Personal constructs according to George A. Kelly

Type of psychology: Personality

Personal construct theory examines the way each person thinks about the world; it attempts to provide avenues for understanding and making use of one’s subjective experiences. It demonstrates how cognitions change when one incorrectly predicts the future on the basis of those cognitions.

Introduction

Personal construct theory maintains that all people are motivated to reduce uncertainty in their lives. In this manner, each person is like a scientist who is attempting to solve complex problems. Instead of dealing with complex equations in chemistry and physics, however, people are attempting to unravel the complexities of their own lives and the relationships that they have developed. Just as scientists are constantly making changes in their theories and research claims based on the availability of new evidence, people change the way they look at their subjective worlds on the basis of new evidence. That evidence appears in the form of new interactions with significant others in people’s lives, such as spouses, children, parents, and bosses. When new evidence is made available, people will alter their thought patterns to reduce uncertainty in the future. This view forms the basis of George Kelly’s principle of constructive alternativism—the view that people are entitled to their own views of the world and that they will make use of those views to reduce uncertainty in the future.

Kelly became involved in personal constructs theory late in his career. Ironically, Kelly’s early experiences as a psychologist did not even involve the study of personality. It was only in 1955, twelve years before his death, that he published The Psychology of Personal Constructs: A Theory of Personality. In this work, he defined and discussed the concept of a construct. For Kelly, a construct is a thought that a person has for the purpose of attempting to interpret events; these interpretations may prove to be accurate or inaccurate. In those situations in which a construct leads to an incorrect prediction of an event, the person is likely to change the construct. All of Kelly’s constructs are dichotomous in nature. That is, they are made of pairs of polar opposites that cannot be simultaneously correct when referring to the same person. For example, one cannot view one’s boss as both intelligent and unintelligent at the same time. Similarly, one’s boyfriend or girlfriend cannot be seen as cruel and kind at the same moment.

Fundamental Postulate and Corollaries

Kelly claimed that constructs operate according to a fundamental postulate. This postulate maintains that each person directs thoughts and cognitions in a way that permits the most accurate prediction of future events. If a woman has a personal construct which states that her boyfriend is a thoughtful person, and he sends her flowers while she is in bed with the flu, her construct would be regarded as an accurate one. If, however, that same boyfriend used her illness as an opportunity to date other women and ignored her illness in the process, it would be necessary to adjust her construction system because it does not accurately predict her boyfriend’s behavior. This process of changing one’s construction system to predict future events more accurately is an ongoing one designed to decrease uncertainty in the future.

Although the fundamental postulate is critical to Kelly’s attempts to predict and explain behavior, it is not sufficient to cover all aspects of a person’s behavior and the choices that are made which cause that behavior. To address this additional detail, Kelly provided a series of eleven corollaries to his fundamental postulate. These corollaries are supporting statements that provide a detailed analysis of thoughts and behaviors that cannot be directly derived from the fundamental postulate.

The construction corollary maintains that people continue to learn as they are presented with similar events in life. For example, if a man’s mother has given him a birthday present for the last thirty years, his prediction that he will receive another present from her on his next birthday makes sense. Similarly, if a person has watched a particular television program such as Nightline at 11:30 p.m. on weekdays for the past several years, that individual can reasonably predict that it will again be on television at the same time tonight.

Another important corollary to Kelly’s fundamental postulate is the dichotomy corollary. This states that all constructs consist of pairs of opposites. That is, a college course may be either interesting or uninteresting, but it cannot be both at the same time. One important aspect of the dichotomy corollary is that each construct must include three members or items, with two of the members having the same characteristic and the third member having the opposite characteristic. For example, breathing and not breathing would not be a legitimate construct in evaluating three friends. Because all of them breathe, the proposed construct would not tell how the three individuals are different as well as alike. Therefore, it would not reduce uncertainty in the future.

A third corollary to Kelly’s system that is particularly important is the range corollary. This maintains that a construct is only relevant in dealing with a finite number of events. The events for which a construct is deemed applicable is called its range of convenience. Terms such as “happy” and “sad” would not be within the range of convenience in depicting the characteristics of a tree or a book, while they might be critical in evaluating one’s relatives.

Varying degrees of applicability can be found within a series of constructs. For example, the construct “kind versus cruel” would be more relevant in evaluating a relative or girlfriend than it would be in considering the qualities of an elevator operator one occasionally encounters. Kelly’s fundamental postulate and supporting corollaries provide considerable information. The theory also provides some interesting applications in terms of personality assessment and therapeutic intervention.

