Chapter 18: KELLY – PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY (COMPREHENSIVE NOTES)

Kelly’s model is often called a metatheory because it is a “theory about theories.”
Core claim: people anticipate future events through the meanings (personal constructs) they assign to past and present experience.
Emphasizes that reality exists but is apprehended through individual constructions; everyone’s construction is revisable (constructive alternativism).
Alternative labels (cognitive, behavioral, existential, phenomenological) each capture a partial truth; none fully define the theory.
Arlene-and-the-car vignette illustrates Kelly’s notion that everyday decision making follows the logic of scientific inquiry (observe → question → hypothesize → test → revise).

Born late April of the early twentieth century on a Kansas farm; only child to an ex-teacher mother and ex-minister father.
Schooling was irregular: multiple states, several high schools, frequent commuting, early boarding-school experience.
Undergraduate work spanned physics, mathematics, debate, and social concerns at two religiously affiliated colleges.
Master’s degree: educational sociology, backed by minors in labor relations and sociology.
Early career: taught soap-box oratory, speech, government; coached drama; short stint as aeronautical engineer; earned an education diploma in Scotland.
Doctorate completed at the State University of Iowa; dissertation on speech-reading disabilities.
Shift from physiological psychology to clinical work during the Dust Bowl/Depression; created itinerant psychological clinics across Kansas.
Naval aviation psychologist during the Second World War; post-war appointments at Maryland, Ohio State (clinic director), and Brandeis.
Pivotal publication: The Psychology of Personal Constructs (two volumes) in the mid-fifties; became a leading clinical figure, APA division president, charter member of ABPP.
Died in the late nineteen-sixties while revising his theory.

Individuals continually form hypotheses, test them, and revise personal theories to navigate life.

Scientists’ theories are personal constructions, equally open to reinterpretation; hence Kelly invited criticism of his own system.

Assumptions:
- The universe and people’s thoughts both exist and interact.
- Any event can be construed in multiple legitimate ways.
- Accumulating “facts” does not yield absolute truth; only shifting viewpoints.

Defined as transparent, often dichotomous templates we cast on reality to perceive likenesses and contrasts.
Require a triadic comparison: two similar elements contrasted with a third.
Vary in flexibility: permeable constructs admit new elements; concrete constructs resist change.
Hierarchically organized (superordinate ↔ subordinate) and inherently dichotomous.
Function to predict and control events; validation/falsification drives learning.

“A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which that person anticipates events.”
- processes = living, moving person
- channelized = guided through flexible pathways
- anticipation = present-based prediction of future outcomes

Construction – we anticipate by construing replications of events.
Individuality – people differ in their constructions.
Organization – constructs form ordered, often hierarchical systems.
Dichotomy – each construct has two mutually exclusive poles.
Choice – we select the pole that allows greater elaboration of our system.
Range – every construct applies only within a finite range of convenience.
Experience – construct systems evolve with successive construing of events.
Modulation – only permeable constructs allow experiential variation to alter the system.
Fragmentation – subsystems may be incompatible yet coexist.
Commonality – similar construction of experience yields psychological similarity among people.
Sociality – social interaction depends on construing and playing a role in others’ construction systems; introduces concepts of role and core role.

Disorder = persistence in using an invalidated construct.
Two main malfunctions:
1. Impermeable system → rigidity (e.g., abused child equating intimacy with danger; alcoholic denying addiction).
2. Overly permeable system → chaotic disorganization.
Four typical distress states:
- Threat: awareness of imminent change in core constructs.
- Fear: incidental, specific threat within the system.
- Anxiety: confronted with events outside one’s construct range.
- Guilt: loss or violation of one’s core role structure.

Goal: help clients revise constructs to improve predictive efficiency; client chooses goals.
Fixed-Role Therapy:
1. Therapist and client co-write a third-person role sketch containing new attitudes/behaviors.
2. Client enacts the role in daily life for weeks, testing it as a scientist tests a hypothesis.
3. Peripheral roles change first; deeper core roles follow.

Elicits a grid of personal constructs by comparing triads of significant people.
Steps: list role titles → supply names → make triadic comparisons → fill repertory grid.
Reveals idiosyncratic construct systems; can be repeated to measure therapeutic change.

Nearly six hundred empirical studies have employed Rep-based methods; contributions to social-cognition field.

Individuals differ in how centrally they encode gender.
Heavy gender-based construers show stronger stereotypic judgments, especially when little other information is available.

Idiographic Rep assessment showed smokers identify with smoker-trait constructs yet value nonsmoker traits more; real–ideal self disparity did not differ from nonsmokers.

Repertory grids capture about half the variance not explained by Big Five traits, highlighting unique attributes (e.g., body type, politics) that standard trait models omit.

Research stimulation: moderate-to-strong (especially via Rep test).
Falsifiability: low (concepts difficult to operationalize precisely for disconfirmation).
Organization of knowledge: limited (neglects motivation, development, culture).
Practical guidance: moderate for therapy, limited elsewhere.
Internal consistency: very high (elegant hierarchy of postulate + corollaries).
Parsimony: high despite verbose exposition; essentials boiled down to twelve propositions.

Optimistic: people can revise constructs and grow.
Freedom over determinism: elaborative choice within self-constructed channels.
Teleological more than causal: future anticipations, not past causes, direct behavior.
Conscious processes emphasized; unconscious acknowledged as low-level awareness or preverbal constructs.
Social factors valued: interaction hinges on construing others’ constructs.
Uniqueness over universality, tempered by commonality within cultures.

Constructive Alternativism – limitless ways to interpret events.
Personal Construct – dichotomous template for perceiving likeness/contrast.
Core Role – identity-defining role within a social context.
Range of Convenience – domain where a construct is useful.
Permeability – openness of a construct to new elements.
Fixed-Role Therapy – technique of experimentally enacting new roles.
Rep Test – idiographic measure of a person’s construct system.
Threat/Fear/Anxiety/Guilt – four primary emotions signaling construct instability.

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