Personal construct theory

Construct theory (PCT) is a psychological theory of human cognition. Eddington said, "Science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience." George Kelly, the psychologist and creator of personal construct theory pushed this idea two steps further. He inferred that psychology as a science was an attempt to set in order the facts of human experience so that the psychologist could make good predictions about what people will do when confronted by new situations. He explicitly stated that each individual's psychological task is to put in order the facts of his or her own experience. Then each of us, like the scientist, is to test the accuracy of that constructed knowledge by performing those actions the constructs suggest. If the results of our actions are in line with what the knowledge predicted then we have done a good job of finding the order in our personal experience. If not, then we must be willing to change something: our interpretations or our predictions or both. This method of discovering and correcting our constructs is simply the scientific method used by all modern sciences to discover the truths about the universe we live in.

People develop constructs as internal ideas of reality in order to understand the world around them. They can be based on observations or experiences. Constructs are often POLAR which means opposite, with one construct of good another is bad. They can be expanded with new ideas.

"Personal Construct Psychology" (PCP) is a theory of personality developed by the American psychologist George Kelly in the 1950s. From the theory, Kelly derived a psychotherapy approach and also a technique called "The Repertory Grid Interview" that helped his patients to uncover their own "constructs" (defined later) with minimal intervention or interpretation by the therapist. The Repertory Grid was later adapted for various uses within organizations, including decision-making and interpretation of other people's world-views.

The UK Council for Psychotherapy, a regulatory body, classifies PCP therapy under Experiential Constructivism.

Principles

The main tenet of PCP theory is the following:

"A person's unique psychological processes are channeled by the way s/he anticipates events."

Kelly believed that anticipation and prediction are the main drivers of our mind. "Man is a scientist", said Kelly, in that he is always building up and refining theories and models about how the world works so that he can anticipate events. We start on this at birth (a child discovers, "if I cry, mother will come") and continue refining our theories as we grow up. We build theories -often stereotypes- about other people and also try to control them or impose on others our own theories so that we are better able to predict their actions.

All these theories are built up from a system of "constructs". A construct has two extreme points, such as "happy-sad" and we tend to place people at either extreme or at some point in between. Our mind, said Kelly, is filled up with these constructs, many of them unconscious. A given person or set of persons or any event or circumstance can be characterized fairly precisely by the set of constructs we apply to it and the position of the thing within the range of each construct. So Fred for instance may be just half between happy and sad (one construct) and definitively clever rather than stupid (another construct). The baby above may have an unconscious construct "Comes... doesn't come when I cry".

Constructs are applied to anything we put our attention to, including ourselves, and also strongly influence what we fix our attention on. We construe reality constructing constructs. Hence, determining a person's system of constructs would go a long way towards understanding him, especially the person's essential constructs that represent very strong and unchangeable beliefs; and also the constructs a person applies to him/herself.

Therapy approach

Kelly believed in a non-invasive approach to psychotherapy. Rather than having the therapist interpret the person’s psyche, which would amount to imposing the doctor’s constructs on the patient, the therapist should just act as a facilitator of the patient finding his own constructs. The patient’s behavior is then mainly explained as ways to selectively observe the world, act upon it and update the construct system in such a way as to increase predictability. To help the patient find his constructs, Kelly developed the Repertory Grid Interview technique.

The Repertory Grid

To build a Repertory Grid (a sort of matrix) for a patient, Kelly would first ask the patient to select about seven elements whose nature might depend on whatever the patient or therapist are trying to discover. For instance, “Two specific friends, two work-mates, two people you dislike, your mother and yourself”, or something of that sort. Then, three of the elements would be selected at random, and then the therapist would ask:"In relation to… (whatever is of interest), in which way two of these people are alike but different from the third"? The answer is sure to indicate one of the extreme points of one of the patient’s constructs. He might say for instance that Fred and Sarah are very communicative whereas John isn’t. Further questioning would reveal the other end of the construct (say, introvert) and the positions of the three characters between extremes. Repeating the procedure with different sets of three elements ends up revealing several constructs the patient might not have been fully aware of.

The Repertory Grid itself is a matrix where the rows represent constructs found, the columns represent the elements, and cells indicate with a number the position of each element within each construct. There is software available to produce several reports and graphs from these Grids.

Organizational applications of the Repertory Grid technique

PCP has always been a minority interest among psychologists. During the last 30 years, it has gradually gained adherents in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Italy and Spain. While its chief fields of application remain clinical and educational psychology, there is an increasing interest in its applications to employee training and development, job analysis, job description and evaluation. The Repertory Grid is often used in the qualitative phase of market research, to identify the ways in which consumers construe products and services.

References

* Fransella, F., Bell, R., Bannister, D. "A Manual for Repertory Grid Technique. Second Edition." Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
* Jankowicz, A.D. "Applications of personal construct psychology in business practice" in Neimeyer, G. & Neimeyer, R. (eds.) "Advances in Personal Construct Psychology" Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1990. Reviews some of the applications in human resource management and employee development.
* Jankowicz, A.D. "The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids" Chichester: Wiley, 2003. Provides a basic primer in repertory grid technique.
* Kelly, G.A. "A theory of personality" New York : W.W. Norton, 1963. First chapters of (Kelly, 1955). An elegant presentation and proof of the theory in the form of a postulate and sixteen corollaries. Does not include description of the Grid.
* Kelly, G.A. [http://www.oikos.org/kellyconfusion.htm "Confusion and the Clock"] Last work of Kelly, where he tries to construe the idea of Death: his own!
* Kelly, G.A. "The Psychology of Personal Constructs." New York: Norton, 1955. Kelly's main opus in two volumes.
* Mildred L.G. Shaw & Brian R. Gaines. [http://repgrid.com/reports/PSYCH/NewPsych92/index.html "Kelly's Geometry of Psychological Space and its Significance for Cognitive Modeling."] A summary of Kelly's work, including the theory and the Repertory Grid. The Geometry mentioned in the title results when constructs are mapped as straight lines on a plane, where similar constructs get clustered. Elements are represented as points close to the constructs that construe them.
* Stewart, Valerie. [http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/BUS_APP/business.htm "Business applications of Repertory Grid"] . Online book for self-training on the Repertory Grid technique in business situations. Chapter 2 presents a summary and examples.

See also

* Idios kosmos

External links

* [http://www.pcp-net.de/info/centre.html] , The PCP Portal.
* [http://tiger.cpsc.ucalgary.ca:1500/ Web-grid II] . Applications and articles related to Kelly, PCP and the repertory grid, including a web tool that helps elucidating constructs and graphing the resulting grid.
* [http://www.next-practice.com/nextexpertizer nextexpertizer - computer supported repertory grid interview and analysis tool]
* [http://www.eac-leipzig.de/scivescoweb sci:vesco - FREE Online Repertory Grid Software, 3D Grid Analysis]
* A concise introduction: [http://www.enquirewithin.co.nz/theoryof.htm George Kelly's Theory of Personal Constructs and Repertory Grid Summarised]