Kelly: Psychology of

Personal Constructs
Prepared by: Jay - ar D. Baybay
• Variously called Cognitive Theory, Behavioral Theory,
Existential Theory, and Phenomenological Theory.
• Metatheory
• Constructs - As per Kelly, all individuals anticipate
events by the meanings and interpretations they
place on those
• Constructions – people’s behavior is shaped by
their gradually expanding interpretation of the
world.
• Constructive Alternativism – people are not
victims of circumstances, because alternative
constructions are always available.
• George Alexander Kelly was born April 28, 1905 ,on
farm near Perth, Kansas
• Only child of Elfleda M. Kelly (former school
teacher) and Theodore V. Kelly (an ordained
Presbyterian minister and became a Kansas farmer)
• When 4 yrs. old, the family moved to eastern
Colorado, Kelly attended school only irregularly
• His family went back to Kansas because of lack of
water drove – he attended four different high
schools in 4 years
• 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.
• He moved to several times and held a variety of
positions:
– Minneapolis, where he taught soapbox oratory at a
special college for labor organizers, conducted
classes in speech for the American Bankers
Association and he taught government to an
Americanization class for prospective citizens.
• He moved to several times and held a variety of
positions:
– Sheldon, Iowa, where he taught at junior college
and coached drama – He met his future wife,
Gladys Thompson (English teacher at the same
school)
– Minnesota, where he taught summer session at the
University of Minnesota
• He moved to several times and held a variety of
positions:
– Wichita, to work for a few months as
aeronautical engineer
– Scotland, as an exchange student, receiving
advanced professional degree in education at
University of Edinburgh
• Dabbled academically in education, sociology,
economics, labor relations, biometrics,
speech pathology, and anthropology, and
majored in psychology for a grand total of
nine months.
• 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.
• Obtained legislative support for a program
of traveling psychological clinics
• During World War II, he joined the Navy as
an aviation psychologist
• In 1995, he published his most important
work – The Psychology of Personal
Constructs
• He spent several summers as a visiting professor
• During those postwar years, he became a major
force in clinical psychology in the United States
• He was the president of both the Clinical and the
Consulting Divisions of the American Psychological
Associations and was also a charter member and
later president of the American Board of Examiners
in Professional Psychology
• Before he could complete revisions of
his theory of personal constructs, he
died on March 6, 1967
• Person as Scientist
• Scientist as Person
• Constructive Alternativism
Kelly’s Philosophical Position

Person as Scientist
Kelly’s Philosophical Position

Scientist as Person
Kelly’s Philosophical Position

Constructive Alternativism
• Basic Postulate:
- “aperson’s processes are psychologically
channelized by the ways in which [that
person] anticipates events” (Kelly, 1955,
p. 46)
a psychology
of the human
quest
MAUla
r
• 11 Supporting Corollaries:
1. Similarities Among Events
2. Differences Among People
3. Relationships Among Constructs
4. Dichotomy of Constructs
5. Choice Between Dichotomies
• 11 Supporting Corollaries:
6. Range of Convenience
7. Experience and Learning
8. Adaptation to Experience
9. Incompatible Constructs
10. Similarities Among People
11. Social Processes
1. Similarities among events

“Construction corollary”
A person anticipates
events by constructing
replications

Forward looking
-behavior is forged by the
MAUla
anticipation r
2. Differences among people

“Individuality corollary”
A person differs from others in
the construction of events

People in the same event react in a

different manner that gives a different form
MAUla
r
3. Relationship among constructs
“Organization corollary”
A person characteristically evolves
construction system embracing
ordinal relationship between
constructs.
Person organizes similar events in a manner that
minimizes incompatibility and inconsistencies.
MAUla
r
4. Dichotomy of constructs

“Dichotomy corollary”
A person construction system is
composed of a finite number of
dichotomous constructs.

Either-or preposition i.e good or bad

MAUla
r
5. Choice between dichotomous

“Choice corollary”
A person chooses for himself that in a
dichotomized construct through which they
anticipate the greater possibility for extension
and definition of future constructs.

anticipation does have to do with person’s own

processes MAUla
r
6. Range of convenience

“Range corollary”
A construct is convenient for the
anticipation of a finite range of
events only.
Excluding – taking out those irrelevant
MAUla
r
7. Experience and Learning
“Experience corollary”
A person’s construction system varies
as he successively construes the
replications of events.

restructuring of events allows us to learn

from our experiences
MAUla
r
8. Adaption to experience
“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.
capacity to be used as a referent and to accept new
subordinate constructions within its range of
convenience MAUla
r
9. Incompatible constructs
“Fragmentation corollary”
A person may successively employ a
variety of constructive subsystems which
are inferentially incompatible with each
other.
behaviors often seem inconsistent but there is
underlying stability in most of our actions.
MAUla
r
10. Similarities among people
“Commonality corollary”
To the extent that one person employs
a construction of experience which is
similar others

no two people ever interpret experiences

exactly the same
MAUla
r
11. Social Process
“Sociality corollary”
To the extent that people accurately construe
the belief system of others, he may play a role
in a social process involving those other people.

Trying to understand how other people think and

predict what they will do and will modify our
behavior accordingly MAUla
r
• Abnormal Development
- Threat
- Fear
- Anxiety
- Guilt
Abnormal development Threat
- psychologically healthy people validate their - “the awareness of imminent
personal constructs against their experiences with
the real world. comprehensive change in one’s core
structures”
- Psychologically unhealthy people, like everyone else,
possess a complex construction system.
- One can be threatened by either people or events, and
sometimes the two cannot be separated

Fear Anxiety
- more specific and incidental than threat - “the recognition that the events with which one is
confronted lie outside the range of convenience of one’s
construct system

- People are likely to feel anxious when they are

experiencing a new event.
Guilt Psychotherapy
“the sense of having lost one’s core role structure”

- fixed-role therapy. - helping clients change their

outlook on life by acting out a predetermined role.

The Rep Test 1.

2.
A teacher you liked.
A teacher you disliked.
- to discover ways in which 3. The most intelligent person whom you know
people construe significant people in their lives. personally.
Psychotherapy
• Fixed-role therapy – technique for
altering the clients’ consteucts
The Rep Test
• Role Construct Repertory (Rep) test –
discover ways in which people
construe significant people in their
lives
• Gender as Personal Construct
• Smoking and Self-Concept
• Personal Constructs and
the Big Five
• His professional career was spent working with
relatively normal, intelligent college students
• He made no attempt to elucidate early childhood
experiences or maturity and old age.
• Fails to account for developmental and cultural
influences on personality
• Based on six criteria of a useful theory:
1. This theory receives a moderate to strong rating on
the amount of research it has generated. The Rep
test and the repertory grid have generated sizable
number of studies.
2. Low on falsifiability
• Based on six criteria of a useful theory:
3. Rated low in terms of organization of knowledge
4. Low as a guide to action
5. Internally consistent, rated high on the set of
operationally defined terms
• Optimistic
• Free Choice – Elaborative Choice
• Teleological
• Conscious Processes
• Social Influences
• Uniqueness of Personality
• Feist, J and Feist, G. J. (2018). Theories of Personality.
USA: Mc Graw-Hill Higher Education
• Feist, J and Feist, G. J. (2010). Theories of Personality.
USA: Mc Graw-Hill Higher Education