George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs He was ahead of his time by describing human personality in a way similar to the constructivist models that have become popular in recent decades.
In this sense, Kelly’s work cannot be strictly framed within the cognitivist orientation, dominant at the time.
The psychologist and educator George Alexander Kelly (1905-1967) proposed his personality model in his two fundamental works: “Theory of Personal Constructs”, published in 1955, and “Theory of Personality”, from 1966.
Similar to factorial or trait models of personality (for example, that of Raymond B. Cattell or the Big Five of Costa and McCrae), Kelly proposes the use of qualifying adjectives to explain personality. However, in this case the important thing is the way each individual constructs and gives meaning to words in question.
Kelly conceives of the human being as a scientist who builds and modifies with experience his set of knowledge and hypotheses, or his life philosophy, in order to anticipate the results of his behavior and other events. This takes place through the formation of personal constructs, descriptive categories that we use to conceptualize events.
Personal constructs are dichotomous and bipolar ; This means that we understand personality and human experience in general from adjectives with opposite poles. Some examples of personal constructs would be the happy-sad, smart-dumb, and high-short dichotomies. Constructs are not always bipolar, as we will see later.
This author considered that his perspective can be considered “constructive alternativeism.” By this he meant that, when studying human personality and thought, it is advisable to focus on the relevance of an interpretation of reality to a specific person rather than on its degree of truthfulness in comparison with objective facts.
The eleven corollaries of this theory
The fundamental postulate of Kelly’s theory states that all An individual’s psychological processes depend on the way he anticipates events Eleven corollaries are derived from this core idea, which are very useful for understanding how personal constructs work and how personality develops according to this author.
1. Construction
Human beings use abstract thinking to build mental models of reality and with them predict events. So, From past events we anticipate those of the future
2. Individuality
Psychological differences between people depend on the degree of similarity between their construct systems, that is, between their respective ways of constructing reality mentally, since these are the ones that determine behavior and mental content.
3. Organization
Personal construct systems They are organized hierarchically based on their scope of application This allows us to avoid contradictions when predicting through different constructs, given that there will always be one that has a greater weight.
4. Dichotomy
As we have said, according to Kelly, people We conceptualize reality from opposite pairs of terms, like “hot-cold” or “nervous-calm”. When only one of the poles is known, we say that it is a submerged construct.
5. Choice
Extensive construct systems allow many events to be predicted but the risk of error is high; On the other hand, those that are more restrictive minimize the probability of failures but anticipate a smaller number of events. People with a more risky nature tend towards extension and those cautious towards the definition.
The corollary of scope or application refers to the fact that each construct is effective in predicting a certain range of phenomena. The concept “convenience center” is used to talk about the aspects for which the construct is particularly useful.
7. Experience
Although life experience can modify a person’s system of constructs, this does not happen spontaneously but rather takes place through the psychological construction we make of the events in question. The susceptibility to change of a given construct or system of constructs It is a very relevant factor in personality.
8. Modulation
This postulate speaks of permeability, that is, the capacity of a construct to introduce new elements into its scope of application and the possibility of modification of constructs hierarchically superior to it.
9. Fragmentation
Fragmentation is the ability of a system of constructs to include subsystems of which contradictory predictions are extracted without this leading to a disorganization of the whole This corollary is closely related to that of organization, since fragmentation depends on the hierarchization of the constructs.
10. Communality
A relevant aspect of Kelly’s theory is the emphasis that systems of constructs of Two people who share the same culture will be more likely to look alike what if it’s not like that. Therefore, the same will happen with behavior, values and other psychological processes and mental contents.
11. Sociability
The eleventh and final corollary of personal construct theory states that we are more likely to understand and like an individual if we are able to reproduce his or her construct system. This postulate can be clearly related to the concept of empathy, and is influenced by the corollary of communality.
