KELLY’S COGNITIVE THEORY OF PERSONALITY THEORY:Biographical Sketch

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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 24

KELLY'S COGNITIVE THEORY OF PERSONALITY THEORY

1-Kelly's theory is phenomenological it focuses on the internal frame of reference of the individual.

2-It is cognitive because it studies mental events.

3-It is existential because it emphasized the future and individual's freedom to choose,

4- Humanistic since it focuses on creative powers and optimistic about people's ability to solve their

problems.

For Kelly an individual's behavior and thoughts are guided by a set of personal constructs that are used in

predicting future events.

A person's processes (behavior and thinking) are channelized by ways that he anticipates reality.

Examples of constructs include "good versus bad," "friendly versus hostile." These constructs are the ones

which many people use to construe events in their daily lives.

Core concepts of George Kelly's Cognitive Theory of Personality

1- The Psychology of Personal Construct

2- Biographical Sketch

3- Cornerstones of Cognitive Theory

i- Constructive Alternativism

ii- People as Scientists

4-Personal Construct Theory

i- Constructs: Templets for Reality

ii- Formal Properties of Constructs

iii- Types of Constructs

5- Personality: The Personologist's Construct?

6- Motivation: Who Needs It?

7- A postulate and some corollaries

8- Channelizing Processes

9- Individuality and Organization

10- To Construe or Not to Construe: That Is the Question

11- C-P-C Cycle

12- Change in a Construct System

13- Social Relationships and Personal Constructs

14- Role Construct Repertory Test: Assessing Personal Constructs

15- Application:

1-Emotional States Anxiety , Guilt, Hostility.

2-Psychological Disorders

16- Psychological Health and Disorder

17- Fixed-Role Therapy

18- Summary

Personality Psychology PSY 405

19- Evaluation

George Kelly: A Cognitive Theory of Personality

Kelly's theory is phenomenological it focuses on the internal frame of reference of the individual. It is

cognitive because it studies mental events. It is existential because it emphasized the future and individual's

freedom to choose, and humanistic since it focuses on creative powers and optimistic about people's ability

to solve their problems.

For Kelly an individual's behavior and thoughts are guided by a set of personal constructs that are used in

predicting future events.

A person's processes (behavior and thinking) are channelized by ways that he anticipates reality.

1-The Psychology of Personal Construct

It is a fundamental fact of life that human beings are thinking animals. Indeed, man's intellectual processes

are so self-evident that all personality theories in some way acknowledge their effects on behavior. George

Kelly, a practicing clinical psychologist, was the first personologist to emphasize the cognitive or knowing

aspects of human existence as the dominant feature of personality. According to his theoretical system, the

Psychology of Personal Constructs, a person is basically a scientist, striving to understand, interpret,

anticipate, and control the personal world of experience for the purpose of dealing effectively with it. This

view of human behavior as scientist-like is the hallmark of Kelly's theory:

Mankind, whose progress in search of prediction and control of surrounding events stands out so clearly in

the light of the centuries, comprises the men we see around us every day. The aspirations of the scientist are

essentially the aspirations of all men (Kelly, 1955, p. 43).

Kelly admonished his fellow psychologists not to proceed as if their subjects were passive "reactors" to

external stimuli. He reminded them that their subjects also behave like scientists, inferring on the basis of

the past and hypothesizing about the future. His own thinking, highly original and different from the

dominant forms of psychological thought prevalent in America in his day, has greatly contributed to recent

major innovations in cognitive personality theory.

2- Biographical Sketch

George Alexander Kelly was born in Perth, Kansas, on April 28, 1905, the only child of farm parents. His

father was a Presbyterian minister who turned to farming because of ill health. Kelly's early education was

limited to a one-room country school. His parents later sent him to Wichita, Kansas, where in the course of

four years he attended four different high schools. Kelly's parents were religiously devout, hardworking,

and firmly opposed to evils such as drinking, card playing, and dancing. Kelly's family was imbued with

traditional Midwestern values and aspirations, and Kelly himself was afforded considerable attention as an

only child.

Kelly's career as an academic psychologist began at Fort Hays Kansas State College. There he rose to

become an associate professor of psychology in 1943. During his twelve-year period he developed a

program of traveling psychological clinics that allowed both him and his students opportunities to

implement new approaches to behavior problems encountered in the state's school system. This experience

also stimulated numerous ideas that were later incorporated into his formulations of personality and

psychotherapy. In particular, it was during this period that Kelly abandoned the Freudian approach to

understanding personality. His clinical experiences taught him that people in the Midwest were more

victimized by prolonged drought, dust storms, and economic setbacks than by libidinal forces.

