Chapter 19 Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs 587the degree to which people internalize cultural views of gender. Moreover,
Harper and Schoeman hypothesized that those who do use gender to organize
their social perceptions will do so in a more stereotypic fashion than those who do
not regularly use gender to organize social perceptions. “Gender thus becomes a
primary means of resolving social ambiguity” (Harper & Schoeman, 2003, p. 518).
Lastly, these authors predicted that the less information someone has about a person,
the more likely he or she will use stereotypic gender schemas to evaluate and per-
ceive that person. In other words, with well-known individuals, we should expect
more complex and less stereotypic attitudes.
In the Harper and Schoeman study, participants were mostly female students
from a university in South Africa. The version of the Rep test used by the researchers
required that participants say whether their person portraits were descriptive of women,
of men, of neither, or of both women and men. In the first stage of the Rep test
procedure, participants wrote down names of people who best represented one of 15
different role titles, such as “liked lecturer/teacher,” a person with whom they worked,
and “the most successful person known personally.” In the second stage of the pro-
cedure, people who fit each role title were compared to each other in groups of three,
with two role titles being compared to a third. Finally, in the third stage of the pro-
cedure, participants rated role titles on whether they were more descriptive of women
than of men, men than of women, or neither/both. Gendered ratings were scored 1
and nongendered ratings (either of both or neither) were scored 0, with possible scores
ranging from 0 to 20. In addition to the Rep test, participants completed a question-
naire concerning gender stereotyping and whether they applied gender stereotypes to
strangers in social situations and a questionnaire on sexist gender attitudes.
Results showed that gender was a basic category for many participants, with
no one scoring 0, and the mean was slightly less than 10 out of 20. Additionally,
those who used gender most as a way of categorizing people on the Rep also were
more likely to apply gender stereotypes to strangers in social situations. Harper
and Schoeman (2003) concluded that “participants who frequently engaged in gen-
der stereotyping also organized their person schemas in terms of gender. This
suggests that participants who use gender stereotypes in perceiving strangers also
tend to circumscribe their perceptions of family members and acquaintances along
gendered lines” (p. 523).
Applying Personal Construct Theory to Intra-Personal
Questions of Identity
Kelly’s original Rep test was designed to assess how individuals construe signifi-
cant people in their lives. In this way, it serves as a test of interpersonal com-
parisons that reveal meaningful personal constructs, like gender in the previous
section. Recently, however, Bonnie Moradi and her colleagues have begun to use
the Rep test in an exciting new way to assess how individuals identify or disiden-
tify with elements of themselves. That is, this research uses the Rep test to exam-
ine intra-personal questions of identity within individuals. Using personal constructs
theory and the Rep test in this unusual way, Moradi and her colleagues have
examined internalized homophobia among gay and lesbian participants (2009) and
also explored the predictors of college students’ identification as feminists (2012).