George Kelly

The Psychology of Personal Constructs

History

 Formed theory from clinical experience

 Clients in counselling centers
 Able to discuss concerns rationally
 Express problems in intellectual terms
 Depends heavily on cognitive information processing
abilities
Personal Construct Theory

 Each person creates a set of cognitive constructs about

the environment
 Interpret and organize events in a pattern
 Use this to guide behavior and make predictions about
others’ behavior
 The individual’s reality is constructed!
Personal Construct Theory

 Construct = mental representations used to interpret

events
 Unique way of looking at life
 Intellectual hypothesis
 Dichotomous
 Constructive alternativism = we can change or replace
the way that we interpret events
 Behavior is rarely predetermined
 We make our own decisions
 We don’t just react – we act
Characteristics of Constructs

 Bipolar – have opposing characteristics

 emergent pole – applies to the event being construed
 Implicit pole – end of the construct not being actively
applied
 e.g. clever
 Hierarchical
 Superordinate levels
 Subordinate levels
 Not permanently fixed
Corrollaries

 Fundamental principle: Psychological processes

are directed by the ways in which we anticipate
life events
 11 Corrolaries
Corrolaries

 Construction
 We conservatively construct anticipation based on past
experiences.
 Individuality
 As everyone's experience is different, their constructs are
different.
 Organization
 Constructs are connected to one another in hierarchies
and network of relationships. These relationships may be
loose or tight.
 Dichotomy
 We store experience as constructs, and then look at the
world through them.
Corrolaries

 Choice
 We can choose to gain new experiences to expand our
constructs or stay in the safe but limiting zone of current
constructs.
 Range
 Constructs are useful only in limited range of situations.
Some ranges are broad, whilst other ranges are narrow.
 Experience
 We can choose to gain new experiences to expand our
constructs or stay in the safe but limiting zone of current
constructs.
Corrollaries

 Modulation
 Some construct ranges can be 'modulated' to accommodate
new ideas (e.g. 'big'). Others are 'impermeable'.
 Fragmentation
 Many of our constructs conflict with one another. These
may be dictated by different contexts and roles.
 Commonality
 Many of our experiences are similar and/or shared, leading
to similarity of constructs with others. Discussing
constructs also helps to build shared constructs.
 Sociality
 We interact with others through understanding of their
constructs.
Emotional states

 Anxiety
 The present constructs are not applicable for the
anticipation of the currently experienced events.
 The problem is not that the individual cannot apply
his/her constructs but he/she has no constructs for the
situation.
 not able to predict
 not able to understand the whole situation
 not able to solve problems in the situation
Emotional states

 Remorse
 The individual recognizes that his/her self got out from
its central role-structure.
 e.g. the student who constructed himself as a learner
experiences regret if he goes to the pub instead of
learning.
 Threat
 The individual recognizes that he/she has to change the
construct system radically because of the new experiences or
the construct system tends to go to pieces
Emotional states

 Hostility
 Permanent effort to verify constructs that turned out to
be incorrect. The individual tends to force others to
behave according to his/her constructs instead of
accepting that these constructs were incorrect.
 e.g. father – adult daughter
Assessment

 Interview
 Self-characterization sketches
 Used to assess personal construct system
 Role Construct Repertory Test
 Used to assess constructs we apply to important people in
our lives
 Fixed Role Therapy
 Act out constructs
 Abandon old for new, more effective constructs
The REP Test

 The client names a set of ten to twenty people, called

elements, likely to be of some importance to the
person's life. (e.g. past lover, someone you pity…)
 The therapist picks out three of these at a time, and
asks you to tell him or her which of the three are
similar, and which one is different. And he asks the
client to give him/her something to call the similarity
and the difference.
 The similarity label is called the similarity pole, and the
difference one is called the contrast pole, and together
they make up one of the constructs you use in social
relations.
The REP Test
The REP test

 The list of constructs will show you the patterns of the

client’s personal constructs.
 These constructs determine focus of the client’s
attention and behavior.
 They show somebody sees the world, what are the
important behavioral experiences for him/her.
Outgrowth of Kelly’s Theory

 Cognitive Styles
 Differences in how we perceive elements of the
environment
 Styles:
 Cognitive complexity
 Better able to make predictions about others’ behavior

 Increases with age

 Cognitive simplicity
The End