During World War II, as a naval aviation psychologist, Kelly headed a training program for local civilian

pilots. His interest in aviation continued at the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery of the Navy in Washington,

D.C., where he remained in the Aviation Branch until 1945. That year he was appointed associate professor

at the University of Maryland.

In addition to his

distinguished career as a teacher, scientist, and theorist, Kelly held many positions of

leadership among

American psychologists. He served as president of both the Clinical and Counseling

Divisions of the

American Psychological Association. He was also instrumental in formulating the

American Board

of Examiners in Professional Psychology, an organization devoted to the further

Personality Psychology PSY 405

upgrading of professional psychologists, and served as its president from 1951 through 1953. He received

invitations to teach and lecture at universities throughout the world. During the concluding years of his life,

Kelly contributed much of his time to international affairs. For example, financed by a grant from the

Human Ecology Fund, he and his wife traveled around the world during 1960-1961 applying his personal

construct theory (to be discussed shortly) to the resolution of international problems.

3- Cornorstones of Cognitive Theory

The central theme of this volume is that any personality theory necessarily involves certain philosophical

assumptions about human nature. That is, the way a personologist chooses to view his or her subject matter,

the human organism, will largely determine his or her model of the person. Unlike most personologists,

George Kelly explicitly acknowledged that all conceptions of human nature, including his own, are

founded on basic assumptions. Kelly developed his personal constructs theory on the basis of a single

philosophical assumption-constructive constructive alternativism.

i-Constructive Alternativism

Kelly's major premise was that all humans act like scientists in that way they attempt to reduce uncertainty

by developing theories (construct system) which allow them to anticipate future events accurately.

Individuals interpret, explain, or predict, the events in their lives by utilizing his constructs. A construct is a

category of thought that describes how events are similar to each other and yet different from other events.

All individuals are free to choose, create whatever constructs they choose in their attempts to give meaning

to their experiences. This freedom to choose constructs is called constructive alternativism. So we are free

to choose constructs but once chosen or selected we are bound to them.

Now that people of all ages are exploring alternative life-styles and ways of under standing things, George

Kelly's vintage-l955 theory appears to have been curiously ahead of its time. Kelly's underlying

philosophy, constructive alternativism, furnishes a dazzling array of options for people seeking, alternatives

to the commonplace. In fact, the philosophy practically demands that people do so.

As a doctrine, constructive alternativism asserts that all present interpretations of the universe are subject to

revision or replacement. Nothing is sacred. There are no politics, religions, economic principles, social

mores, or even college administrative policies that are absolutely and unalterably "right." All would be

changed if people simply saw things differently. Kelly argues that there is no such thing as an interpretation

free, view of the world. A person's perception of reality is always subject to interpretation.

ii- People as Scientists

Kelly's major premise was that all humans act like scientists in that way they attempt to reduce uncertainty

by developing theories (construct system) which allow them to anticipate future events accurately.

Individuals interpret, explain, or predict, the events in their lives by utilizing his constructs.

Kelly's theory is a contemporary cognitive approach to the study of personality, one which emphasizes the

manner in which individuals perceive and interpret people and things in their environments. Construct

theory thus focuses on the processes that enable people to understand the psychological terrain of their

lives. From this cognitive perspective, Kelly proposed a model of personality based on the analogy of a

person as a scientist. Specifically, he theorized that, like the scientist who studies the human subject also

generates working hypotheses about reality with which she or he tries to anticipate and control the events of

life.

Kelly did not propose that every person is literally a scientist who attends to some limited aspect of the

world and employs sophisticated methods to gather and assess data. That analogy would have been foreign

to his outlook. But he did suggest that all persons are scientists in that they formulate hypotheses and

follow the same psychological processes to validate or invalidate them as those involved in a scientific

enterprise (Kelly, 1955). Thus, the basic premise underlying personal construct theory is that science

constitutes a refinement of the aims and procedures by which each of us works out a way of life. The aims

of science are to predict, to modify, and to understand events (i.e., the scientist's main goal is to reduce

uncertainty). Not only the scientist, every person shares these same aims. We are all motivated to anticipate

the future and make plans based on expected outcomes.

