Transcript George Kelly - Kelley Kline

George Kelly
Personal Construct Theory
I. Biography: 1905-1967
George Kelly was born in a farming community
near Wichita, Kansas.
He graduated with a degree in physics and
mathematics from Park College in Missouri in
1926.
Kelly didn’t care for psychology. He was
incredulous of Freud’s theory & unimpressed with
learning theory as well.
Biography contd.
Kelly attended a learning class in college &
was bored stiff. This is what he said of his
experience:
“The most I could make of it was the S was
what you had to have in order to account for
the R, and the R was put there so the S
would have something to account for,” he
wrote.
Biography contd.
Kelly went to the University of Edinburgh to study
education in 1929. While there he developed a growing
interest in psychology.
In 1931 he received his Ph.D. from the University of
Iowa. For 10 years he worked at Fort Hays Kansas
State College, setting up clinics for dustbowl victims in
the 1930s.
After WWII (He served in the Navy), Kelly spent a year
at the University of Maryland & the next 20 years at
Ohio State University.
George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory
Kelly rejected the need for motivational concepts to
explain human behavior.
He argued we are not pushed into action by
environmental or unconscious forces. Kelly saw us as our
own personal scientists.
People like scientists, generate & test hypotheses about
the way the world works.
Because no 2 people see the world the same, no 2 people
behave the same or have the same personality.
Creating templates
Imagine you generate a hypothesis about what one of
your instructors is like, based on observations.
Whenever you see this instructor you collect more
information & compare it to your hypothesis. If it’s
verified (the instructor asks the way you predict) you
continue using it, otherwise you discard it.
Kelly described this process as template matching.
We place the templates over the events we encounter. If
they match, we retain the templates; if not, we modify
them for a better prediction next time.
Personal Constructs:
Are cognitive structures we use to interpret &
predict events.
No 2 people use identical personal constructs, &
no 2 people organize their constructs in an
identical manner.
Personal constructs
According to Kelly, personal constructs are bipolar.
--That is, we classify relevant objects in an either/or
fashion with each construct.
E.g., friendly-unfriendly, tall-short, intelligent-stupid,
masculine-feminine, etc.
After applying the original black-and-white construct we
can use other bipolar constructs to determine the extent of
blackness or whiteness.
E.g., If you think a person is intelligent, you may then
apply the construct, “academically intelligent or
commonsense intelligent.” --provides a clearer picture!
How can personal constructs be used
to explain personality differences?
Kelly argued that differences in our behavior
largely result from differences in the way people
“construe the world.”
Suppose two people meet a new individual named
Adam.
Person 1: uses friendly-unfriendly, fun lovingstuffy, and outgoing-shy constructs in forming his
template for Adam’s behavior.
Person 2: uses refined-gross, sensitiveinsensitive, & intelligent-stupid constructs.
After both individuals interact with Adam they
walk away with different impressions of Adam.
Person 1 believes that Adam is a friendly, funloving & outgoing person, whereas Person 2
thinks that Adam is gross, insensitive, & stupid.
The same situation is interpreted differently.
The Fundamental postulate &
corollaries
Kelly began with one basic postulate upon which his
entire theory was based, followed by eleven corollaries
that elaborate on the theory.
The Fundamental Postulate: A person’s processes are
psychologically channelized by the ways in which he
anticipates events.
Kelly argued that we are tied to our past experiences
only in the sense that they have helped to develop our
constructs & expectancies for the future.
What drives us according to Kelly?
“Anticipation is both the push & pull of the
psychology of personal constructs.”(1955,
p. 49).
“It is the future that tantalizes man, not the
past.”
How do we go about anticipating events?
Kelly explains in his Construction Corollary
that we anticipate events by “construing their
replications.”
Without expectancies we would be
overwhelmed with information which would
leave us confused & unable to predict anything.
Therefore, we utilize past experiences to help
us organize & anticipate future events.
Past experience—guides our predictions
We use past experience to determine what is
important to attend to & what we can ignore.
If you knew if a person was quiet or talkative
(talkative-quiet construct), you could predict
their behavior in a given situation more
accurately.
Why do two people who experience the
same event, have different interpretations of
that event?
1. Each person may have a different set of constructs
they use to evaluate a given event.
2. Two people may use similar constructs on one pole,
but not on the other.
E.g., You might use an outgoing-reserved construct,
whereas you might use an outgoing-melancholy
construct. Thus, what you see as reserved, I may see
as melancholy.
Kelly’s Organizational corollary:
We differ in the way we organize our constructs.
Some constructs are more important than others
in interpreting our worlds.
Kelly calls these superordinate personal
constructs & compares them to be less important
subordinate constructs.
A subordinate construct may be
subsumed within one side of the
superordinate construct, like this:
Friendly-Unfriendly
Outgoing-Quiet
Here, people are judged as either friendly or
unfriendly. If judged as friendly, they are then
judged as either outgoing or quiet.
You might, however organize your
constructs this way:
Friendly-Unfriendly
Outgoing-Quiet
Outgoing-Quiet
Here, whether you judge people as friendly or
unfriendly, you can further judge them as
either outgoing or quiet.
Psychological Problems:
Kelly thought that people have psychological problems
because their construct systems are faulty, not because
of the residue of past traumatic experiences.
Past experiences with an unloving parent or a tragic
incident may help explain why people construe the
world the way they do, but they are not the cause of
the problems.
All disorders—result from faulty construct systems.
What is the route of all madness?
Anxiety!!!!!
Kelly argued that anxiety diminishes our
capacity to predict future events.
When we are anxious we fail to encode
stimuli important in making predictions,
leaving us feeling confused & disoriented.
Why do our constructs sometimes fail us
when we are trying to predict future
events?
Sometimes we develop impermeable constructs.
An impermeable construct does not easily allow new
elements into its existing range of convenience.
This drastically limits your ability to anticipate events,
which would make your world feel less predictable &
more out of your control.
Keep in mind construct systems may be incomplete.