Personal Constructs Theory

PERSONAL
CONSTRUCTS GEORGE KELLY
THEORY
George Alexander Kelly was born April
28, 1905 ,on farm near Perth, Kansas
Biography of Only child of Elfleda M. Kelly (former

school teacher) and Theodore V. Kelly
(an ordained Presbyterian minister and
George Kelly became a Kansas farmer)
When 4 yrs. old, the family moved to

eastern Colorado, Kelly attended school
only irregularly
Biography of George Kelly
 After high school, he spent 3 years at Friends University in Wichita and 1

year at Park College in Parkville, Missouri. Both schools had religious
affiliations – explain why many of is later writings are with biblical
references
 His undergraduate degree was in physics and mathematics, and a member of
debate team
 concerned with social problems – led him to University of Kansas, where he
received a master’s degree with a major in educational sociology and a
minor in labor relations and sociology.
After returning from Edinburgh, he began to

pursue a career in psychology.
 Enrolled at the State University of Iowa and, in 1931
completed a PhD with a dissertation on common
factors in speech and reading disabilities.
 Returned to Kansas, beginning his academic career in 1931 at Fort Hays State College by
teaching physiological psychology
 Decided to pursue more humanitarian than physiological psychology – become
psychotherapist, counseling college and high school students in the Hays community
 Kelly pointed out that his decision was not dictated by circumstances but
rather by his interpretation of events – his own construction of reality
altered his life course.
 Before he could complete revisions of his theory of personal constructs,
he died on March 6, 1967
Kelly’s Philosophical Position
Person as Scientist
Scientist as Person
Constructive Alternativism
Person
as Scientist
 When you decide what food

to eat for lunch, what
television show 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.
Scientist as
Person
 If people can be seen as a

scientist, then scientist can
also be seen as people.
Constructive Alternativism
 Kelly began with the assumptions that the universe really exists and that It
functions as an integral unit, with all its parts interacting precisely with each
other. Moreover the universe is constantly changing, so something is
happening all the time.
 Added to these basic assumptions is the notion that people’s thoughts really
exist and that people strive to make sense out of their continuously changing
world.
Personal Constructs
Basic Postulate:
-“ a person’s processes are
psychologically channelized by the
ways in which [that person]
anticipates events” (Kelly, 1955,
p. 46)
Supporting Corollaries
 To elaborate his theory of personal constructs, Kelly proposed 11 supporting

corollaries, all of which can be inferred from his basic postulate.
Construction Corollary
 A person anticipates events by construing their replications

 This corollary points out that people are forward looking ; their behavior is
forged by their anticipation of future events.
Individuality Corollary
 Persons differ from each other in their construction of events.

 Because people have different reservoirs of experiences, they construe the
same event in different ways. Thus, no two people put an experience
together in exactly the same way. Both the substance and the form of their
constructs are different.
Organization Corollary
 emphasizes relationships among constructs and states that people

“characteristically evolve, for [their] convenience in anticipating events, a
construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs”
 The organization corollary also assumes an ordinal relationship of constructs
so that one construct may be subsumed under another.
Dichotomy of Constructs
 The dichotomy corollary states that “a person’s construction system is

composed of a finite number of dichotomous constructs”
 Kelly insisted that a construct is an either-or proposition—black or white, with
no shades of gray. In nature, things may not be either-or, but natural events
have no meanings other than those attributed to them by an individual’s
personal construct system.
 In order to form a construct, people must be able to see similarities between
events, but they must also contrast those events with their opposite pole.
Kelly (1955) stated it this way: “In its minimum context a construct is a way
in which at least two elements are similar and contrast with a third”
Choice Corollary
 People choose for themselves that alternative in a dichotomized construct

through which they anticipate the greater possibility for extension and
definition of future constructs.
 This corollary assumes much of what is stated in Kelly’s basic postulate and in
the preceding corollaries. People make choices on the basis of how they
anticipate events, and those choices are between dichotomous alternatives.
Range Corollary
 Kelly’s range corollary assumes that personal constructs are finite and not
relevant to everything. “A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a
finite range of events only” (Kelly, 1955, p. 68). In other words, a construct
is limited to a particular range of convenience.
Experience Corollary
 she] successively construes the replications of events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 72).

Kelly used the word “successively” to point out that we pay attention to only
one thing at a time. “The events of one’s construing march single file along
the path of time”
Modulation Corollary.
 The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability

of the constructs within whose range of convenience the variants lie”
 This corollary follows from and expands the experience corollary. It assumes
that the extent to which people revise their constructs is related to the
degree of permeability of their existing constructs.
fragmentation corollary
 A person may successively employ a variety of constructive subsystems which

are inferentially incompatible with each other”
Commonality Corollary
 To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is

similar to that employed by another, [that person’s] processes are
psychologically similar to those of the other person”
 Two people need not experience the same event or even similar events for
their processes to be psychologically similar; they must merely construe their
experiences in a similar fashion.
sociality corollary
 To the extent that people accurately construe the belief system of others,
they may play a role in a social process involving those other people.
 People do not communicate with one another simply on the basis of common
experiences or even similar constructions; they communicate because they
construe the constructions of one another.
Applications of Personal
Construct Theory
Abnormal development
 psychologically healthy people validate their personal constructs against
their experiences with the real world.
 Psychologically unhealthy people, like everyone else, possess a complex