Personality Psychology PSY 405

4-Personal Construct Theory

The heart of Kelly's cognitive theory lies in the manner in which individuals perceive and interpret people

and things in their environments. Labeling his approach personal construct theory, Kelly focused on the

psychological processes which enable the person to order and understand the events of his or her life.

i-Constructs: Templets for Reality

A construct is a category of thought that describes how events are similar to each other and yet different

from other events. All individuals are free to choose, create whatever constructs they choose in their

attempts to give meaning to their experiences. This freedom to choose constructs is called constructive

alternativism. So we are free to choose constructs but once chosen or selected we are bound to them.

Scientists formulate theoretical constructs to describe and explain the events with which they are

concerned. In Kelly's personological system, the key theoretical construct is the term Construct itself:

Man looks at his world through transparent patterns or templets which he creates and then attempts to fit

over the realities of which the world is composed. The fit is not always very good. Yet without such

patterns the world appears to be such an undifferentiated homogeneity that man is unable to make any

sense out of it (Kelly, 1955, pp. 8-9).

It is these "transparent patterns or templets" which Kelly designated personal constructs. Stated otherwise,

a construct is a category of thought by which the individual construes, or interprets, his or her personal

world of experience. It represents a consistent way for the person to make sense of some aspect of reality in

terms of similarities and contrasts. Examples of personal constructs include "excitable versus calm,"

"refined versus vulgar," "intelligent versus stupid," "good versus bad," "religious versus nonreligious," and

"friendly versus hostile." These constructs are ones which many people use to construe events in their daily

lives.

ii-Formal Properties of Constructs

Kelly proposed that certain formal properties characterize all constructs. First, a construct resembles a

theory in that it encompasses a particular domain of events. This range of convenience consists of all events

for which a particular construct may be relevant or applicable- that is, a given construct has relevance for

some events but not for others. The construct dimension "scholarly versus not scholarly," for example, is

quite applicable to understanding a vast array of intellectual and scientific accomplishments but is hardly

appropriate for construing the relative merits of being married or single. Kelly noted that the predictive

efficiency of a construct is seriously jeopardized whenever it is generalized beyond the range of events for

which it was intended. Thus, all constructs have a limited range of convenience, though the scope of the

range may vary widely from construct to construct. The construct "good versus bad" has a wide range of

convenience since it applies to most situations requiring personal evaluation. In contrast, the construct

"virginity versus prostitution" is substantially narrower in scope.

iii-Types of Constructs

Kelly also suggested that personal constructs can be classified according `to the nature of the control they

implicitly exercise over their elements. A construct which freezes ("preempts") its elements for

membership exclusively in its own realm Kelly termed a preemptive construct. This is a type of pigeonhole

construct; what has been placed in one pigeonhole is excluded from any other. Preemptive construing may

be likened to the "nothing but" kind of thinking characteristic of a rigid person. Ethnic labels illustrate the

use of preemptive Constructs. For instance, if a person is identified as a Chicano, then she or he may be

thought of by some as nothing but a Chicano. Or, to a lesser degree, once a professor has been labeled as

"hard-nosed," some students may disregard the possibility of thinking of him or her in other ways, e.g., as a

person with tender feelings for his Or her children, artistic hobbies, or social reform pursuits. Preemptive

thought represents a kind of denial of the right of both others and ourselves to re-view reinterpret, and see

in a fresh light some part of the world around us (Bannister and Fransella, 1971).

5- Personality: The Personologist's Construct?

Kelly never offered an explicit definition of the term "personality." However, he discussed the concept in

general terms in one paper, stating that personality is "our abstraction of the activity of a person and our

Personality Psychology PSY 405

subsequent generalization of this abstraction to all matters of his relationship to other persons, known and

unkn0wn, as well as to anything else that may seem particularly valuable" (1961, pp. 220-221). Kelley thus

believed that personality is an abstraction made by personologists of the psychological processes they

observe in others. It is not a separate entity to be discovered by them. Furthermore, Kelly argued that

personality is by its very nature embedded in a person's interpersonal relationships. Meshing these two

ideas and adding one of our own, a more pointed definition of personality within Kelly's system is

possible; specifically, an individual's personality is nothing more or less than his or her construct system.

One uses constructs to interpret one's world of experience and to anticipate future events; indeed,

personality consists of the constructs one uses to anticipate the future. To understand another person

involves knowing something about the constructs he or she employs, the events subsumed under these

constructs, and the way in which they are organized in relation to one another to form a construct system.

In short, to know someone's personality is to know how she or he construes personal experience.

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