PERSONAL

CONSTRUCT
THEORY
George Alexander Kelly
Reporters: Sinfuego, Joshua Tantoy, Carissa Marie
WORD UP
ICE BREAKER
TCOCUNRST
CONSTRUCT
MDESITENRI
M
DETERMINIS
M
MFORDEE
FREEDOM
SEEXPCNERI
E
EXPERIENC
ES
SNOTEITRPAINTE
R
INTERPRETATION
S
• Kelly’s Philisophical
Position Person as Scientist
Scientist as Person • Applications of Personal
Construct Theory
Constructive Alternativism
Abnormal Development
• Personal Constructs
Psychotherapy
Basic Postulate
The Rep Test
Supporting Corollariess
• Related Research
BIOGRAPHY
GEORGE ALEXANDER KELLY
BIOGRAPH • Born in a small town
Y
in Kansas in 1905
• Only child of a
Presbyterian minister
and his wife
BIOGRAPHY
• He attended high school in Wichita,
Kansas, and then Friends University,
where he enrolled in courses in music
and public debating.
• He graduated from Park College in 1926
with a degree in mathematics and
physics
BIOGRAPHY
• In 1929, he was awarded an
exchange scholarship and spent
a year at the University of
Edinburgh, where he earned a
bachelor’s degree in education.
BIOGRAPHY
• He returned to the United States with a
developing interest in psychology and
entered the graduate program in that
field at the University of Iowa.
• In 1931 he was awarded his Ph.D. for a
dissertation in the area of speech and
reading disabilities.
BIOGRAPHY
• Kelly’s professional career in
psychology began with his acceptance
of a position at Fort Hays State College
in Kansas.
• Soon afterward, he began developing
psychological services for the State of
Kansas; he established a network of
traveling clinics throughout the state.
BIOGRAPHY
• He began to develop his own theory,
which he based partly on his
observation of a friend who took a part
in a dramatic production in college,
lived it for the two or three weeks the
play was in rehearsal, and was
profoundly influenced by it.
BIOGRAPHY
• The crux of Kelly’s theory of personal
constructs arose from his observation that
“people tended to have the symptoms they
had read about or had seen in other people”
• Read the works of the eminent linguist
Korzybski and the role-playing theorist
Jacob Moreno; on the basis of his reading,
he was able to refine his theory
BIOGRAPHY
• After a stint in the navy as an aviation
psychologist during World War II, Kelly
was appointed associate professor at the
University of Maryland.
• He left Maryland in 1946 to become
professor of psychology and director of
clinical psychology at Ohio State
University
BIOGRAPHY
• He also taught a number of courses for
graduate students who were training to
become clinical psychologists.
• Finally, during his tenure at Ohio State
University, he produced his major
theoretical work, The Psychology of
Personal Constructs
BIOGRAPHY
•In 1965, he accepted the
Riklis Chair of Behavioral
Science at Brandeis
University.
•He died in 1967.
 MAJOR
CONCEPTS
Kelly’s Philisophical Position

Person As Scientist
■ When you decide what foods to eat for lunch, what
television shows to watch, or what occupation to enter,
you are acting in much the same manner as a scientist.
That is, you ask questions, formulate hypotheses, test
them, draw conclusions, and try to predict future
events. Like all other people (including scientists),
your perception of reality is colored by your personal
constructs—your way of looking at, explaining, and
interpreting events in your world.
Kelly’s Philisophical Position

Scientist As Person
■ If people can be seen as scientists, then scientists can
also be seen as people. Therefore, the pronouncements
of scientists should be regarded with the same
skepticism with which we view any behavior. Every
scientific observation can be looked at from a different
perspective. Every theory can be slightly tilted and
viewed from a new angle. This approach, of course,
means that Kelly’s theory is not exempt from
restructuring.
Kelly’s Philisophical Position
• Constructive Alternativism
• It is the assumption that all of us are capable of
changing or replacing our present interpretation of
events
• The assumption also implies that our behavior is never
completely determined; we are always free to some
extent to reinterpret our experiences.
• Kelly’s theory is constructed on a joint base of
freedom and determinism.
Kelly’s Philisophical Position

• Constructive Alternativism
• superordinate construct - Construct that
controls many other constructs.

