Lecture 7

Question 1

What are three main points of George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory?

Answer 1

1. necessary for persons to predict how others will behave and events will proceed
2. people maintain or revise predictions as their experience does or does not confirm them
3. person’s personality can be understood by understanding how a person categorises people and predicts events

Question 2

What are the three steps of a ‘person-as-scientist’?

Answer 2

1. people have expectations (hypothesis)
2. people test those expectations (experiment)
3. revise expectations based on experience (theory building)

Question 3

What are personal constructs?

Answer 3

‘Constructed’ ways of understanding the world

Question 4

What do constructs guide?

Answer 4

Expectations, perceptions and behaviour

Question 5

What is the Role Construct Repertory Test (REP Test)?

Answer 5

Kelly’s method developed to understand and assess such personal constructs

Question 6

What is the fundamental postulate?

Answer 6

A person’s processes are psychologically channelized (directed) by the ways in which he anticipates events

Question 7

What is the acronym for the 11 corollaries?

Answer 7

I Can

Question 8

What is a construction corollary?

Answer 8

we construct our anticipations using past experiences

Question 9

what is an experience corollary?

Answer 9

when our anticipations do not live up to our expectations that we ‘reconstruct’

Question 10

what is the modulation corollary?

Answer 10

some people are flexible in their thinking, some people are inflexible - changeability

Question 11

what is permeability in relation to the modulation corollary?

Answer 11

the changeability of constructs - dilation and constriction

Question 12

What is the individuality corollary?

Answer 12

people differ from each other in their construction of events

Question 13

what is the commonality corollary?

Answer 13

similar constructs, experiences and understandings

Question 14

what is the dichotomy corollary?

Answer 14

bipolar constructs/opposites

Question 15

what is a choice corollary?

Answer 15

we choose what will improve our understanding and allow better predictions - we don’t have to be victims of our experiences

Question 16

What is the repertory grid technique?

Answer 16

a method of testing personal constructs

Question 17

what is constructive alternativism?

Answer 17

that we can choose how we perceive events and how it effects us

Question 18

Does Kelly advocate or reject free will/determinism?

Answer 18

Rejects

Question 19

According to Kelly, what causes psychopathology?

Answer 19

can be traced to a person’s construction system - failure in permeability. Rigid/inflexible thinking

Question 20

What is fixed-role therapy?

Answer 20

therapist writes a new identity for the client - aim to show client that there are different ways of living.

Question 21

What is the influence of Kelly’s theory on Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy?

Answer 21

changing behaviour/feelings through changing thinking

Question 22

What are two criticisms of Kelly’s theory?

Answer 22

1. absence of biological factors?

2. intellectual bias?