken.
2. Fear
Fear is
more specific than threat and requires an incidental, rather than a comprehensive,
restructuring of one’s construct system.
3. Anxiety
People
experience anxiety when they recognize that they cannot adequately deal with a
new situation. Pathological anxiety exists when people become aware that their
incompatible constructs can no longer be tolerated, an awareness that breaks
down one’s construction system.
4. Guilt
Kelly
defined guilt as “the sense of having lost one’s core role structure.” This
means that people will feel guilty when they behave in ways that are incompatible
with their core role.
B. Psychotherapy
Kelly
insisted that clients should set their own goals for therapy and that they
should be active participants in the therapeutic process. He sometimes used a
procedure called fixed-role therapy
in which clients act out a predetermined role for several weeks. By playing the
part of a psychologically healthy person, clients may discover previously
hidden aspects of themselves.
C. The Rep Test
The
purpose of the Rep test is to discover ways in which people construe
significant people in their lives. Participants place names of people they know
on a repertory
grid in order to identify both similarities and differences among these people.
Changes in personal constructs, as revealed by the Rep test, can reveal change
during psychotherapy.
VI. Related Research
Kelly’s theory has influenced clinicians
more than researchers. Nevertheless,
personal construct theory and the Rep test have generated a substantial amount
of empirical research with both children and adults and in both the United
States and
the United Kingdom.
A. The Rep Test and
Children
Wayne Hammond and David Romney (1995)
used the Rep test with children and found that the self-constructs of depressed
adolescents are marked by low self-esteem, pessimism, and an external locus of
control. Other research with children and the Rep test (Donahue, 1994) showed
that preadolescents construed themselves and others in ways consistent with the
Big Five personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, and intelligence), thus demonstrating that the Big Five
factors can come from instruments other than standard personality tests.
B. The Rep Test and
the Real Self Versus the Ideal Self
Research with adults demonstrated the
usefulness of the Rep test in predicting adherence to a physical activity
program (Jones, Harris, & Walter, 1998), detecting differences between the
real self and the ideal self (Watson & Watts, 2001), and measuring
neuroticism (Watson & Watts, 2001).
C. The Rep Test and the Pain
Patient
A number of studies from New Zealand,
including the Large and Strong (1997) study, have found that the Rep test can
be a reliable and valid instrument for measuring pain. Interestingly, some of this
research showed that people close to the pain patient may unintentionally
exacerbate their friend’s pain by behaving as if the pain was more central to
the pain patient’s life than construed by the patient.
VII. Critique of Kelly
Kelly’s
theory is most applicable to relatively normal, intelligent people.
Unfortunately, it pays scant attention to problems of motivation, development,
and cultural influences. On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate
Kelly’s theory very high on parsimony and internal consistency, about average
on its capacity to
generate research, and low on its ability to be falsified, to guide the
practitioner,
and to organize knowledge.
VIII. Concept of Humanity
Kelly
saw people as anticipating the future and living their lives in accordance with
those anticipations. His concept of elaborative
choice suggests that people increase their range of future choices by the
present choices they freely make. Thus, Kelly’s theory rates very high in
teleology and high in choice and optimism. In addition, it receives high
ratings for conscious influences and for its emphasis on the uniqueness of the
individual. Finally, personal construct theory is about average on social
influences.