• subordinate constructs - Construct that is

controlled by other constructs.
Personal Constructs

• Kelly (1963) would insist that these people,

along with everyone else, are looking at their
world through “transparent patterns or
templates” that they have created in order to
cope with the world’s realities. Although these
patterns or templates do not always fit accurately,
they are the means by which people make sense
out of the world. Kelly referred to these patterns
as personal constructs.
Personal Constructs

• Basic Postulate
• Assumes that “a person’s processes
are psychologically channelized by
the ways in which [that person]
anticipates events” (Kelly, 1955)
Personal Constructs

• Supporting Corollaries
• Individuality Corollary -- individual differences
• Organization Corollary -- People differ not only
in their constructs but also in the way in which they
organize them. Organization of constructs also serves to
reduce conflict for the person.
• Choice Corollary -- Kelly assumed that all of us
are continually making choices between the poles of our
constructs.
Personal Constructs

• Supporting Corollaries
• Fragmentation Corollary -- our construct
subsystems are not always mutually consistent, and we may
sometimes show behaviors that are inconsistent with our
most recent experiences.
• Commonality Corollary -- that those who
interpret events similarly will behave alike.
• Sociality Corollary -- “to the extent that one
person construes the construction processes of another, he
may play a role in a social process involving the other
person” (Kelly, 1955).
APPLICATION OF
THE THEORY
The Role Construct Repertory Test
Abnormal Development

• Threat -- People experience threat when they

perceive that the stability of their basic
constructs is likely to be shaken
• Fear -- more specific and incidental.
• Anxiety -- People are likely to feel anxious
when they are experiencing a new event.
• Guilt -- people feel guilty when they behave in
ways that are inconsistent with their sense of
who they are
Pychotherapy

Fixed Role Therapy

■ The purpose of fixed-role therapy is to help
clients change their outlook on life (personal
constructs) by acting out a predetermined role,
first within the relative security of the therapeutic
setting and then in the environment beyond
therapy where they enact the role continuously
over a period of several weeks.
The Role Construct Repertory Test

