George Kelly Part 1. The 11 Corollary

What are Collaries in Kelly’s Theory?

They lay out the psychological processes of a person and help explain the way a person understands, predicts, or anticipates events

Construction Corollary

A person anticipates new events by creating replications of similar, previous ones

Individuality Corollary

Persons differ from each other in their constructions of events

Kelly argued that the subjective interpretation of the event is more important that what actually happened

Ex. Two students get the same critical feedback from a professor. One interprets it as helpful guidance; the other interprets it as personal rejection.

Organization Corollary

People will impose their own meaning onto their constructs, and will organise them into a fashion that typically involves a hierarchy

Ex. A person might organise their system so that success includes being disciplined, smart, and responsible. When they meet someone they see as successful, they automatically expect those subordinate qualities too.

Dichotomous Corollary

A person’s construction system is composed of a finite number of dichotomous construct

Ex. Honest vs. dishonest

Choice Corollary

A person chooses the alternative in a dichotomised construct that he anticipates will most affirm his system; you pick the construct that will be the most useful to you

Ex. A person may stay in a boring but familiar job because it feels predictable and safe, rather than take a new job that might be more satisfying but is less certain

Range Corollary

A construct is only useful for a certain number of events; all of our constructs only apply in specific scenarios.

Experience Corollary

When we are exposed to new experiences, our constructs can either stay the same, confirm our hypothesis, or change

The experience cycle

Modulation Corollary

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

Ex. Some categories are more rigid than other. Ex. What is intelligent vs intelligent may change fairly easily, but something more moral/political, such as what’s honest vs dishonest may be super hard to change

Fragmentation Corollary

A person may use constructs which are inconsistent with one another

Ex. A man who first sees a woman as a friend in class because of shared interests, but later sees her as an enemy at a political rally because her views oppose his.

Commonality Corollary

The extent that one person employs a construction of experience which is similar to that employed by another

Ex. Everyone in the winning political party will be happy with the outcome, regardless of definitions.

Sociality Corollary

To relate effectively to other people, we must understand how they construe events

A student who knows a professor values independence will frame a question differently than with a professor who values collaboration