Use with Career Goals

Kelly’s personal construct theory has been used to explain, predict, and attempt to modify behavior in a wide range of circumstances. One interesting application involves the use of personal constructs in formulating career goals. A high school student, for example, may establish a goal of becoming a successful surgeon in the future. The nature of her constructs can then be examined to determine whether her constructs (as they relate to her own characteristics) are likely to lead to a medical career. She currently views herself as unintelligent rather than intelligent, dedicated to immediate gratification rather than delayed gratification, and lazy rather than hardworking. If she is eventually to become a successful physician, she must reject those constructs and develop a new construction system that is consistent with her career goals. The application of Kelly’s theory to career choice is important. Although no one expects first-grade children to examine their own characteristics realistically in considering career options, much more is required of high school and college students. It is not sufficient for people to state that they want to pursue a given career: The nature of their constructs must be evaluated to determine if they are consistent with their career goals. In those circumstances in which inconsistencies exist, either the constructs or the career goals must change.

Role Construct Repertory Test

One of the most interesting applications of Kelly’s personal construct theory involves the development of an assessment device, the Role Construct Repertory Test. This test defines a role as a set of behaviors that are performed by a person in response to the construction systems and behaviors of others. The test itself determines the nature of a person’s system of constructs as it is related to the significant others in that person’s life. The test can be used as a means of evaluating progress during psychotherapy or as a vehicle for detecting changes in interpersonal relationships.

The test involves the creation of a grid in which significant others in the life of the person are listed. Examples would be self, mother, spouse, boss, friend, and successful person. The client then considers these individuals in groups of three provided by the therapist. The client comes up with a word that typifies two of these individuals and a second word that is the opposite of the first word but typifies the third person. This procedure is followed for a group of twenty sorts, or sets of comparisons. This enables the therapist to determine the behaviors and thoughts of the client concerning the significant others in her life.

One of the determinations that can be made involves the flexibility of the client in dealing with others. That is, in listing those individuals on the grid who possess certain positive characteristics, the therapist would examine whether the same individuals on the grid are given credit for all the positive characteristics listed while a second group is always viewed negatively. This would indicate a lack of flexibility in the client and might offer an area for needed change in the future.

Fixed Role Therapy

As an application of Kelly’s theory, the Role Construct Repertory Test is an initial step in the therapeutic process. An interesting follow-up provided by Kelly is fixed role therapy. This technique begins by asking the client to develop an in-depth description of himself or herself, written in the third person. This is called a self-characterization sketch. The third-person style is used to produce greater objectivity than would be achieved with first-person narratives. This gives the therapist a clear look at the client from the client’s own perspective. The therapist then establishes a role for the client that is directly opposite many of the characteristics in the self-characterization sketch. The client is asked to act out that new role for a period of time. The role would include positive characteristics not found in the self-characterization sketch. The ultimate goal of the technique is to have the client maintain many of those new positive characteristics on a long-term basis.

In evaluating applications of Kelly’s work, the emphasis must be placed on the importance of knowing one’s own construction system and, when appropriate, taking steps to change that system. Although this may be handled through formal techniques such as fixed role therapy, many therapists make use of Kelly’s emphasis on cognitive change without strictly employing his terminology. To this extent, the influence of Kelly’s work should increase in the future.

Kelly’s Career

Kelly did not begin his career with the intention of developing personal construct theory. In fact, his initial training was not even in the field of personality psychology. Kelly’s original specialty in graduate school was physiological psychology, and his dissertation was concerned with the areas of speech and reading disabilities. Having received his degree around the time of the Great Depression, however, Kelly came to the conclusion that the principles and concepts contained within his areas of specialization offered little solace to those who were emotionally and financially devastated in the aftermath of the Depression. He turned to clinical psychology, with an initial emphasis on the psychoanalytic approach. He noted that concepts such as the id and the libido seemed of no use in dealing with victims of the Depression.

Kelly’s initial academic position was at Fort Hays State College in Kansas. While at Fort Hays, he developed a series of traveling psychological clinics designed to treat the emotional and behavioral problems of students. This experience was crucial in the eventual formulation of personal construct theory. Kelly tried numerous forms of treatment with the students and determined that the optimal technique varied across cases. This led him to conclude that any clinical technique that is successful should be retained, while techniques that result in repeated treatment failure should be discarded. This flexibility, reflected in his later theoretical claims regarding constructive alternativism and his fundamental postulate, has made Kelly unique among personality theorists. Kelly’s willingness to respect subjective reality as determined by each human being is reflective of his unwillingness to commit himself totally to any one theoretical perspective. Although Kelly was influenced by many theorists, he clearly traveled his own path in the development of his psychology of personal constructs.

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