Theories_of_Personality 7th Ed Feist

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

V. Learning Theories 18. Kelly: Psychology of

Personal Constructs

© The McGraw−Hill^579

Companies, 2009

Key Terms and Concepts

• Basic to Kelly’s theory is the idea of constructive alternativism,or the
  notion that our present interpretations are subject to change.


• Kelly’s basic postulateassumes that all psychological processes are
  directed by the ways in which we anticipate events. Eleven corollaries
  derive from and elaborate this one fundamental postulate.


• The construction corollaryassumes that people anticipate future events
  according to their interpretations of recurrent themes.


• The individuality corollarystates that people have different experiences
  and therefore construe events in different ways.


• The organization corollaryholds that people organize their personal
  constructs in a hierarchical system, with some constructs in superordinate
  positions and others subordinate to them. This organization allows people
  to minimize incompatible constructs.


• Kelly’s dichotomy corollarypresumes that all personal constructs are
  dichotomous; that is, people construe events in an either-or manner.


• His choice corollarystates that people choose the alternative in a
  dichotomized construct that they see as extending their range of future
  choices.


• The range corollaryassumes that constructs are limited to a particular
  range of convenience; that is, they are not relevant to all situations.


• The experience corollaryholds that people continually revise their
  personal constructs as the result of experience.


• The modulation corollarymaintains that some new experiences do not
  lead to a revision of personal constructs because they are too concrete or
  impermeable.


• The fragmentation corollaryrecognizes that people’s behavior is
  sometimes inconsistent because their construct system can readily admit
  incompatible elements.


• Kelly’s commonality corollarystates that, to the extent that we have had
  experiences similar to other people’s experiences, our personal constructs
  tend to be similar to the construction systems of those people.


• The sociality corollarystates that people are able to communicate with
  other people because they can construe other people’s constructions. Not
  only do people observe the behavior of another person but they also
  interpret what that behavior means to that person.


• Kelly’s fixed-role therapy calls for clients to act out predetermined roles
  continuously until their peripheral and core roles change as significant
  others begin reacting differently to them.


• The purpose of Kelly’s Rep testis to discover ways in which people
  construe important people in their lives.

Chapter 18 Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs 573