Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 18. Kelly: Psychology of
Personal Constructs(^578) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
572 Part V Learning Theories
present behavior, but the influence of past events is quite limited. Personality is
much more likely to be guided by our present anticipation of future events. Kelly’s
fundamental postulate—the one on which all corollaries and assumptions stand—is
that all human activity is directed by the way that we anticipate events (Kelly, 1955).
There can be no question, then, that Kelly’s theory is essentially teleological.
Kelly emphasized conscious processesmore than unconscious ones. However,
he did not stress conscious motivationbecause motivation plays no part in personal
construct theory. Kelly speaks of levels of cognitive awareness. High levels of
awareness refer to those psychological processes that are easily symbolized in
words and can be accurately expressed to other people. Low-level processes are in-
completely symbolized and are difficult or impossible to communicate.
Experiences can be at low levels of awareness for several reasons. First, some
constructs are preverbal because they were formed before a person acquired mean-
ingful language, and, hence, they are not capable of being symbolized even to one-
self. Second, some experiences are at a low level of awareness because a person
sees only similarities and fails to make meaningful contrasts. For example, a per-
son may construe all people as trustworthy. However, the implicit pole of untrust-
worthiness is denied. Because the person’s superordinate construction system is
rigid, he or she fails to adopt a realistic construct of trustworthy/untrustworthy and
tends to see the actions of others as completely trustworthy. Third, some subordi-
nate constructs may remain at a low level of awareness as superordinate constructs
are changing. For instance, even after a person realizes that not everyone is trust-
worthy, the person may be reluctant to construe one particular individual as being
untrustworthy. This hesitation means that a subordinate construct has not yet
caught up to a superordinate one. Finally, because some events may lie outside a
person’s range of convenience, certain experiences do not become part of that per-
son’s construct system. For example, such involuntary processes as heartbeat, blood
circulation, eye blink, and digestion are ordinarily outside one’s range of conve-
nience; and one is usually not aware of them.
On the issue of biological versus social influences,Kelly was inclined more to-
ward the social. His sociality corollary assumes that, to some extent, we are influ-
enced by others and in turn have some impact on them. When we accurately
construe the constructions of another person, we may play a role in a social process
involving that other person. Kelly assumed that our interpretation of the construc-
tion systems of important other people (such as parents, spouse, and friends) may
have some influence on our future constructions. Recall that, in fixed-role therapy,
clients adopt the identity of a fictitious person; and by trying out that role in var-
ious social settings, they may experience some change in their personal constructs.
However, the actions of others do not mold their behavior; rather, it is their inter-
pretation of events that changes their behavior.
On the final dimension for a conception of humanity—uniqueness versus sim-
ilarities—Kelly emphasized the uniqueness of personality. This emphasis, however,
was tempered by his commonality corollary, which assumes that people from the
same sociocultural background tend to have had some of the same kinds of expe-
rience and therefore construe events similarly. Nevertheless, Kelly held that our in-
dividual interpretations of events are crucial and that no two persons ever have pre-
cisely the same personal constructs.