Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 18. Kelly: Psychology of
Personal Constructs© The McGraw−Hill^575
Companies, 2009As predicted, smokers identified more with their descriptions of smoker per-
sonalities, and vice versa for nonsmokers. Among the more frequent traits attributed
to smokers were “laid back,” “outgoing,” “lazy,” and “loud,” whereas the more fre-
quent traits for nonsmokers were “quiet,” “studious,” “friendly,” and “athletic.” In-
terestingly, however, all participants endorsed and valued nonsmoker traits more
highly than smoker traits on all four self-concept measures. That is, both the smokers
and nonsmokers identified with and valued more highly the traits of nonsmokers
(such as quiet, studious, etc.) than of smokers. The prediction that smokers would
have lower self-esteem (greater real versus ideal self disparity) did not hold. Because
this self-esteem finding came out of the literature with adolescent smokers, it may
not hold with young adult smokers. A main conclusion drawn by Weiss, Watson, and
Mcguire is that the Rep test is not only a useful tool for assessing self-concept, but
it is perhaps a more valid and more individualized tool than standard questionnaire
inventories.
Personal Constructs and the Big Five
Researchers have begun investigating the connections between Kelly’s personal con-
structs and the Big Five traits (Chapter 14). The Big Five traits (neuroticism, extra-
version, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) have received a great deal
of attention in modern personality research. Kelly’s personal constructs have a mod-
erate amount of attention, but not to the same extent as the Big Five model. Not all
personality psychologists agree with this disproportionate allocation of research and
the value of each approach. James Grice and colleagues, for example, have directly
compared Kelly’s personal construct theory with the Big Five (Grice, 2004; Grice,
Jackson, & McDaniel, 2006).
These two approaches to personality are quite different, and it is worth high-
lighting the importance of this comparison. The list of the Big Five traits was created
by essentially boiling down all the thousands of ways people describe one another
into a shorter more manageable list that captured the most common themes. It seeks
to describe everyone along the same continuum. Kelly’s repertory grid approach,
conversely, seeks to capture the uniqueness of individuals. Uniqueness is hard to
capture in the Big Five because everybody is described along just five dimensions,
but in the repertory grid the rater essentially creates his or her own continuum on
which to describe people. For example, as discussed earlier in this chapter, the first
continuum described on the sample repertory grid in Figure 18.2 is religiosity, so
clearly for the person completing the repertory grid religiosity is an important de-
scriptor, but it is not a descriptor that is directly captured by many measures of the
Big Five.
The research by James Grice (Grice, 2004; Grice et al., 2006) essentially
sought to determine just how good the repertory grid approach was at capturing
uniqueness compared to the Big Five. To do this, Grice (2004) had participants com-
plete a modified version of Kelly’s repertory grid and a standard self-report measure
of the Big Five. Participants rated both themselves and people they knew using the
repertory grid and the Big Five measure. Using complex statistical procedures, the
researchers were able to measure the amount of overlap in participants’ repertory
grid ratings and Big Five scores.
Chapter 18 Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs 569