construction system.
Fear
 more specific and incidental than threat
 A man may drive his car dangerously as the result of anger or exuberance.
These impulses become threatening when the man realizes that he may run
over a child or be arrested for reckless driving and end up as a criminal. In
this case, a comprehensive portion of his personal constructs is threatened.
However, if he is suddenly confronted with the probability of crashing his car,
he will experience fear.
Threat
 defined threat as “the awareness of imminent comprehensive change in one’s

core structures”
 One can be threatened by either people or events, and sometimes the two
cannot be separated.
For example
 during psychotherapy, clients often feel threat from the prospect of change,
even change for the better. If they see a therapist as a possible instigator of
change, they will view that therapist as a threat. Clients frequently resist
change and construe their therapist’s behavior in a negative fashion.
Anxiety
 defined anxiety as “the recognition that the events with which one is confronted lie outside
the range of convenience of one’s construct system” (p. 495). People are likely to feel anxious
when they are experiencing a new event.
For example
 when Arlene, the engineering student, was bargaining with the used-car dealer, she was not
sure what to do or say. She had never before negotiated over such a large amount of money, and
therefore this experience was outside the range of her convenience. As a consequence, she felt
anxiety, but it was a normal level of anxiety and did not result in incapacitation.
Guilt
 “the sense of having lost one’s core role structure”

 For example, a person with an underdeveloped conscience has little or no
integral sense of self and a weak or nonexistent core role structure. Such a
person has no stable guidelines to violate and hence will feel little or no guilt
even for depraved and shameful behavior
Psychotherapy
 As a technique for altering the clients’ constructs, Kelly used a procedure

called 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.
The Rep Test
Another procedure used by Kelly, both inside and outside therapy, was the Role Construct
Repertory (Rep) test. The purpose of the Rep test is to discover ways in which people construe
significant people in their lives.
 With the Rep test, a person is given a Role Title list and asked to designate people who fit the
role titles by writing their names on a card. For example, for “a teacher you liked,” the person
must supply a particular name. The number of role titles can vary, but Kelly (1955) listed 24 on
one version (see Table 18.1). Next, the person is given three names from the list and asked to
judge which two people are alike and yet different from the third. Recall that a construct
requires both a similarity and a contrast, so three is the minimum number for any construct.
Research 1
Title: ENGAGING HOST SOCIETY YOUTH IN

EXPLORING HOW THEY CONSTRUE THE
INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE
RESETTLEMENT OF SYRIAN REFUGEES (2017)
Authors: Nadia Naffi, Ann-Louise Davidson
 Participants: 42 participants between 16 and 24 years-old from a variety
of North American and European countries affected by the Syrian refugee influx
Research 1
 Instrument:
 In this section, we will present our adaptations of four interview techniques
that stem from PCP: Kelly’s self-characterization technique, Procter’s
Perceiver Element Grid, Kelly’s Rep-ertory Grid Test and Hinkle’s laddering
tech-nique. These adaptations helped us to explore how youth from host
societies construed online interactions about the Syrian refugee crisis and
how they anticipated the role played by these in-teractions in the integration
and inclusion of Syr-ian refugees in host countries.
Research 1
Results: In retrospect, our pilot test suggests that this type of interview
protocol, based on PCP principles, is a powerful learning tool that can allow
youth from host societies to engage in critical thinking and to learn to live with
the one they perceive as being “the other”. More studies are necessary to
identify the base of knowledge that we can extract from such methodologies and
to verify the pedagogical soundness of such methodologies for learning about
“the other”.
Research 2
 Title: Applications
of Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory to
Vocational Guidance
Authors: Anna Paszkowska-Rogacz, Zofia Kabzińska (2012)
Participants: Students of various universities in Lodz, Poland.
Instrument: Two diagnostic methods were used: the
Vocational Preference Questionnaire Job-6 and a Rep Test
focused on job-related constructs. The authors used multi-
dimensional scaling to analyze and visualize the results.
Research 2
 Results: The results show that the application of Kelly’s Personal Construct
Theory to vocational guidance is a valuable approach, which affords results
complementary to those obtained with questionnaire-based methods.

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PERSONAL

CONSTRUCTS GEORGE KELLY

Biography of Only child of Elfleda M. Kelly (former

When 4 yrs. old, the family moved to

 After high school, he spent 3 years at Friends University in Wichita and 1

After returning from Edinburgh, he began to

 When you decide what food

 If people can be seen as a

 To elaborate his theory of personal constructs, Kelly proposed 11 supporting

 A person anticipates events by construing their replications

 Persons differ from each other in their construction of events.

 emphasizes relationships among constructs and states that people

 The dichotomy corollary states that “a person’s construction system is

 People choose for themselves that alternative in a dichotomized construct

 she] successively construes the replications of events” (Kelly, 1955, p. 72).

 The variation in a person’s construction system is limited by the permeability

 A person may successively employ a variety of constructive subsystems which

 To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is

 Psychologically unhealthy people, like everyone else, possess a complex

 defined threat as “the awareness of imminent comprehensive change in one’s

 “the sense of having lost one’s core role structure”

 As a technique for altering the clients’ constructs, Kelly used a procedure

Title: ENGAGING HOST SOCIETY YOUTH IN

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