• The major diagnostic tool for assessing the

personal construct systems of people in clinical
settings.
• The goal of the Role Construct Repertory Test
(or simply Role Repertory Test, RRT) is to
understand how an individual views (that is,
construes) his or her world, especially those
people known to the person with whom he or she
plays different roles.
 RELATED
RESEARCH/
ABSTRACT
Individual differences in cognitive complexity
Related Research/ Abstract
• In research examining individual differences in cognitive
complexity, Pancer, Hunsberger, Pratt, and Alisat (2000, pp.
38–57) have noted that most students experience great levels
of stress during the transition from high school to college.
• New college students must learn to adjust to the new demands
of adult independence (e.g., managing their own finances and
doing their own laundry), to make new friends, and to meet the
challenges of their academic work, which is often more
difficult than the work they did in high school.
Related Research/ Abstract
• Pancer and his colleagues predicted and found that students who were
cognitively complex were better able to cope successfully with these
stresses than students who were cognitively simple.
• Cognitively complex individuals had done a great deal of thinking about
the possible problems that they would encounter in the college
environment before they enrolled at the school, and developed strategies
for coping with them once they occurred. They had long discussions with
their parents, friends, and officials of the school prior to enrolling, and
had gathered more information about what life on the campus would be
like (e.g., what their classes, their professors, and their social life would
be like).
Related Research/ Abstract
• As a result, the cognitively complex students were able to
reduce their stress and make a better adjustment to college life
—for example, by keeping up-to-date with their course work,
and by participating in many of the social activities offered by
the school.
• This research also showed that cognitive complexity about
college life was increased by giving students information about
campus life in advance of their enrollment, and such newly
generated complexity served to protect many students from
some of the stresses they experience at college.
Related Research/ Abstract
• Pancer and his colleagues then suggested that college officials
should provide students who are about to enroll with
information about what college life is like, thus increasing their
readiness for college.
• Such programs could also prepare the students for some of the
challenges they might face while attending college and give
them strategies that they could use to overcome these tasks—
for example, time-management strategies that would help them
prioritize their activities so that their course work gets done
(Pancer, Hunsberger, Pratt, & Alisat, 2000, p. 54).
MAJOR STRENGTHS
AND WEAKNESSES
Major strengths and weaknesses
• Comprehensiveness – not very comprehensive,
but it has the potential to handle far more
phenomena than it does currently. Its perspective
has focused largely on psychopathological
behavior
• Precision and testability – unusually clear and
testable
• Parsimony – too economical
Major strengths and weaknesses
• Empirical validity – evidence is largely correlational and
paper-and-pencil in nature, and , it describes the constructs the
client claims to use in articulating and ordering experiences
• Heuristic value – Kelly’s theory has proven very interesting
and challenging to British psychologists, who have been most
active in testing various aspects of it.
• Applied value – Until recently, Kelly’s theory had little effect
on disciplines outside of psychology. Today, however, Kelly’s
ideas and measurement techniques are being utilized
successfully by business managers and occupational
counselors.
 KEY
TERMS
KEY TERMS
■ choice corollary The proposition that
people select between alternatives in
dichotomized constructs in making their
judgments about reality.
■ commonality corollary The
proposition that similar construct
systems in different individuals lead to
similarities in their behavior.
KEY TERMS
■ constellatory construct Type of construct that allows
its elements to belong to other constructs concurrently;
however, once identified in a particular way, these
elements are fixed.
■ constructive alternativism Fundamental assumption
that human beings are capable of changing their
interpretations of events.
■ constructs Ways of representing our experiences; they
are abstractions that are defined in terms of the
similarities and contrasts of their poles.
KEY TERMS
■ controlled elaboration Therapeutic technique in
which clients are encouraged to clarify and think
through their problems in consultation with the
therapist; this process enables them to revise or discard
old constructs and to formulate new and more effective
ones.
■ core constructs Important beliefs that are part of the
individual’s personal identity.
■ core role constructs Set of beliefs associated with
important role relationships that constitute the person’s
social identity.
KEY TERMS
■ enactment sketch A description of a role that clients are asked
to play that provides an opportunity for them to behave in
ways that contrast with the self-characterization sketch.
■ fixed-role therapy Therapeutic procedure used by Kelly to
produce personality changes in clients by constructing roles for
them that help them overcome their weaknesses and, in the
process, enable them to reconstrue themselves and their life
situations.
■ fragmentation corollary The proposition that an individual’s
personal construct subsystems may be disjointed and mutually
incompatible, and that the person is often unaware of the
inconsistency.
KEY TERMS
■ individuality corollary The proposition that
people differ in their constructions of reality.
■ loose constructions Beliefs that are unstable,
weak, and poorly defined and that lead to erratic
and often invalid predictions about how the
world operates.
■ organization corollary The proposition that the
individual’s constructs are arranged in particular
ways within his or her personal system.
KEY TERMS
■ peripheral constructs Beliefs that are relatively unimportant
to the person and that can be changed rather easily.
■ permeability The degree to which new elements will be
admitted within the boundaries of a construct.
■ preemptive construct Type of construct that includes only its
own elements and maintains that these elements cannot apply
to other constructs.
■ propositional construct Type of construct that leaves all of its
elements open to modification.
■ range of convenience The scope of a construct; the number of
other constructs to which it is related.
KEY TERMS
■ Role Construct Repertory Test (RCRT) Test devised by
Kelly to assess an individual’s personal construct system; also
known as the REP test.
■ self-characterization sketch Initial step in fixed-role therapy,
in which clients are asked to write a brief character outline of
themselves as it might be written by an intimate and
sympathetic friend.
■ sociality corollary The proposition that constructive
interpersonal relationships depend on mutual understanding of
each other’s construct systems.
■ subordinate construct Construct that is controlled by other
constructs. superordinate construct Construct that controls
many other constructs. 
REFERENCE
S
REFERENCES
• Ryckman, R. (2008). Theories of Personality, Ninth
Edition. US: Thompson Wadsworth
• Idiogrid. (a/n). Kelly's Original Role Construct
Repertory Test. Retrieved from http://
www.idiogrid.com/RRT_Original.htm?fbclid=IwAR3lpI
anvUIHeETvAvIBKPzFv4T8trjdW7_wJWMkFgxA1W
gFZn2OWVcQ_jg
• Feist, J & Feist, G. (2008) Theories of Personality,
Seventh Edition. US: McGraw Hill Companies
QUIZ